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.”
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.”
