Reader Posts
« previous | TPM CAFÉ READER POSTS HOME | next »
Obama as a warmonger? (clipped)
I just received a link to this article and thought that TPM would be a good place to paste it.
Obama as a warmonger?
by JonJayRay
People have mostly dismissed his desire to invade Pakistan as just ignorance but the Paleocon writer excerpted below notes that there is much more of the same thinking that seems to have been airbrushed out of commentary on Obama. It is certainly true that it is mainly Democrats who have in the past got America involved in foreign wars
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.
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.” ….
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.”
Comments (7)
I don't agree. At all in anyway whatsoever. But this is America. And as such, you have every right to express someone else's opinion.
March 8, 2008 5:19 PM | Reply | Permalink
I think it's an interesting angle. One that should be examined.
March 8, 2008 5:27 PM | Reply | Permalink
Henry Hazlitt, in his seminal work Economics in One Lesson, stated the following: "The art of economics consists in looking not merely at the immediate but at the longer effects of any act or policy; it consists in tracing the consequences of that policy not merely for one group but for all groups."
You are persistently critical of Barack Obama. This is fine, but you never describe what you believe the alternative to be. Nearly every criticism you raise is just as true, if not more true, of Hillary Clinton. The failure to perceive and address realistic alternatives is indicative of the type of thinking that leads to the fallacy of the broken window. So, I ask you Mr. Seaton, is that you simply prefer naked political dynasties or do you have some realistic alternative in mind?
Anyone who thinks any of the three remaining candidates will end this war with immediacy and finality is delusional. What are our alternatives, Mr. Seaton? Do you fathom the forces that have brought us to this juncture in history or is your purpose merely to complain about the superficialities of popular culture?
March 8, 2008 5:45 PM | Reply | Permalink
While much attention has been given to Senator Hillary Clinton's support for the U.S. invasion of Iraq, her foreign policy record regarding other international conflicts and her apparent eagerness to accept the use of force appears to indicate that her fateful vote authorizing the invasion and
her subsequent support for the occupation and counter-insurgency war was no aberration.
Indeed, there's every indication that, as president, her foreign policy agenda would closely parallel that of the Bush administration. Despite efforts by some conservative Republicans to portray her as being on the left wing of the Democratic Party, in reality her foreign policy positions bear a far closer resemblance to those of Ronald Reagan than they do of George McGovern.
For example, rather than challenge President George W. Bush's dramatic increases in military spending, Senator Clinton argues that they are not enough and the United States needs to spend even more in subsequent years. At the end of the Cold War, many Democrats were claiming that the American public would be able to benefit from a "peace dividend" resulting from dramatically-reduced military spending following the demise of the Soviet Union.
Clinton, however, has called for dramatic increases in the military budget, even though the United States, despite being surrounded by two oceans and weak friendly neighbors, already spends as much on its military as all the rest of the world combined.
Her presidential campaign has received far more money from defense contractors than any other candidate - Democrat or Republican - and her close ties to the defense industry has led the Village Voice to refer to her as "Mama Warbucks." She has
even fought the Bush administration in restoring funding for some of the very few weapons systems the Bush administration has sought to cut in recent years. Pentagon officials and defense contractors have given Senator Clinton high marks for listening to their concerns, promoting their products and leveraging her ties to the Pentagon,
comparing her favorably to the hawkish former
Washington Senator "Scoop" Jackson and other pro-military Democrats of earlier eras.
Clinton has also demonstrated a marked preference for military confrontation over negotiation. In a speech before the Council on Foreign Relations, she called for a "tough-minded, muscular foreign and defense policy." Similarly, when her rival for the Democratic presidential nomination Senator Barack Obama expressed his willingness
to meet with Hugo Chavez, Fidel Castro or other foreign leaders with whom the United States has differences, she denounced him for being "irresponsible and frankly naive."
Senator Clinton appears to have a history of advocating the blunt instrument of military force to deal with complex international problems. For example, she was one of the chief advocates in her husband's inner circle for the 11-week bombing campaign against Yugoslavia in 1999 to attempt to
resolve the Kosovo crisis.
Though she had not indicated any support for the Kosovar Albanians' nonviolent campaign against Serbian oppression which had been ongoing since she had first moved into the White House six years earlier, she was quite eager for the United States to go to war on behalf of the militant Kosovo
Liberation Army which had just recently come to prominence. Gail Sheehy's book Hillary's Choice reveals how, when President Bill Clinton and others correctly expressed concerns that bombing Serbia would likely lead to a dramatic worsening of the human rights situation by provoking the Serbs into engaging in full-scale ethnic
cleansing in Kosovo, Hillary Clinton successfully
pushed her husband to bomb that country anyway.
She has also defended the 1998 U.S. bombing of a pharmaceutical plant in Sudan which had provided that impoverished African country with more than half of its antibiotics and vaccines, falsely claiming it was a chemical weapons factory controlled by Osama bin Laden.
Immediately following the 9/11 attacks, Clinton went well beyond the broad consensus that the United States should go after al-Qaeda cells and their leadership to declare that any country providing any "aid and comfort" to al-Qaeda "will now face the wrath of our country." When Bush echoed these words the following week in his nationally-televised speech, she declared "I'll stand behind Bush for a long time to come."
She certainly did. Clinton voted to authorize the president with wide-ranging authority to attack Afghanistan and was a strong supporter of the bombing campaign against that country, which resulted in more civilian deaths than the 9/11 attacks against the United States that had prompted them.
Despite recent pleas by the democratically elected Afghan president Harmid Karzai that the ongoing U.S. bombing and the overemphasis on aggressive counter-insurgency operations was harming efforts to deal with the resurgence of violence by the Taliban and other radical groups, Clinton argues that our "overriding immediate objective of our foreign policy" toward Afghanistan "must be to significantly step up our military engagement."
Particularly disturbing has been Senator Clinton's attitudes regarding nuclear issues. For example, when Senator Obama noted in August that the use of nuclear weapons -traditionally seen as a deterrent against other nuclear states - was not appropriate for use against terrorists, Clinton rebuked
his logic by claiming that "I don't believe that any president should make any blanket statements with respect to the use or nonuse of nuclear weapons."
Senator Clinton has also shown little regard for the danger from the proliferation of nuclear weapons to other countries,
opposing the enforcement of UN Security Council resolutions challenging the nuclear weapons programs of such U.S allies as Israel, Pakistan and India. Not only does
she support unconditional military aid - including nuclear-capable missiles and jet fighters - to these countries, she even voted to end restrictions on U.S. nuclear cooperation with countries that violate the Non-Proliferation Treaty.
She has a very different attitude, however, regarding even the possibility of a country the United States does not support
obtaining nuclear weapons some time in the future. For example, Senator Clinton insists that the prospect of Iran joining its three Southwest Asian neighbors in developing
nuclear weapons "must be unacceptable to the entire world" since challenging the nuclear monopoly of the United States and its allies would somehow "shake the foundation of global security to its very core."
She refuses to support the proposed nuclear weapons-free zone for the Middle East, as called for in UN Security Council resolution 687, nor does she support a no-first use
nuclear policy, both of which could help resolve the nuclear standoff. Indeed, she has refused to rule out the use of nuclear weapons against such non-nuclear countries as Iran, even though such unilateral use of nuclear weapons directly contradicts the Non-Proliferation Treaty, the same
treaty she claims the United States must unilaterally and rigorously enforce when it involves Iran and other countries our government doesn't like.
Senator Clinton also criticized the Bush administration's decision to include China, Japan and South Korea in talks regarding North Korea's nuclear program and to allow
France, Britain and Germany to play a major role in negotiations with Iran, claiming that instead of taking "leadership to keep deadly weapons out of the hands of rogue states and terrorists … we have outsourced over
the last five years our policies." In essence, as president, Hillary Clinton would be more unilateralist and less prone to work with other nations than the Bush administration
on such critical issues as non-proliferation.
In Latin America, Senator Clinton argues that the Bush administration should take a more aggressive stance against the rise of left-leaning governments in the hemisphere.
Regarding Israel, Senator Clinton has taken a consistently right-wing position, undermining the efforts of Israeli and Palestinian moderates seeking a just peace. She’s spoken freely about military action against Syria and Iran, often repeating Bush administration talking points that have been proven false. I could go on and on, but I’m nearly out of space.
Hillary Clinton is no progressive. She’s a war mongering cash cow for the military industrial complex. Don’t let her fool you.
March 8, 2008 6:06 PM | Reply | Permalink
But having said that, I think Hillary Clinton just might get us universal health care and maybe John McCain just might do a "Nixon goes to China" on Iraq... But in my humble opinion Barack Obama is nothing but a bag of wind.
March 8, 2008 6:14 PM | Reply | Permalink
Given that you're across the pond, I will forgive you for having no way of recognizing, without actually having the opportunity to mingle with them, that there are many people who support Barack Obama that are not merely swayed by his rhetoric.
Hillary Clinton will do nothing of the sort. She receives more contributions from the health care sector than anyone else in Washington. There is a reason that she refuses to release the documentation of her negotiations with the health care industry during the 1990's. And there is a very good reason why her plan will mandate the purchase of insurance.
I think that what we're seeing now is a battle for the soul, if you will, of the Democratic party. Your perspective is absolutely bereft of what is happening on the ground here. You count all of these people as fools, and yet what is happening is the realization of Howard Dean's 50 state strategy. This is about old guard versus new, establishment versus grass roots. Terry McAuliffe versus Howard Dean. What do you think the meaning of $55M in small, personal contributions actually means?
Your cynicism maybe be justified in being averse to cliches. The trouble will cliches is that they don't start out as cliches, they start out as truth. Anyone could have said the same things about MLK when he said if not now, when? It remains to be seen what will come of it, but your admission that the alternatives are non-existent and your persistence in pooh-poohing the possibility that what you believe is necessary might actually be happening lead me to believe that you don't actually want it to happen.
So carry on, Mr. Seaton, and kick your can down the road.
March 8, 2008 6:36 PM | Reply | Permalink
Barack Obama's campaign is a classic example of how the "establishment" tames and decontents the potentially subversive, I call this phenomenon, "Elvis joins the army", it's been going on since I was a kid. The "establishment" briefly lost control of the whole thing in 60s and 70s, but everything is ok now.
March 9, 2008 7:49 AM | Reply | Permalink
Post a Comment