Barack Obama: Wolf in Sheep’s Clothing

Introduction

In “honor” of President Obama’s speech before the nation last night, concerning the US-led intervention in Libya:

Sometimes I find it useful to turn back the hands of time. Let’s see what candidate Obama had to say concerning the military aspect of our national character. I posted this on another (now defunct) blog on June 25, 2007 (excerpts follow):

Analysis of Three Quotes

I will quote from Barack Obama's essay in the July/Aug 2007 issue of Foreign Affairs magazine. My comments follow each quote:

Quote Number 1:

QUOTE: Summary:  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. America cannot meet this century's challenges alone; the world cannot meet them without America.:UNQUOTE.

My Response to Quote Number 1:

Whew! I've got to hand it to Barack or to whomever helped him fine-tune this passage. You will be hard put to find 67 words more skillfully strung together. Well, let's get to work, shall we?

"After Iraq" - What does Barack mean when he says "After Iraq?" I'll tell you what he does not mean: He doesn't mean "after US forces have been completely withdrawn from Iraq." Mark my words, he'll keep us there in at least some residual capacity for decades. What he probably meant was: "After the 2008 election is safely in hand, and I am elected president, and our presence in Iraq has been re-packaged so that it would seem irresponsible [mark this word - Steve] for me as Commander in Chief to withdraw, since doing so would not give us Democrats a chance to fix what Bush so profoundly messed up."

"tempted" - Use of this word is a very nice nod to the GOP base and others who are like-minded. Especially the Religious Right, which responds well to speeches urging us to avoid temptation. Nice shot, Barack!

"turn inward" - He didn't use the word "isolationist" because I'm sure his advisors are getting through to him: "Barack, start using smaller words or you'll sound too elitist." As for his point here: We all know what happens when America neglects the great arena of foreign affairs - threats galore start erupting! [Hoo boy!]

His next sentence is a real gem: "The American moment is not over, but it must be seized anew." Get it? He's urging us to "seize the moment," which is a real button-pusher for millions of the insecure who need to be urged to get off their butts and be more aggressive in their personal lives. What they really need to do is get off their butts and vote the Dem/Pubs out of office - vote them all out.

Such panderings are effective when directed toward people who are feeling more and more powerless as each day goes by. As to why they're powerless: That's got a lot more to do with our repressive Dem/Pub agenda than with Al-Qaeda. Also, the urge to "seize" anything (and everything!) warms the hearts of the more militant among us.

[Hey, didn't you know? We're a nation of conquerors, as written in our national anthem: "Then conquer we must, when our cause it is just, and this be our motto: ‘In God is our Trust.'" I guess those last 5 words will justify our wars, so that we may call them "holy."]

Next, Barack wrote: "We must bring the war to a responsible end and then [my emphasis] renew our leadership -- military, diplomatic, moral -- to confront new threats and capitalize on new opportunities."

When I read "and then," I wondered, "hmm...why can't we renew our leadership before or as we bring the war to an end? Why must we wait to renew our leadership until after the war is over? Maybe Barack is thinking: ‘It won't be possible to renew our leadership at the same time we're immersed in Iraq. We don't multi-task well, so we'll need a blank slate.'" [Note: Many of the simple among us like thinking we can afford to wait until our various slates are magically wiped clean before we have to begin remedial action.]

Barack's use of the word "responsible" is very telling, and shows he's being true to his roots. Back in the 60's, in the heat of the civil rights struggle, there was a group calling itself the Black Panthers. They had the balls to agitate for changes while taking initiative within their own communities. Some of them wore guns and spoke of protecting the Black Community against racist cops.

Such behavior led die-hard segregationists to ploy: "We'll only deal with responsible blacks, not radicals like the Panthers." Hence the word responsible became very much a button pusher for wannabe Black leaders back then. To ingratiate themselves with the White establishment, they sometimes went overboard to demonstrate how responsible they were: Sometimes to the point of abandoning some of their ideals.

So when Barack says he'll be responsible, ask yourself: How many of his ideals (and yours) will he abandon?

His promise to "renew our leadership - military..." worries me. Since our military is second to none, won't he be satisfied unless we spend 10 times more for "defense" than all other countries in the world combined? 100 times? 1,000 times? When will it end, Barack? When will the euphemism "military leadership" be insufficient to mask our increasing paranoia and start to really mean "military dominance," and then "total military control of the entire planet?"

That sentence ends with a promise to "confront new threats" (don't worry, they're out there all right) and then uses our favorite words: "capitalize" and "opportunities." What Barack isn't saying is, these "new threats" are our "new opportunities." Fancy that!

Barack's last sentence should have been a lead-in to a call for a new style United Nations; a UN which isn't a tool of superpower foreign policy, but a "higher power" to which even the US must bow. Maybe we're too proud to even consider (ever) having to bow to world opinion as expressed in a truly independent world body. [Better watch out for that "pride" stuff.]

Quote Number 2:

QUOTE: We must use this moment both to rebuild our military and to prepare it for the missions of the future. We must retain the capacity to swiftly defeat any conventional threat to our country and our vital interests. But we must also become better prepared to put boots on the ground in order to take on foes that fight asymmetrical and highly adaptive campaigns on a global scale.:UNQUOTE.

My Response to Quote Number 2:

Instead of saying, we should "rebuild our military," Barack could have said, we should "rebuild our military's morale, especially by taking care not to overuse it to the point of exploiting our troops in the name of ambitious imperialist motives." He could have said that...but he didn't. And he won't. There's no way any prez hopeful would use the word "imperialist" to describe what it is we do in the name of empire (sorry, I meant to say "our vital national interests").

It seems Barack wants to compete with McCain and Clinton by implying that it is our military's equipment, which is in need of rebuilding (remember the brouhaha over lack of personal armor for our soldiers in their humvees?).

Barack's second sentence is just plain silly, since retaining the capacity to neutralize any "conventional threat" isn't even an issue. Is there any candidate who is suggesting we should reduce our conventional threat response capability to the point we couldn't take care of business, should that ever become necessary?

When Barack talks about putting "boots on the ground," I couldn't help thinking: "Yeah, right...this from a guy who never wore a military uniform for a single day!"

Barack's last sentence shows his need to modernize his lingo by saying, "asymmetrical and highly adaptive campaigns." Maybe he was stuck with a word choice issue and had to choose the lesser of two evils. On the one hand, he didn't want to call it "guerilla warfare," since that might remind voters of the Vietnam War Debacle (we lost that one due to a guerilla war conducted by a determined opponent). On the other hand, I'm sure Obama's advisors were a little uneasy using the word "asymmetrical," since that sounds a bit high falutin. Oh well, choices have to be made.

Quote Number 3:

QUOTE: Finally, we must develop a strong international coalition to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons and eliminate North Korea's nuclear weapons program. Iran and North Korea could trigger regional arms races, creating dangerous nuclear flashpoints in the Middle East and East Asia. In confronting these threats, I will not take the military option off the table. But our first measure must be sustained, direct, and aggressive diplomacy -- the kind that the Bush administration has been unable and unwilling to use :UNQUOTE.

My Response to Quote Number 3:

I can only assume that Barack's "strong international coalition" might deem it necessary to bypass the UN. Since Iran and North Korea aren't acting illegally, not even under the terms of the United Nations itself, Barack isn't opposed to using any means or alignment of nations necessary to render Iran and NK into nuclear free zones. [I just wish he'd be honest enough to come right out and say it: "We'll bypass the UN if necessary, to be sure these two countries never acquire nuclear weapons."]

"I will not take the military option off the table," - Barack. Maybe Barack should have assured the world that he would act legally, instead of issuing vague threats. It would have been easy for Barack to say, "I declare the military option is off the table." That might help ratchet down the rhetoric and convince these two countries we're not trying to back them into a corner. And besides, if he ever decided it was starting to become necessary to reinstate the military option, he could do so.

However, for the sake of an electioneering article in Foreign Policy magazine, Barack wants to look tough to the voters here - even if it's at the price of spooking Iran and NK. Way to go, Barack. You the man! Everybody says so, especially the press.

Closing Comments:

When Obamania was sweeping the country (that is, back when everyone was shutting down their critical-thinking capacity), I urged the electorate to read what this “peace” candidate actually put in writing. But they didn’t do that. They just had to have a Black President – though as I’d repeated loudly and frequently: “The blackest things about him are his motives and lack of honesty.” I, for one, was not surprised that Obama upped the ante in Afghanistan, with him calling it a war we could not afford to lose. [Huh? It’s more like a war we can’t afford not to get out of, and the sooner the better.]

Obama is a candidate we can’t afford to re-elect. Do it right this time: Vote for me instead. My only regret from having run in the last election: I simply couldn’t overcome the pro-media bias in favor of the Obama bandwagon. Don’t let the media get in the way of the message this time.

Steven Searle for U.S. President in 2012

Founder of The Independent Contractors’ Party

“I am the only candidate with a written contract, which will serve quite well to keep us out of unwanted military entanglements” – Steve.