We’re obsessed with Power—but the real issue is Obama
I’m glad that Justin has cleared up my misunderstanding about his position toward the foreign policy of Samantha Power. He knows her for what she is—the princess of the global do-gooders.
But at the heart of my posts yesterday was not merely Samantha Power—whose interventionist fantasies are dismissed easily enough—but the problem of traditional conservatives’ supporting Obama as a “not so bad” option.
Generally speaking, I think Justin is backing Obama for the right reasons. Despite his claims of being a cultist, having a “man-crush,” and suffering from Obamania, he actually doesn’t go in for any of the gooey, transcendental crap that attracts the vast majority of Obamaniacs (and the Obamacons). At the very least, I think Justin is the first to quote Garet Garrett in an endorsement of the Illinois senator (!).
All of this is fine, but Obama’s connection with Samantha Power should stand as warning to all traditionalists, paleos, and libertarians who dare see Obama as a lesser-of-two-evils choice in November.
Obama’s actual statements about foreign policy have been rather vague. All we know is that he’s “willing to talk” and wants to “end the war in Iraq.” It’s plausible that these sentiments would materialize as a sane foreign policy—perhaps even that “humble foreign policy” Governor Bush promised us years ago.
But then it’s equally plausible that Obama would go on a Samantha Power trip and pursue a whole new set of “liberventions” in Darfur, Kenya, the Congo, Burma… With a crushing defeat of McCain in the general and the popular will behind him, Obama would certainly have the political capital to attempt such wild schemes. And his supporters—both the Obamaniacs and Obamacons—would not do much to hold him back. Obama voters of all sorts seem to believe that the senator from Illinois is a messiah sent down to us from some secular leftist god. Obama himself seems to concur, clearly infatuated with the image he and his supporters have fashioned. None of this leads me to believe that the election of Barrack Obama would herald a return to realism.
Comments
As I recall it was Bush who claimed to talk to GOD. I havent heard Obama [Im not an Obama supporter] claim such a thing. I heard many a fundamentalist claim that GOD had put Bush in office etc etc.
Hypocrisy is an ugly thing.
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In places like “Darfur, Kenya, the Congo, Burma” I will rather have Obama as a face of USA than McCain. Contrary to popular belief, US presidents don’t just wake up in the morning and decide to smash some small country later that day. Well maybe if your name is G.W.Bush you do…
I wish I am more like Justin and be able to truly follow “prime directive” but in many cases US did make a right call to intervene. It took Bill Clinton years to bomb Serbs in Bosnia and at that point all sides were so exhausted that they were ready to accept any reasonable peace agreement that was on the table. Clinton bombed Serbs in Kosovo too. That also took at least a year of internal conflict and at that point Serbia had nearly 100,000 troops in Kosovo (between police, army and what-not.) Compare that to number of US troops in Iraq, expenses involved, and you will realize what Serbs have realized: loss of Kosovo is inevitable at that point.
While I can’t say what kind of deliberation was going on in Clinton administration at that time it seems they have made a right call, or rather did what was inevitable. Make no mistake, being of Serb origins and a Republican, that is not as easy for me to admit.
Compare that to G.W.Bush and his foreign policy. I wish I can see overarching design or inevitability of giving Kosovo full independence but it escapes me. It comes down to him waking up one morning on trip in Albania, making a statement about “time has come etc.” and proceeding to seriously shake foundations of international law and fanning hopes of hundreds of tribes, groups, regions that seek their own independence.
Point is, some calls are made right some are wrong. Establishing some kind of “autopilot” doctrine that will condemn any intervention out of hand would be a grave mistake. That being said, I don’t believe that Obama would be inclined any more than McCain or Hillary to make wrong calls on the issue. In any case, his “political capital” would be gone after first attempt that went wrong and his stance on Iraq is at least some kind of warranty that we won’t see out troops stuck for decades.
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I consider Obama the lesser, by far of three evils.At least he seems intelligent and thoughtful,plus for some reason the Israeli lobby hates him.However I have given up voting for evil in any form and Mr.Obama is far too proabortion for me to vote for.
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From everything I’ve read about him and heard him say (in person once, here in New Mexico), I believe that he’s far too mindful of the expense and the wastefulness of an overly interventionist foreign policy. He might pontificate a bit, as President, about Darfur, but I’m absolutely convinced he’d want to expend whatever political capital he won in a mandate on things like national health care and re-negotiating NAFTA in the interests of both American workers and environmental and human rights concerns. I see Obama, in the military field, as merely a “4th generation warrior,” which means no invasions of anywhere, and, instead, “counter-terrorist, surgical stikes.” I also believe he’d pursue much more vigorous, much more “internationalist-minded” diplomacy that would be highly innovative, but also very hard-headed. I could see him some day going to Teheran, just as Nixon went to Beijing.
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Looks like all those idiots with the “man crush” on Obama are in lust with the wrong candidate after all. And that is leaving aside all the baggage about having a black racialist Marxist mentor pastor father figure and a wife who has a hate on for “whitey” that is a wonder to behold.
http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2008/03/08/obama_stance_on_iraq_shows_evolving_view/
In July of 2004, the day after his speech at the Democratic convention catapulted him into the national spotlight, Barack Obama told a group of reporters in Boston that the United States had an “absolute obligation” to remain in Iraq long enough to make it a success
“The failure of the Iraqi state would be a disaster,” he said at a lunch sponsored by the Christian Science Monitor, according to an audiotape of the session. “It would dishonor the 900-plus men and women who have already died. . . . It would be a betrayal of the promise that we made to the Iraqi people, and it would be hugely destabilizing from a national security perspective.
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There is precious little in your article which presages a return to realism.
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Until we see a front-running candidate actually possess the fortitude to talk about the counter-productivity of Statism and it’s departure from the intent of the Framers, which was, to put it short and sweet:
To keep government out of the way of the people…
....I will be disinclined to support a single one of them because the uniting theme of these Champions of Empathy has been to surmount a Mount Pisgah of the American Imagination and tell one and all of the paradise within their reach if they only vote...for , eh...hmmm, “me”.
One could make a case that it is better to vote for Obama than either ultra-interventionists McCain and Clinton but Conservatives tried the “enemy of my enemy is my friend” routine and had their political force punctured like a Bolsheviki balloon.
Obama sounds impressive from a political perspective but it is politics, aka bul**** that has put us all on the ropes.
8 years of “I can Feel Yer Pain” Bubba and 8 more years of “yer gonna feel my pain” Shrub and we do not so much have a Republic as we do a god damnable Pain Clinic Writ Large.
The Bubbashrub Motto: Stupid is as stupid does. Government Empathy is like a Sub Prime Mortgage, one’s immediate desires are fulfilled but the interest rate goes up like a rocket and then there is alot of excess product standing empty.
If we got government out of the way of the people and dismantled leviathan, prosperity would immediately follow, despite the dislocations and adjustments of talking ourselves in from the ledge we inhabit.
I have no reason, whatsoever, to believe that Obama has even a simple clue of the defining challenge of the age:Ourselves and Our Lapsed Republic.
He wants to shape the current government, not dismantle it to it’s Constitutional limits and this fact should remain uppermost in everyone’s minds. We keep choosing “lesser of evils” and the destination remains evil, no matter how much Prozac and Darvon one consumes during our orgy of Empathy.
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