I would not want to endorse histroical determinism, so I also concede that Obama may really be against what he says he’s against sometimes — despite acting differently.
At the end of the day; I am more concerned about what his actions in office are. It can be useful to understand his spirit to predict his actions, but we can’t fuse ourselves with him mentally, so we can only obtain certainity bounded by the limits of human perception/analysis of the world.
What Obama’s supporters should not do is contiunally give him a pass for his pragmatic behavior — if it truly be motivated by a desire to save political face. If it is, then I’d say Obama deserves spiritual condemnation for lacking integrity and being a shallow power addict rather than acting to achieve the good.
Arthur Silber pointed out how “Progressives” who tout political idealism can turn around to tell you “it’s just how politics is” when you point out Obama’s inconsistences.
Bob,
I am about to preach to the choir here. I am just extremely angry that Obama is being treated as this “Progressive” change agent.
Yes; Obama still says he will do what the Bush admistration is allegedly doing in Iraq.
Prevent a civil war or genocide.
Fight terrorism.
Train, advise, and otherwise back up the security forces of Iraq.
How can you withdraw all combat troops by 2011 and still do all of the above? Beats me.
The U.S. should not give one single dollar to the corrupt theocracy it has midwifed in Iraq. We may well see Iraq become an Islamist threat it wasn’t in the future. The U.S. is already allegedly trying to prevent various Islamist-tribalistic thugs from causing further mayhem by mindlessly throwing cash each way. If the U.S. were to re-intervene in the context of a Sunni-Shia-Kurdish civil war esque bloodbath that may approximate some definition of three way genocide, then it would be back to where Bush has brought us.
The Bosnian and Kosovo wars are an excellent example of how you become tangled up with bad guys in even seemingly humantarian ventures.
To quote from Arthur Silber’s blog:
“As part of this destabilising process, the USA permitted the movement of Mujihadeen forces from the Middle East and Central Asia to fight alongside the Bosnian Muslims against the Serbs.
In 1993, as documented in David Halberstam’s seminal War In a Time of Peace: Bush, Clinton and the Generals, President Clinton gave a ‘green light’ to the arming of the Bosnian Muslims by Iran and Saudi Arabia, even though this defied a UN embargo against arming any side in the Yugoslav conflict (8). From 1993 to 1996 there was an influx of weapons and military advisers into Bosnia, largely organised by Iranian and Saudi officials. This opened the floodgates to the arrival of Mujihadeen fighters from Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Algeria and elsewhere, to fight with the Bosnian Muslims. All of this took place under the watchful eye of a Clintonian policy of ‘no instruction’ – in short, such movements should not be interfered with and, if possible, should be encouraged by a ‘green light’ (9).”
http://powerofnarrative.blogspot.com/2006/07/liberal-hypocrisy-in-name-of.html
I am no expert on the Balkans, but I highly doubt everyone loves each other right now due to Western military intervention. What do you expect to happen when you take sides in wars fought by military organizations with a complete disregard for human rights? Why were the Bosnian Muslim fighters more worthy of our support then Serbian ones? Serbian forces under Milosevic behaved very badly; no doubt. This doesn’t make it rational to back ideological compatriots of Bin Laden or Albanian nationlist thugs in response.
Not if you want to actually see human rights triumph rather than perpetually police warring factions — a la contempoary Iraq. “Liberals” who argue the U.S. shouldn’t arm Sunni tribes with little respect for the norms of liberal civilization should also acknowledge that the same principle applies when it comes to Albanian tribes versus Serbian ones.
Especially not Bin Laden connected separatists.
“The march was organised by the separatist Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA), which is seeking an independent Kosovo as part of a Greater Albania. The KLA functioned as the political proxy of the United States during last spring’s war against Serbia, and has utilised NATO’s intervention to establish its own political control of Kosovo, expelling hundreds of thousands of Serbs and other minorities.”
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2000/feb2000/nato-f24.shtml
Ironically; the Republicans pointed out the gross nature of the KLA:
“In 1998, the U.S. State Department listed the KLA as a terrorist organization, [17] and in 1999 the Republican Policy Committee of the U.S. Senate expressed its troubles with the “effective alliance” of the Clinton administration with the KLA due to “numerous reports from reputable unofficial sources (…) that the KLA is closely involved with: the extensive Albanian crime network (…) [and with] terrorist organizations motivated by the ideology of radical Islam, including assets of Iran and of the notorious Osama Bin Laden (…)”. [18]”
Here is a link with more extensive information:http://www.balkanpeace.org/index.php?index=/content/analysis/a09.incl
I admit that I am sort of sympathetic to internationalist coalitions of some nature taking some kind of action about this stuff, but I’d prefer such an organization to differ from contempoary nation-states. I’d also like to see less emphasis on militartism as the end all be all cure. You should also not make alliances with groups like the Shia clerics of Iraq, Albanian ethnic separatist thugs, and Afghan warlords. If you really want to do a humantarian intervention using military force, then you should be prepared to face the possiblity of killing people from both sides of a civil-genocidal conflict.
Whew; I kind of went off topic, but this is relevant, because Biden was big on pushing interference in the Balkans. I suspect Obama-Biden will bring us a war in either Iran, Russia, Sudan, Iraq, Afghanistain, or Pakistan. Probably more than one place.
]]>Well, I suppose he may have voted for it in part because he contemplated himself having the powers he was voting for once elected. I don’t know. But the kind of opportunism I had in mind was simply the fact that he very publicly caved to the Bush Administration’s surveillance state agenda because (at least in part) he didn’t want a specific Congressional vote that would mark him as soft on terrorism
in the upcoming election. So threw his stated principles out the window in order to protect his campaign from Right-wing attack politics.
I expect that similar calculation went into his voting for the bail-out bill: the fear was that if he did anything that broke with Washington consensus, it would provide an avenue for attack; whereas if he went with the consensus, it wouldn’t provide a wedge issue to differentiate him from Gothmog. Since he didn’t care to fight on this particular issue, and would prefer to keep the debate on other topics, he went along to get along.
]]>I certainly wouldn’t use that as a reason to say that people shouldn’t have criticized Hillary Rodham Clinton at the time. But I do think it is a fact worthy of noticing.
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