for NWO Hobbit - Fri, 06/20/2008 - 21:34
Monday, 02 June 2008 13:49
Washington Post op-ed calls on Obama to promote a “European Union” format for North America.Another Washington establishment insider is now calling for North American Union. In a Washington Post op-ed titled “The Orthodoxy of Hope”, liberal columnist Jim Hoagland calls on Barack Obama to a adopt a “broad new hemispheric approach” to American foreign policy. Hoagland argues that Obama should promise to “apply the lessons of the European Union and its half-century of economic and political integration” and that “a functioning American Union that pools sovereignty is a goal worth introducing now.” Clearly the globalist are feeling confident that Barack Obama will be our next President –- a New World Order. Please click here to read the entire article by Jim Hoagland.
for Hobbit - Sat, 06/21/2008 - 00:36
Make the World Safe for Hope
February 25, 2008 Issue
Copyright © 2008 The American Conservative
http://www.amconmag.com/2008/2008_02_25/index1.html
Make the World Safe for Hope
Can Barack Obama, who campaigns as an icon of peace, actually be more bellicose than Bush? Yes, he can.
by Brendan O’Neill
Obama-mania is getting out of hand. Full-grown and well-educated men—from swooning Andrew Sullivan to the entire staff of GQ
magazine—are developing “man crushes” on Barack Obama, going weak in
the knees for his immaculately pressed suits, oratorical skills, and
shameless hope-mongering.
“I’ve
never wanted anyone more than I want you,” warbles Obama Girl in a song
called “I Got a Crush on Obama,” which has been viewed over 6 million
times on YouTube. Celebs are queuing up to fall at his feet. “My heart
belongs to Barack,” says Scarlett Johansson. There’s a palpable whiff
of semi-religious hysteria at Obama rallies. As Joel Stein wrote in the
Los Angeles Times, “Obamaphilia has gotten creepy,” and its “fanatical” adherents are starting to embarrass themselves.
Actually,
it’s worse than that: they are deluding themselves. Many Democrats have
become so goggle-eyed, so insanely convinced that Obama is the savior
of American politics (potentially rescuing both the Democratic Party
from political ruin and America herself from the decadence and violence
of the Bush era), that they are beginning to suffer political
hallucinations. They fantasize that he is pure and righteous, a
miracle-worker who, in a pique of rage, will overturn the conventions
of neocon-ruled America.
The
blind hope in Obama-as-messiah is most clearly expressed in the
widespread delusion that he would be a “president of peace,” welcomed
by a world eager to bury the warmongering ways of the office’s former
occupant and renew its respect for America. Columnist Michael Kinsley
praised Obama’s “valuable experience … as what you might call a ‘world
man’—Kenyan father, American mother, four formative years living in
Indonesia, more years in the ethnic stew of Hawaii, middle name of
Hussein, and so on—in an increasingly globalized world.” But from my
sedate Obamarama-free home in London, I’m not cheered by the prospect
of this “world man” in the White House. Rather, I see him for what he
is—or for what he threatens to become. Having never been stirred by the
sight of Obama giving an MLK-style speech on the need for change, I can
only take the candidates at their words. And Obama’s words are ominous
indeed.
President
Obama would be a warmonger. He would be a wide-eyed, zealous
interventionist who would not think twice about using America’s
“military muscle” (his words) to overthrow “rogue states” and to
suppress America’s enemies, real and imagined. He would go farther even
than President Bush in transforming the globe into America’s backyard
and staffing it with spies and soldiers. He would relish the “American
mission” to police the world and topple tyrannical regimes.
After eight years of Bush’s military meddling in the Middle East, if you want more war, vote Obama.
Two
myths must be exploded: first, that Barack Obama was a principled and
passionate opponent of the war in Iraq; second, that if he were
installed in the White House he would resist the temptation to launch
new wars and would instead usher in an era of peace.
Iraq
is the Obamabots’ favorite faultline in the clash of the two Democrat
contenders: Clinton supported the invasion and Obama opposed it. An
open-and-shut case of one candidate being “for the war” and the other
being “against the war,” right? Not quite. Obama’s position over the
past five years has been strikingly similar to Clinton’s. And that
ought to be an issue of serious concern for Obama’s army of acolytes
and the peace protesters who have latched on to his campaign because,
as Jeff Taylor pointed out in Counterpunch, “Clinton herself
provides no substantive alternative to the neoconservative philosophy
of the Bush administration.” Obama is little different from Clinton,
and Clinton is little different from Bush.
Obama’s
campaign frequently invokes his 2002 “speech against the war,” but very
rarely quotes directly from it. Why? Because this mysterious
speech—which has become the stuff of legend in Obamaphilic circles,
talked about but rarely read—is a pro-war tirade. Yes, Obama described
the planned invasion of Iraq as “dumb” and “rash,” but his overriding
concern—expressed repetitively throughout the speech—was that the Bush
administration was damaging the legitimate case for American-made wars
of intervention and potentially making it harder for future
administrations (Democratic, for example) to send soldiers around the
world to depose unfriendly regimes.
Obama
gave the speech at an antiwar rally in Chicago in October 2002. Perhaps
nervous about being seen at a gathering of critics of American military
intervention, he straight away outlined his pro-war credentials: “Let
me begin by saying that although this has been billed as an anti-war
rally, I stand before you as someone who is not opposed to war in all
circumstances.” He reiterated his non-opposition to war another four
times in the 921-word speech.
Then
Obama went to Washington, where he obediently voted to fund the war in
Iraq and opposed the withdrawal of American troops. In 2004, he even
talked about sending more troops to Iraq to stabilize the country—he
had the idea of a surge before the Bushies did. When he and Hillary
Clinton had a chance to enact Sen. Russ Feingold’s measure ordering
Bush to withdraw most U.S. troops from Iraq by July 1, 2007, both voted
no. Both senators also voted against a June 2006 amendment proposed by
John Kerry for the redeployment of U.S. troops out of Iraq. It wasn’t
until May 2007 that Clinton and Obama voted to cut off funds.
It
is a myth, pure bunkum, that Obama is a brave anti-warrior. He made a
brief speech in 2002—peppered with reminders of his generally pro-war
leanings—and then, like Clinton, used his muscle in the Senate to fund
the war and extend its bloody duration. It is only during the past
year, as he has thrown himself into the presidential race, that Obama
has decided to pose as a long-standing, level-headed critic. As Taylor
argues, “An adept politician, Obama began emphasizing his ‘anti-war’
stance as the war became increasingly unpopular among Democrats across
the country and he began gearing up for the 2008 presidential campaign.”
But
there is more going on here than Iraq-related opportunism. If elected
president, Obama would make it a priority to smash the argument for
non-interventionism and to rehabilitate America’s imperial mission to
right the wrongs of the world.
His
main beef with the war in Iraq is not that it has failed in its stated
objectives, fomented terror, and killed thousands, but rather that it
has made the American people skeptical about military intervention.
“There is one … place where our mistakes in Iraq have cost us dearly,
and that is the loss of our government’s credibility with the American
people,” he says. Citing a Pew Survey that found that 42 percent of
Americans agree that the U.S. should “mind its own business
internationally and let other countries get along the best they can on
their own,” Obama retorted, “We cannot afford to be a country of
isolationists right now. … We need to maintain a strong foreign policy,
relentless in pursuing our enemies and hopeful in promoting our values
around the world.”
Those
foolishly cheering Obama’s promise to bring the war in Iraq to a
“responsible end” should recognize why he is planning this: not to
liberate Iraq but rather to liberate the interventionist project from
the “Iraqi distraction” and rebuild America’s military sufficiently to
send its forces to hotspots around the globe. In a long piece for Foreign Affairs
in July/August 2007, he argued, “After Iraq, we may be tempted to turn
inward. That would be a mistake. The American moment is not over, but
it must be seized anew. We must bring the war to a responsible end and
then renew our leadership—military, diplomatic, moral—to confront new
threats and capitalize on new opportunities.” He calls for adding
65,000 soldiers to the Army and 27,000 to the Marine Corps and vastly
expanding their mission. “[D]eposing a dictator and setting up a ballot
box” is not enough: Obama wants $50 billion to promote “sustainable
democracy,” a gauzy scheme that aims to “build healthy and educated
communities, reduce poverty, develop markets, and generate wealth.”
Yet
for all his focus on the “politics of hope,” when it comes to outlining
his program of international interventionism, Obama parrots precisely
the Bush regime’s panic-packed arguments about the horrendous threats
facing America. Paying tribute to earlier battles against fascism and
Soviet communism, Obama said last year, “This century’s threats are at
least as dangerous and in some ways more complex than those we have
confronted in the past. They come from weapons that can kill on a mass
scale and from global terrorists who respond to alienation or perceived
injustice with murderous nihilism. They come from rogue states allied
to terrorists and from rising powers that could challenge both America
and the international foundation of liberal democracy.” Here, Obama the
celebrated new Democrat sounds startlingly like the clapped-out
dinosaurs of the neocon project. Like them, he compares today’s shoddy
and stateless terror networks to the powerful regimes of fascist
Germany and Soviet Russia. And like them he suggests that America is
threatened by “weapons that can kill on a mass scale”—a dark hint at
the much feared “dirty nuke,” the existence of which has never been
established, either in al-Qaeda’s caves or in the nuclear facilities of
Iran.
Besides
plagiarizing the Bush regime’s book of fear-mongering, Obama embraces
two other aspects of Bushite foreign policy: unilateralism and
pre-emption. He argues, “No president should ever hesitate to use
force—unilaterally if necessary—to protect ourselves and our vital
interests when we are attacked or imminently threatened.”
Those
expecting the age of Obama to bring a repudiation of the Bush agenda
hope in vain. In a speech to the Chicago Council on Global Affairs last
April he said, “We have heard much over the last six years about how
America’s larger purpose in the world is to promote the spread of
freedom.” The anticipated twist never came. “I agree,” Obama told the
crowd. Turns out we haven’t done enough to mold the world in America’s
image: “America must lead by reaching out to all those living
disconnected lives of despair in the world’s forgotten corners.”
Making
Bush’s foreign policy look nearly as “humble” as initially promised,
Obama declared that America’s security is “inextricably linked to the
security of all people,” opining that flu-stricken Indonesian chickens
and Latin American corruption put Americans at risk. No, they don’t.
Obama’s stress on how everything is interconnected not only sets up the
United States to intervene everywhere, but it makes any coherent
strategy impossible. If every problem is an American problem, how would
Obama set priorities or address one crisis instead of another? It’s a
question he hasn’t begun to answer.
Neoconservatives are only too happy to fill in the blank. In a Washington Post
column entitled “Obama the Interventionist,” Robert Kagan celebrated
the repudiation of the realist consensus: “Obama’s speech … was pure
John Kennedy, without a trace of John Mearsheimer.” In 1996, Kagan
co-wrote with Bill Kristol a Foreign Affairs essay entitled
“Toward a Neo-Reaganite Foreign Policy,” which argued that U.S. foreign
policy should seek to preserve “American hegemony” so that we can
continue to fulfill our “responsibility to lead the world.” Obama has
updated this outlook in PC, Democrat-friendly lingo: “The mission of
the U.S. is to provide global leadership grounded in the understanding
that the world shares a common security and a common humanity.” Little
wonder that Kagan sees in Obama a kindred spirit: “Obama believes the
world yearns to follow us,” he writes. “Personally, I like it.”
If
President Obama pursued a neocon foreign policy, only with a touch more
East Coast-style diplomacy than was ever employed by the
Stetson-wearing Bush, that would be bad enough. But he might actually
be worse than the neocons.
Obama
continually criticizes the Bush administration for pursuing its
interests on the international stage instead of spreading “values” and
“principles.” He says Iraq was a war based “not on principle but on
politics.” Yet if there could be anything worse than the Bush foreign
policy, it would be Obama’s principled meddling. At least interventions
driven by narrow interests and politics have some kind of endpoint:
when the interest has been protected or the political goal realized,
the intervention might come to an end. Obama, by contrast, inflamed by
his self-defined “values” and motivated by a vision of good versus evil
in which it is America’s role to lead the world toward its “common
humanity,” would be more reckless and unwieldy than Bush ever was.
There is nothing quite so dangerous as a well-armed leader convinced
that he has an historic moral purpose on the world stage.
Barack Obama’s Inaugural Address wouldn’t require much work: George W. Bush delivered the first draft in 2005.
_________________________________
Brendan O’Neill is editor of Spiked in London. (spiked-online.com)
for Hobbit - Fri, 06/20/2008 - 23:59
Constitution????? What Constitution?
Takes me back to this Thread... http://forums.libertylove.org/?q=node/234
