Sherwood Ross: Obama For President

[babylonsister]

http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/node/32903

Obama For President
Submitted by davidswanson on Mon, 2008-04-21 15:23.

By Sherwood Ross

snip//


No matter if Bush’s war has by now claimed the lives of a million human beings, destroyed much of Iraq, and cost the American people 4,000+ lives, 30,000 wounded, (have you visited a VA hospital lately?) and parted the public from a couple of trillion bucks. As far as Fox News is concerned, it’s okay to vote to make illegal wars and kill innocent people. It’s not okay to have a pastor that condemns wrong wars in an angry tone of voice. That's disgusting.

As this campaign has worn on, I have begun to suspect that Obama does not believe in killing innocent people. Recall that Senator Clinton scolded him last year for saying he would not use atomic weapons to go after terrorists. Obama said he wouldn’t do it as nukes might kill civilians.
Since the use of such weapons is prohibited by a treaty the United States has signed, it’s an eminently sensible position. Besides, when you drop an atomic bomb, the fallout spreads and who knows where it might wind up? The Three-Mile Island debacle pales beside the prospect of military use of a nuclear weapon.

But Clinton chided Obama for taking the nuclear “option” off the table when, in fact, no such option exists. Now this is a very real and significant difference between the candidates. As far as I can tell, Obama is the only one of the three sane enough not to claim the right to use banned atomic weapons.

Maybe that’s because, as a constitutional scholar and former University of Chicago law school professor, Obama believes in law and order. The Illinois Fraternal Order of Police thought so when it endorsed him for the Senate in 2004. However, by their votes favoring an illegal war, Senators McCain and Clinton have proved they are no respecters of law and order, no more than is President Bush, no more than Fox News.

Speaking of the law, when you graduate magna cum laude and as president of the Harvard Law Review you can pretty much have your pick of jobs at many a prestigious law firm and earn yourself a bundle. Instead, Obama took a $13,000-a-year job as head of a faith-based community organizing agency funded by the Catholic Church and directed by a church coalition. According to biographers, Obama worked “to counteract the dislocation and massive unemployment caused by the closing and downsizing of southeast Chicago steel plants.”

So I ask you, who would want a man in the White House that actually believes in law and order, refuses to vote for illegal wars or drop atomic bombs, and instead devotes his life to alleviating human suffering in preference to making himself rich? Why would anyone vote for such a guy? Seriously, Obama towers over his opponents in the eyes of Americans who would like to see a humanitarian, not a warmonger, seated in the Oval Office.