When the Bush administration committed deplorable acts of war and military imperialism, the left went berserk in righteous defiance. Yet when the Obama administration commits similar offenses, the left obediently goosesteps along in compliant unison.

Barack Obama, our Dear Leader (as the North Koreans are compelled to call Kim Jong Il), ran for office promising to bring all the troops home within 16 months. That’s no longer the plan.

In truth, he has, in every practical sense, signed on to the agreement reached by former President George W. Bush and the Iraqi government to remain until 2011. The main difference is that the original Security of Forces Agreement (SOFA) planned to withdraw from Iraq entirely. Obama is telling America it must continue a full scale occupation of Iraq, with 50,000 troops remaining there indefinitely.

For a man who spoke out against the illegal invasion from the beginning, Obama is strangely committed to the undeterred continuation of American imperialism in Iraq. Despite security gains from the troop surge and bribery of sectarian groups to stop fighting, the Iraqi people still resent the foreign occupier they’ve been forced to live with for the past six years. And so does a majority of the American people object to its indefinite continuance.

No matter. He is president now. No need to placate to the whims of popular opinion. And besides, the left in this country has decided to wholeheartedly back Obama’s imperial military occupation abroad, even in the very country which roused so much dissent in the Bush years.

Iraq isn’t the only country the formerly anti-war left has conceded to Obama to militarily dominate. Obama’s Iraq-like surge in Afghanistan has utterly failed to provoke more than a minimal degree of defiance on the left. Because, of course, Bush’s misguided foreign policy was immoral and despotic. But, Obama is a well-meaning champion in a difficult position, doing his best to consider everybody’s views and proceed accordingly in a delicate and humble balancing act, effectively absolved of all burden of responsibility. Please.

The near 70,000 troops Obama plans to have on the ground in Afghanistan is a piece of foreign policy which promises to be as fruitless in the long term as any surge in Iraq. Military occupation has virtually no chance of foiling Afghanistan from becoming a safe haven for terrorists. Rather, it will attract and incite insurgent resistance as well as terrorist activity. But you won’t hear the left condemn Obama for making the same mistakes Bush did in Iraq when his invasion flooded Iraq with fighters from all over the region.

Obama has held true to some substantive change in foreign policy, like making diplomatic progress with Iran, but that will remain only an incremental feature of improvement if he can’t manage to resist the appeasement of America‘s massive military industrial complex and the insatiable need for an expanding empire.

In the face of all of this, the culpability of Obama and the Democratic congress remains comfortably unscathed. The left apparently promised him deference, conformity and faith. Regardless of how principled they were during the Bush years against avoidable militarism, against a president and a policy driven by false hopes and unsupported by reason or by the tenets of free societies, they now seem to have muddled those principles for the preservation of functioning partisanship.

It is this complacency, this sort of blind adherence even in the face of contradictory policies, that allows American political corruption. So the government can maintain its empire. So it can overhaul the broken financial system through indefensible corporate welfare, demanding our patience and support and promising future solvency, but clearly just breaking it even more. And nobody blinks.

Unfortunately, liberals all too often find Democratic transgressions excusable so that Obama can explicitly continue Bush’s policies on extraordinary rendition and secret detention facilities not subject to international law. All without so much as a whisper of pointed dissent that can hold a candle to the volume and potency it had under Bush.

Until the people are vigilant against all of those in power, until they consider no person or party sacred, we will never escape the embarrassment that is the American military and financial empire. It has driven us to failed wars and economic collapse, but seems to be a status quo that most are committed to protecting under the guise of party politics.

John Glaser is a Collegian columnist. He can be reached at [email protected].