Neither Barack Obama nor Hilary Clinton have ever enjoyed much credibility in these quarters, but I do continue to be surprised by the extent to which their supporters exhibit selective blindness when performing critical analysis of their actions.
Obama is set to announce Clinton as his Minister of Foreign Affairs (or Secretary of State, as it’s called in the US). On the face of it, it’s a curious choice.
Obama previously criticised Clinton for her support of Bush’s illegal war in Iraq. Of course, she immediately withdrew her support once public opinion swung the other way, but back when the American public was still being led up the garden path with fairy tales of Iraq being an Al Qaida hotbed, she was as vocal as anyone about the absolute necessity of invading Iraq.
Clinton, on the other hand, whilst campaigning for the Democratic party presidential nomination, criticised Obama for being naive, inexperienced and generally not up to the job of president. She also condemned him for his willingness to sit down without preconditions and talk to the likes of Cuba, Iran, Venezuela and North Korea.
So, you could conclude that she doesn’t exactly see eye to eye with Obama on foreign policy, but she’s still prepared to work under him as the Secretary of State? Isn’t that a little disingenuous?
It’s not as strange as it seems, of course. You just have to remember that most politicians are duplicitous, conniving megalomaniacs with only their own interest at heart. Then it all starts to make sense.
Clinton has a history of modifying her stance on anything and everything in order to increase her popularity with the general public, thereby improving her chances of career advancement. If the sum of 2 + 2 was a hot political issue and she believed the result to be 4, you can rest assured that her public statements would repeatedly emphasise that the result was, in fact, 5, if that’s what her advisors were telling her the unwashed masses wanted to hear.
Taking the job with Obama, therefore, is nothing more than cynical self-interest. Even if she considers Obama to be an incompetent baboon, there’s no way she’d ever turn down a chance to occupy a powerful office like that. It’s all about the power, you see. Political ambition is all she has left in her vacuous life.
And what does Obama now have to say about Clinton, a woman who voted to send her country headlong into an unwinnable war in Iraq without even first demanding to see the evidence the proponents of said war claimed would unequivocally justify their actions?
He says this: “She is an American of tremendous stature who will have my complete confidence, who knows many of the world’s leaders, who will command respect in every capital, and who will clearly have the ability to advance our interests around the world.”
It’s hard to know how a woman who can support starting a war without caring to see the evidence that would supposedly justify it can command anyone’s complete confidence, much less that of the man about to run the world’s most powerful country.
In fact, what’s the worst possible job you could imagine giving to someone whose judgement has already been demonstrated to be woefully, negligently bad? Minister for Foreign Affairs, is the one that springs to my mind.
Not only does Obama have bad foreign policy, he now has an equally bad foreign minister to enact it. You can at least give the man credit for a perverse consistency, I suppose.
Watch out, Afghanistan. The next four years are going to be harsh.
Dont forget Syria too!
We seem to like to peg things on them, even though they seem to be trying to bend over backwards to do what they can to help the situation from everything Ive read.
Yes, Syria is unlikely to be embraced in the near future. That would upset the Israelis too much, even though, as you say, Syria has done a lot in recent years to try to appease the West.
Well, this seems like a good idea:
http://muslimsagainstsharia.blogspot.com/2008/12/report-obama-advisors-want-nato-troops.html
Not exactly pro israel, as it would limit their bad activity. Not exactly anti-israel as it would increase their security as well as that of the palestinians.
Obama won’t be quite as left as I would like, but I’m convinced he is going to listen to people and do the best he can, which is more than I can say for any president since I’ve been able to vote (with the possible exception of Clinton, but his triangulation with things like don’t ask don’t tell, keeping environmental and labor concerns out of NAFTA, etc. do give me pause).
Obama is also the only president in modern history to not be funded by corporations and special interests.
Easiest thing in the world to declare his presidency a failure 2 months before it has started. He won’t be perfect, but McCain was a war monger and a retard, so I’m at least hopeful.
I agree that Obama will be the first president in modern history not to be completely in the pocket of big business. However, given his declared foreign policy, I don’t believe this will actually make a lot of difference in practice.
Don’t take my criticism of Obama as an implied preference for McCain. McCain certainly wouldn’t have been any better for the world. As far as foreign policy is concerned, however, there isn’t nearly as much difference between Obama and McCain as I’d like to see. Both of them favour continuing to assist Israel in its oppression of the Palestinians and regional sabre-rattling, for example towards Iran.
To my mind, Obama’s stated policies make him as much as a warmonger as McCain would have been. He just favours Afghanistan as the primary theatre of operations instead of Iraq.
So yes, I may be condemning the man before he’s even taken office, but I’m doing so on the strength of his own statements of intent.