Saturday, June 23, 2012

Bleier on Cashill: Did Obama write Dreams from My Father



My  12 page, 4,000 world article,  “Jack Cashill’s Expose: Who wrote Obama’s Dreams from My Father?” 
 is available on the DESIP website.
 The article is the first of a proposed two- part essay under the heading: “Searching for Obama.”
Except for part of the first paragraph, the selections copied below are from the final sections of the article.
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Excerpts from:  


“Jack Cashill’s Expose: Who wrote Obama’s Dreams from My Father?”
                                                             by Ronald Bleier



In early 2011 on CSPAN’s Book TV program I watched author Jack Cashill present his controversial and startling theory regarding Obama’s memoir, Dreams from My Father (1995). Summarizing the findings he set out in his recently published Deconstructing Obama,[i] Cashill contended that Obama’s memoir was ghostwritten by Bill Ayers.



Authorship of Dreams-- A Matter of Importance?

The  question of whether Dreams from My Father  was ghostwritten or not rose above the trivial for me because  by early 2011 I had come to believe that President Obama had been relentlessly pursuing an extremist right-wing Republican agenda.   In foreign policy he continued and escalated the destructive militarism of his predecessors revealing a lack of compassion and ruthlessness that rivaled his bloody predecessors. I felt that Oliver Stone was not exaggerating when he termed President Obama “a wolf in sheep’s clothing” referencing his militarism and his efforts to scuttle Constitutional rights of due process. Domestically Obama has promoted and continues to favor a damaging program of austerity and tax cuts, including the more than a trillion in tax cuts that he has already pushed through in 2009 and 2010[ii]; with apparently more to come in 2012-2013.

The argument is that if President Obama has pursued these policies with the full awareness of the consequences for the economy and for his re-election (see below) it can be deduced that counterintuitively he prefers a hobbled economy, a weakened Democratic Party, an undermined and demoralized middle class—his base-- in order to pursue a Republican agenda of attacks on labor, the middle class, Social Security and Medicare.

Similarly his escalation and continuation of the drone strike program in Pakistan and Yemen is particularly egregious and telling. Critics of these attacks often point out that that a chief consequence of the program which reportedly kills more civilians than “militants” by a factor or 2 or 3 or 4 or more, is to radicalize the local population and in the end, create more “terrorists.” In other words, if the purpose of the drone program is counterterrorism, then the program is counterproductive—not to speak of its appalling destruction and the perilous precedent it sets for the future security of all nations.

Since these effects must be as plain to the White House as they are to critics, the implication is that Obama’s “anti-terrorism” rhetoric masks a more sinister program. The drone program seems designed to allow free rein to the most militaristic and aggressive elements of the U.S.’s national security state, embodied in Obama’s hawkish national security advisor, John Brennan. The evident intention of the deadly drone attacks—not to mention other regular and special forces U.S. military operations-- is to wreak havoc and destabilize vulnerable areas of the world as part of an endless war agenda favored by extremist hawks, neoconservatives and others.

Does Obama really wish to be re-elected?

If President Obama is a faux Democrat, a serial traitor to his party and to his core supporters, then it would be understandable if he were not wholly comfortable in his high profile leadership role. A second term would, among other things, only widen his exposure as a fraud, as the great deceiver,[iii] as the more effective evil[iv] as some are beginning to see.  Developments in a post 2013 Obama administration would continue to peel away at the veils of his deception.  If he leaves office after only one term, he would be leaving, relatively speaking, at the top of his game. 

If he left the White House in January 2013 he need have no fear as to the continuation of his political program since he has already made giant strides in institutionalizing an extremist right wing and totalitarian agenda. Due to the terrible and groundbreaking precedents of the past decade and more, a real Republican like Mitt Romney should have little trouble persevering on the road to heightened national and international instability, global unsustainability and more rigorous control everywhere from the top.

One sign that Obama is not deeply committed to a second term would be if his re-election campaign machine turns out to be not as smoothly run as it was in 2008. Could his June 2012 political faux pas, when he allowed that “the private sector is doing fine” be a sign of a lack of focus or interest?  More such blunders, as well as a campaign lacking in direction, could be signs of Obama’s inner intentions.
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Read more:


[i] Jack Cashill, Deconstructing Obama: The Life, Loves, and Letters of America’s First Postmodern President (2011).
CSPAN Book TV aired Jack Cashill’s book talk regarding his newly published, Deconstructing Obama in March 2011. The Book TV website offers the following summary of the Cashill presentation.
Jack Cashill questions whether President Obama wrote his memoir, Dreams from My Father.  Mr. Cashill argues that Barack Obama was assisted in the writing of his 1995 memoir by Bill Ayers and contends that the President's life story is different than the one presented in his biography.  Jack Cashill presents his argument at the Kansas City Public Library in Kansas City, Missouri.

[ii] Jack Rasmus, “Obama’s Economy,” Z Magazine, April 2012.
[iii] Yves Smith, “Barack Obama, the Great Deceiver,” May 14, 2012. (h/t Xymphora).
[iv] Glenn Ford: Why Barack Obama is the More Effective Evil, 3.21.12,  http://blackagendareport.com/content/why-barack-obama-more-effective-evil

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