Tom Hayden: Rage is Good

[marmar]

via CommonDreams:



Published on Friday, March 6, 2009 by The Nation
Rage is Good

by Tom Hayden


Hopefully, the demonstrations planned on Wall Street April 4 will contribute to the global uprising. Our president and Congress need the pressure.

The world has turned against American hegemony before: against the Vietnam war, against the World Trade Organization and against the invasion of Iraq. On all three occasions, the world was right and Washington was wrong.

On this occasion, the global economy is being devastated by the Wall Street crash. Hundreds of millions are are hurtling into extreme poverty, export industries are collapsing, currencies being destabilized.

As the conservative French president Nicolas Sarkozy says, "Laissez-faire, ces't fini." (Laissez-faire is finished.)

As nations blame Wall Street and move to protect their people, the protests need not be anti-American nor anti-Obama. Sarkozy cannot be accused of being anti-US. Neither are Iceland nor Ukraine. The global opposition might just may be what we need, an organized populist counterforce to the business and banking lobbies entrenched in Washington.

Obama's stimulus package and proposed budget are not the problem. They represent the most progressive government initiatives in a half-century. But as Franch Rich noted in the New York Times March 1, Obama "was fuzzy when it came to what he wanted to do about" more bailouts. The Obama administration is in trouble on the question of what to do about the financial system andthe credit crisis. But Rich is wrong for once in suggesting that it's "bad news" for Obama that "the genuine populist rage in the country...cannot be ignored or finessed." ........(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.commondreams.org/view/2009/03/06-14