why cant obama admit it?

radiohead33 wrote:

he has legitimate problems with americas race problem, yet talks little about race, poverty, the inner city, drugs and all that? Why?

He makes jokes about not being able to get a cab in NY because of his skin, yet refuses to talk about race in any other way than the big speech he gave earlier this year. I dont get it.

His wife talks about being happy for the first time with her country, I can understand completely what she means. But neither he nor she discuss deeply what was meant.

This is what I dont like about obama. Everyone acts like his is JFK or RFK or Jesus. He is none of them. All those people had big ideas and delivered. They werent hype.

To have problems with americas race problem is legitimate and justified. To speak vaguely on it, and act like you plan on doing something grand about it in inescusable.

RFK if elected would have been the first radical president. he would have ended vietnam. He would have been a friend and supporter of the poor and downtrodden. He would have made race a huge issue to debate and repair. There isnt a question about that.

With obama, you dont know. Is he for Iraq, or not. Will he get them out by 2013 or not. Will he attack Iran?

AMY GOODMAN: We take a look now at Robert F. Kennedy’s position on the Vietnam War and how it changed. As President Kennedy’s Attorney General, Robert Kennedy took part in the high-level discussions that led to his brother’s massive escalation of the US attack on Vietnam.


In a Democracy Now! exclusive, I want to turn to a never-before-broadcast address by Robert F. Kennedy on February 14, 1966. Speaking to students at St. Lawrence University in Canton, New York, Kennedy was asked about his position on the ongoing US attack on Vietnam. His answer was decidedly pro-war.


ROBERT F. KENNEDY: I’ll give you what I think myself, as far as Vietnam is concerned, and then I’d be glad to answer any other questions in more detail about it. First, I think that we have a commitment in Vietnam that we have to keep. Now, whether that commitment, as George Kennan said, should have been made originally, whether we should have been in this position, become involved in this kind of a position ten years ago, eight years ago, five years ago or three years ago, the fact is that we are now there, and a commitment has been made by several presidents of the United States and supported by the American people. I think we have to keep that commitment. So, therefore, I am not in favor of unilaterally withdrawing from South Vietnam. I’m in favor of remaining there and keeping the commitment that we have. I think it would be disastrous to pull out of Vietnam at the present time.


Secondly, I’m in favor of trying to find a peaceful solution to the problem of Vietnam. I don’t think that there is any chance of finding that peaceful solution at the present time, although I’m in favor of making every kind of effort to do so and to demonstrate to our own people and around the world that we are interested in finding a peaceful solution.


But I think that Hanoi and the Viet Cong and the National Front and the Chinese are convinced that the United States is going to turn and run from Vietnam. They felt that the French were going to do it in 1954. There was dissension within France. They see the same kind of dissension within the United States. They think that there—as General Giap said in his speech last spring, the Americans are going to say, “Bring the boys home for—by Christmas,” that they aren’t going to remain there, that we don’t have the tenacity or the will to remain, so that therefore they think that the war is going in their direction and that they will—there’s no sense in any sitting down to any negotiating discussions, that they’ve had negotiations before and discussions before and sat down at a conference table, and they felt they’ve always come out badly. They thought they would do much better in the 1955 discussions and felt that they were betrayed by Molotov, so that they don’t wish to come back to a conference table, because they think the United States will get out, that they think they can win the war in the South.


I think that our greatest problem, therefore, is to prove that we’re going to remain in Vietnam. Now, that war, that struggle in Vietnam, therefore, in my judgment, is going to be costly, is going to be long, is going to be much bloodier than it is at the present time, and we’re going to have a commitment of a great number of more troops than we have at the present time. I would think that the estimate of 400,000 troops by the end of the year is probably accurate and the fact that it will grow even more next year, and the casualties will be considerably higher than they are at the present time, as far as Americans.