Pat Lang notices that Barack Obama is basically a neoconservative.
Neoconism is a body of ideas as well as loyalties. The ideas expressed by Obama in Chicago are neocon words. The neocons are not conservatives and neither is Obama, but he shares their ideas in foreign policy.As you've all noticed, the popular Donkle complaint centers on the "incompetence" of the Bush administration, although I do admit that there seems lately to be a modest, though surely temporary, uptick in the portion of Americans who consider foreign adventurism itself a bad idea.
The danger of a character like Obama--or Hillary Clinton, for that matter--is that they will more "competently" execute these adventures. Now the consequences will be no less awful; in fact, they may be worse for Americans. Consider: 9/11 was a response to decades of competent American foreign policy. Competence in this formulation is carrying out imperial plans and imperial aims while delaying the inevitable results. But of course, that simply focuses the results, and it guarantees that the response will be more spectacular. A vicious indigenous insurgency in an occupied country may be a sign of an incompetent policy of occupation. A pyrotechnic attack on American native soil is what results from well-executed imperialism.
10 comments:
I worry about Obama's foreign policy hawkish tendencies, but given that he was strongly anti-Iraq war, I'm not sure it's fair to presume adventurism for him.
That said, I agree that it's critical to emphasize the badness of interventionism, not the badness of intervening badly. I'm not sure how Dems can push this idea without being painted as "isolationist." Not that they should just worry about how they're painted, nor that isolationism is the worst thing, but that it's counterproductive to put forth valuable ideas in ways that get dismissed.
Obviously, Iraq presents a pretty good opportunity for talking about it.
I'm not sure how Dems can push this idea without being painted as "isolationist."
I'm sure the Dems don't care to push this idea because they buy into the virtues of empire by intervention entirely, which is kind of the point.
Go to hell IOZ. I've been trying really hard to like Obama and you have to go and fuck it up.
Yeah. Am I the only one who doesn't ride herd with the racists who found Rush's "Barack the Magic Negro" thingamajig funny in the precision of its description of Barack's place in the Democratic pantheon? It's like the man said of Melville: He wrote the greatest allegory the world has ever know without knowing he was writing an allegory.
isn't that the only way to do anything?
Butbutbut...Obama is Our Pwoggie Savior! What would the Koswacks do with him?
JRoth:
Of course Obama was strongly anti-Iraq war. Haven't you heard? The war in Iraq has weakened the U.S. armed forces from fighting all the other wars of imperialist expansion! Like Iran 2008, North Korea 2011 and China 2017.
It's not that the band is execrable; it's that they'd rather call the tunes themselves.
So...I can't quite go the Stop Me Before I Vote route-I've found my candidate, Mike Gravel (pronounced in a suspiciously "French way-grah velll"). A combination of Deaniac, a better looking Perot, and that Grandpa Munster from television. Boy, he was a hoot on the debates. He does say the right things, though :)
You are starting to sound like Pat Buchanan in your suggestion that 9/11 is the price of empire. Now that doesn't make it inherently wrong, but it does mean that the bedfellows are getting mighty strange
Pat Buchanan's analysis isn't exactly my own, but we agree on the broad details. You know, I don't much agree with guys like Lew Rockwell either on plenty of items, but there it is.
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