Phil Restino, U.S. Army veteran, radio show host and founder of the Central Florida chapter of Veterans For Peace, talks about Resolution 2013-10 to apply the same impeachment standards to President Obama as were applied to former President Bush.
Actually, there were four of us. Tarak had called me right before the show to stress that VFP can't afford to even look like a racist organization. According to Tarak, who has served on the VFP executive board, the organization has to be protected from that image.
Searching for images to use on this blog, I was struck by how racist many of them were. Yes, there are still whites who hate blacks, and who are eager to see Obama fail because he is African American. He is educated, sophisticated, and wealthy. How can that be when so many of America's whites have none of these measures of success? Marginalized whites taking their anger out on blacks; it's an old story of the capitalist system encouraging division among the dispossessed.
But I think that the VFP leadership should have acted upon their convention's vote for impeachment. The organization can take a principled position on war crimes, while at the same time speaking out against white racist groups. Pro Palestinian groups in the US do that all the time. We criticize Israel's apartheid policies, yet reject any person or group that espouses hatred against Jews.
We had only begun to explore the two party system's role in all this. Democrats want to own the antiwar movement, while giving Obama the cover to bomb and invade other countries. The call to impeach is especially needed now to expose the utter hypocrisy of the Democratic Party. We have two corporate, pro-war parties in America, and a bunch of people who don't want to admit how bad things really are.
