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# Is a change going to come?
- URL: https://www.smdp.com/is-a-change-going-to-come/
- Published: 2008-07-01T15:00:00.000Z
- Updated: 2026-10-24T20:01:17.000Z
- Author: Guest Author
- Tags: Opinion, Santa Monica, #archive-import

RECENTLY IN LOS ANGELES, 700 PEOPLE paid $2,300 per person at a fundraiser-reception for Barack Obama; 200 of these people also paid $28,000 per couple for a VIP dinner with the candidate. The recording artist Seal sang a Sam Cooke song, “A Change is Gonna Come,” that captures the hopes of Obama supporters.

Obama advocates that desire real change hope he will address the obscene and growing inequality between rich and poor — the greatest since the late 1920s.

But will someone who has raised millions from Wall Street firms and corporations, and whose economic policy team is headed by Robert Rubin, Clinton’s secretary of treasury, promote the interests of the middle and lower classes rather than the upper class that has generously funded his campaign?

Obama supporters believe he opposes the U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq and will move to end both and bring the troops home.

The truth, however, is that although Obama claimed he would have voted against the 2002 war resolution, since becoming senator he has supported every funding bill to continue the slaughter. He can’t oppose the war, therefore, and vote money to continue it.

According to radical historian Paul Street, Obama thinks the U.S. invasion of Iraq is “a dumb but not a criminal one,” a “botched war” that was undertaken with “the best of \[democratic\] intentions.” Street disagrees, stating that Obama “is incapable of accurately identifying the … illegal, racist and brazenly imperialist invasion of Iraq as a monumental war crime….” After five years of war and devastation resulting in perhaps a million deaths and four million refugees, Obama’s assertion that the invasion of Iraq was undertaken with “the best of democratic intentions” is mind-boggling.

Since 1948, the U.S. has supported Israel’s brutal, illegal and immoral policies toward the Palestinians — built upon a foundation of racist colonialism and ethnic cleansing. The evidence detailing this foundation is provided in Israeli historian Ilan Pappe’s courageous and deeply disturbing book, “The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine.”

In a recent speech before the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), however, Obama ignored this sordid history and once again voiced his uncritical support for Israel’s oppressive policies toward the Palestinians. Will this change if he becomes president?

Given U.S. terrorism against the Third World that has led to the deaths of millions since WW II, will Obama stand with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. who condemned this government in his 1967 “Beyond Vietnam” speech? King called the U.S. — then engaged in a genocidal war of aggression against the Vietnamese — the “greatest purveyor of violence in the world.”

Can one imagine Barack Obama, who is fond of quoting King, making such a statement about the U.S. today?

With particular reference to Africa, will Obama address increasing U.S. military presence on that continent? Will he oppose the U.S. corporate scramble for oil and other natural resources that has led to our support of thugs and killers who enrich themselves at the expense of the masses of African people? Will he stand with Africans seeking democracy and equality, or with corrupt regimes sustained by U.S. and Western elites?

Obama has praised Woodrow Wilson, our 28th president and a racist and imperialist. He lauded Wilson’s efforts to “encourage the self-determination of all peoples … and provide the world a legal framework that could help avoid future conflicts.” Is he unaware of Wilson’s racist aggression against Haiti and the Dominican Republic? According to Noam Chomsky, America’s leading public intellectual, “Wilson’s troops murdered, destroyed, reinstituted virtual slavery and demolished the constitutional system in Haiti.”

Despite “the takeover of Haiti and the Dominican Republic,” Chomsky notes, “Wilson built his reputation as a lofty idealist defending self-determination and the rights of small nations with impressive oratory.”

This doctrine, however, was not extended to blacks. Despite his soaring rhetoric of idealism in foreign policy, will Obama end up emulating Wilson’s policies?

Given the Bush regime’s massive assault on civil liberties that includes Patriot Acts I and II — both supported by Democrats and the latter of which Obama voted for as senator, will he now change his position and join millions of Americans whose city, state and town governments have passed resolutions against these gross violations of our constitutional rights?

Many questions arise about Obama: it is possible that the rhetoric about “A Change is Gonna Come” is simply smoke and mirrors?

JOHN MARCIANO is a professor emeritus for the State University of New York. He lives in Santa Monica.

*Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on July 1, 2008.* [Read the original PDF.](https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/smdp%5Fbackissues/070108.pdf?ref=smdp.com)