The Obama Syndrome: Surrender at Home, War Abroad
“Our country has borne a special burden in global affairs. We have spilled American blood in many countries on multiple continents ... Our cause is just, our resolve unwavering. We will go forward with the confidence that right makes might.”
—Barack Obama, West Point, December 1, 2009
What has really changed since Bush left the White House? Very little, argues Tariq Ali, apart from the mood music. The hopes aroused during Obama’s election campaign have rapidly receded—the honeymoon has been short. Following the financial crisis, the “reform” president bailed out Wall Street without getting anything in return. With Democratic Party leaders and representatives mired in the corrupt lobbying system, the plans for reforming the healthcare system lie wrecked on the Senate floor. Abroad, the “war on terror” continues: torture on a daily basis in the horror chamber that is Bagram, Iraq occupied indefinitely, Israel permanently appeased, and more troops to Afghanistan and more drone attacks in Pakistan than under Bush. The fact that Obama has proved incapable of shifting the political terrain even a few inches in a reformist direction will pave the way for a Republican surge and triumph in the not too distant future.
Hardback, 168 pages
ISBN: 9781844674497
October 2010
$16.95 / £9.99
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Reviews
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The Obama Syndrome will be a powerful boost to Obama dissenters on the left.
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The Obama Syndrome documents the collapse of the Myth into a thousand pieces
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A comprehensive account.
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Ali ... remains an outlier and intellectual bomb-thrower in his adopted London; an urbane, Oxford-educated polemicist.
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Ali is smart as fire.
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Ali doesn't put all blame on Obama and offers a prescription for the terrible problems confronting us: 'The lack of popular social movements in the United States enabled the elite to impose its own solutions, and these were, unsurprisingly, designed to boost the existing arrangements ... The lesson is an old one: without action from below, there will be no change above.'
Blog
From Cairo to Madison: The Arab Revolution and a World in Motion
Tariq Ali, the acclaimed writer, filmmaker and author of The Obama Syndrome: Surrender At Home, War Abroad delivered a riveting talk at Brooklyn's Galapagos Art Space entitled "From Cairo to Madison: The Arab Revolution and a World in Motion." The sold-out event was co-sponsored by Verso and Haymarket Books. Delivering his usual sharp and insightful commentary, Tariq traced past and contemporary patterns of resistance in North Africa and the Middle East that accompanied imperial interference. It comes as no surprise then to discover commonalities between the so-called Arab Spring and resistance to anti-democratic assaults, like the ongoing attacks on public sector workers, in the imperial heartland.
Andrei Platonov, the Bush doctrine, and Robin Blackburn on human rights—new issue of New Left Review out now
The new issue of New Left Review (NLR 69 May/June 2011) is out now. Highlights include:
* Andrew Bacevich tracing the origins of the Bush doctrine of preemptive war to the thought of Albert Wohlstetter.
* Robin Blackburn, whose latest book, The American Crucible, examines the relationship between the struggle for emancipation and the discourse on human rights, reviewing The Last Utopia: Human Rights in History by Samuel Moyn.
* A study of Spain—last frontier of the Eurozone crisis and recent site of mass resistance to the austerity project—in which Isidro López and Emmanuel Rodríguez track the development of the Iberian bubble economy.
* A review of François Dosse’s biography of Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari by Peter Osborne, author of The Politics of Time.
* ‘On the First Socialist Tragedy,’ an article from 1934 by Andrei Platonov, in which he reflects on man, technology and the dialectic of nature.
* Tariq Ali, whose book The Obama Syndrome is out in paperback soon, reviewing Manning Marable’s biography of Malcolm X.
For information on how to subscribe, visit New Left Review.
Tariq Ali "One on One" with Riz Khan
Tariq Ali talks to Riz Khan “One on One” for Al Jazeera about growing up in Pakistan, his student days at Oxford University and involvement in the anti-War movement, the American Empire and paths of the international left.
Visit Al Jazeera to watch the video in situ.
Discussions
Begin a discussionOther books by Tariq Ali
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Kashmir: The Case for Freedom
Leading international voices condemn the brutalities of the Kashmir occupation.by Arundhati Roy, Pankaj Mishra, et al.
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Night of the Golden Butterfly
by Tariq Ali
The final volume in Tariq Ali's acclaimed cycle of historical novels, The Islam Quintet.
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The Protocols of the Elders of Sodom
Provocative and witty essays on the giants of world literature.by Tariq Ali
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Pirates of the Caribbean
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Fully updated edition of this fiery polemic on Latin America’s challenge to US-led neoliberalism.
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A Sultan in Palermo
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Set in medieval Palermo, this is the fourth novel in Tariq Ali's celebrated Islam Quintet.
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Rough Music
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A seething report on the explosive state of affairs in Britain, after Blair's alliance with Bush.
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Street-Fighting Years
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One of the world's best-known radicals relives the early years of the protest movement.
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Bush in Babylon
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The bestselling history of the resistance in Iraq that vitalized the antiwar movement, fully updated.
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The Clash of Fundamentalisms
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Tariq Ali dissects both Islamic and Western fundamentalism.
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The Stone Woman
by Tariq Ali
"Ali spins a web of tales that is as inventive and fantastical as the Arabian nights."—The Times
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Masters of the Universe?
Edited by Tariq Ali
Distinguished dissidents oppose NATO’s war in the Balkans.
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The Book of Saladin
by Tariq Ali
A rich and teeming chronicle set in Cairo, Damascus and Jerusalem.
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Shadows of the Pomegranate Tree
by Tariq Ali
“An enthralling story, unraveled with thrift and verve.”—Independent