What Obama wants more than anything is not to be seen as treading in the path of George W. Bush. Democracy promotion is not his game. That’s neocon stuff. Barack’s not going there, no how, no way, as he made clear in his Cairo speech. It would undermine everything he pretends to stand for, everything he proclaimed in his campaign.
But wait. I’m confused. Back when I identified as a liberal, democracy promotion was very much what we stood for. We would have done anything to get rid of the likes of Pinochet and Somoza. When Pinochet was up against it in Chile, every liberal I knew was jumping for joy, cheering on Salvador Allende. Why not the Iranian demonstrators against Ahmadinejad and the mullahs who, in many ways, are worse even than Pinochet? The Chilean dictator didn’t oppress women and gays to anywhere near the extent of the Islamists. He also wasn’t building a nuclear weapon and denying the Holocaust. Is everything standing on its head? What’s going on here? Left is right. Right is left. Liberal is… reactionary?
June 17, 2009
When Left is right & Right is left
Roger L. Simon on President Obama’s reaction to the current situation in Iran:
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Good point. And You're right, of course. But in fact in Cairo Obama said more or less the same things as Bush has always said, but Obama's words were embellished or camouflaged with flannel and a well chosen citation from the Koran.
ReplyDeleteIn any case in history, he who kills the monster has to go too.
Obama suffers from "Bush Derangement Syndrome" and will do anything he can to refute previous policies because of this illness and a radical leftist, Saul Alinsky, driven agenda. He lied when he took the oath to protect the Constitution; he's done nothing but ignore it. What he does believe in is command economics, that the American people are stupid and need to be told what to do. What made America great was that the government did not get in the way of the people. Now the people are hobbled, and I'm nervous that we, as a people, will not wake up soon enough. A lot of damage has been done. I'm usually optimistic, but this guy works fast, is shrewed and lusts for power more than anyone that has held that office.
ReplyDeleteWell, I'm not as critical of Obama as some may be, but I think he's making some serious mistakes regarding Iran. His perceived support for Ahmadinejad is a serious liability at this point.
ReplyDeletePart of the problem is that during the campaign, Obama said he would negotiate directly with Ahmadinejad without preconditions. I doubt the significance of that statement was thought-through in advance, but once he said it, he was trapped.
Obama needs to get his foreign policy act on track, and soon.