Obama as neocon convert

"America leads. We are the indispensable nation. We have capacity no one else has. Our military is the best in the history of the world. And when trouble comes up anywhere in the world, they don't call Beijing. They don't call Moscow. They call us. ... when there's a typhoon in the Philippines, take a look at who's helping the Philippines deal with that situation. When there's an earthquake in Haiti, take a look at who's leading the charge and making sure Haiti can rebuild. That's how we roll. And that's what makes this America."  Obama

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Oh for god's sake , could there be a clearer declaration of the neocon Jacobin creed?  We are the indispensable nation?  We are the world's gendarmerie?  We are the world's first responders for natural disaster? If that is so, then the world needs to start paying us for our services, and as "protection money."  The resentful and the marxists already believe that we are looting the world.  If Obama's newfound creed is accepted by the American people "the world" will learn what real looting is like. 

http://newsbusters.org/blogs/tom-blumer/2014/09/28/ron-fournier-summarizes-obamas-60-minutes-interview-i-me-my-its-their

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 "As of Friday, the coalition had carried out more than 200 strikes in Iraq and 43 in Syria, Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel told reporters. The United States had done the lion's share of the bombing, although Arab states have contributed significantly. Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Qatar and Jordan all participated in last week's strikes in Syria. France carried out an airstrike in Iraq earlier this month.

The American-led coalition fighting ISIS in Iraq grew by four on Friday -- including Belgium, Britain and Denmark.

The U.S. got a major boost when Prime Minster David Cameron of Britain won approval from Parliament, after describing the militants as "psychopathic terrorists who want to kill us.""  CNN

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The UAE, Jordan  and Saudi Arabia have a lot of aircraft and a considerable number of "stick and rudder"capable pilots, but virtually no staff planning capability for planning missions, doing bomb damage assessments, campaign planning and the like.  If supported by the US air planning center in Qatar they can be useful.

Thus far, the program of bombing raids against IS has been a nuisance to them but it shows no sign of progress against IS occupation of the lands.

Unfortunately, the GCC countries have no significant ground forces that could be engaged anywhere other than on their own soil  In the military trade it would be said that they have no "power projection" capability.  This is mainly a question of logistics.  Jordan has small but capable ground forces but also needs to protect its homeland against both internal and external Islamist threats. 

All of these princely or royal states are considered by IS and other Islamists to be abominations.  In the  opinion of salafist groups all these countries should be incorporated into a purely theocratic entity ruled by a Caliph whose authority is god given and based on their version of Islamic law.

Many of the inhabitants of the princely and royal states sympathize with that point of view.  In many ways the princely states have nurtured such potentially disloyal "citizens."  They have done this by funding and authorizing teaching institutions that preach salafism.

Saudi Arabia is the most extreme example of this but there are others.

The truth is that Turkey and the US are the only countries that can play a significant role against IS.  The Turks show no sign of wishing to do so.  Syrian Iran are potential partners for the anti-IS war but US policy precludes a meaninful role for either.

That leaves the US alone in the field.  pl

http://www.cnn.com/2014/09/29/politics/isis-coalition/

 

Comments

[Rocketrepreneur]

I'm not surprised to see Obama as a neocon convert. After all, neoconservative foreign policy is really just progressivism exercised overseas. Obama's been ignoring Hayek on this side of the ocean (re: the fatal conceit of central planning and government meddling) for long enough, why shouldn't he ignore him across the ocean as well?

It all boils down to different flavors of the belief that we can select angelic wunderkinden who can do a better job of running other peoples' lives than they can. Whether that is shown via market meddling at home or foreign intervention abroad, it's just different strains of the same neurological disorder.

~Jon

[Babak Makkinejad]

Col. Lang:

You cannot such a gifted politician as Mr. Obama to tell the US electorate that US is just like any other country in the world.

They will run him out of town.

[b]

"We are the world's first responders for natural disaster? "

Depends on how one defines the "first responder".

Cuba send 200 doctors to work in Ebola strike countries before the U.S. send 3000 soldiers to destroy the viruses or whatever.

That says something of priorities.

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"The truth is that Turkey and the US are the only countries that can play a significant role against IS."

Why not consider Syria and Iran? Both certainly have motive and are capable of working against IS. But currently the U.S. is doing its very best to handicap them.

[The Beaver]

Colonel

I guess during that lunch , he must have been influenced by neocon Robert Kagan:
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/16/us/politics/historians-critique-of-obama-foreign-policy-is-brought-alive-by-events-in-iraq.html?_r=0
"The New Republic cover article, “Superpowers Don’t Get to Retire,” struck such a nerve in the White House that many in the foreign policy establishment considered part of Mr. Obama’s speech last month at West Point outlining a narrower vision for American force in world affairs to be a rebuttal, and the president even invited Mr. Kagan to lunch to compare world views."

I guess with Nuland on the Ukraine file, his SIL who was using a pseudo-Ph.D to promote the liver eaters of Syria and his brother using the rags to back him up, well we should not be surprised.

[Ishmael Zechariah]

Col Lang,

IMO there are a few issues:
1-The Turkish Government under the tayyiban had supported Daash for quite a while. There is a strong Daash presence in most major cities and these cells can make life very interesting for the Turks if they so choose. Such strife might mean the end of tayyip and his tayyiban, but there will also be significant collateral damage.
2-There is a debate why the secessionist Kurdish cadres in the Kandil mountains do not go and join the fight against Daash; they can do this without going through Turkish territory and they are "trained". Most of the Turkish population would not care to send their sons to save the "bacon" of secessionist Kurds or their tribes. I, personally, would prefer fixing the islamist kleptocracy in Ankara first.

Ishmael Zechariah

[different clue]

I wonder if the pathotoxic narcissism that Walrus has noted about Obama plays into this speech of his. After all, if we are the Indispensable Nation, then he is the Indispensable President World Leader.

[turcopolier]

b

US policy precludes a meaningful role for either. pl

[Fred]

Col,

“America leads. We are the indispensable nation. We have capacity no one else has. … That's how we roll. And that's what makes this America."

Under this administration 20% of all women who attend college or university are sexually assulted (Obama administration’s own statistics). Not a single university president has been fire, resigned or otherwise held accountable for this disgraceful explosion of criminal violence agaisnt women. Where is the Presidential leadership? Invisible. “That’s how we roll”.

http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2014/04/29/fact-sheet-not-alone-protecting-students-sexual-assault

At least the Democrats will win the war on women.

[ex-PFC Chuck]

"ISIS militants less than 2 miles from Baghdad, fierce fighting reported near Iraqi capital"
Col., I realize the article sporting the above headline is in a corner of the Murdochian reality distortion field (The Daily News) but I'm curious to know if you've received any info from your sources that support it. Or is it just more inflammatory BS intended to incite us peasants?

[Robert44]

Yup you are right. And now 72% of Americans are fully expecting to put their boots on the ground to participate.

But all of this is the best recruiting campaign ISIS will ever have. Not only that, local Sunnis who never liked or trusted Jihadhis like ISIS mostly forcibly imported, will take them to heart as their own.

So Americans are in for another fun war that they cannot win. They will stay until their tiny little patience and attention spans end and then the local ISIS guerrillas, they trained to begin with, will resurface as quick as you can say "Taliban" and get back to business as usual.

It will serve however as entertainment so that Americans won't have to think too much about an economy that will not serve to help most of them and where in comparison to the wealthy most will continue to fall farther and farther behind without much hope.

[Seamus Padraig]

Why on earth would the GCC need force projection capability when they have us to do it for them?

[Tyler]

Obama was always a cipher for the Left to project their hopes and dreams on. I'm sure the neocon "invade the world, invite the world, in hoc to the world" mantra fits nicely with his entire "right side of history" nonsense. Rocketpreneur above has the right of it.

[The Twisted Genius]

Obama is just reciting some of the dogma of one of the mainstream religions in the United States... the ultimate national security state destined to rule the world. To speak against this rabid nationalism is blasphemy. I think this is what Karen Armstrong is getting at.

[Will]

why not consider Syria or Iran? surely a rhetorical question. Israel wants a failed state in Syria and an emasculated Iran. And whatever Israel wants is the U.S. policy. we all know this.

[JohnH]

The US electorate would not run him out of town...but the beltway bandits sure would.

Democrats chose Obama over Hillary partly because he was against the war in Iraq. Obama betrayed the Democratic base on most issues, while continuing to pose as their representative.

Finally he has fully revealed his neocon beliefs on foreign policy. If Republicans win the Senate, I expect him to fully reveal himself as a Reagan Republican on domestic issues as well (expect no vetoes of Republican bills.)

Most Democrats are still in denial and will find some way to justify his behavior over the next two years.

[turcopolier]

All

HC is now just another neocon. Her husband is still white trash. Romney is just another brain dead LDS business man., God save the Republic. pl

[Eliot]

That number is political propaganda. The actual figure is somewhere around 2.5 percent.

- Eliot

[William R. Cumming]

Cameron notably failed to get Parliament to approve helping in Syria. And Mr. President--no one called!

[toto]

The Iranians rightly criticize American "meddling", but their own meddling has also made things worse.

http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2013/09/30/the-shadow-commander

[Anonymous]

"We have capacity no one else has."

Indeed a capacity for self-implosion that is the envy of the galaxy.

Democrats are in the business of destroying the country from within. No wonder they need the mantra of foreign indispensability to compensate for lost national self-esteem. How is it that a people who sees every facet of its country be treated as dispensable, from the constitution to the ethnic heritage, falls for the notion that it is indispensable to foreigners somehow?

"That's how we roll."

You have a dung beetle for president.

[Larry Kart]

I don’t see Obama as a neocon convert but rather as a man in a vacuum (or a man who is himself a vacuum) grasping for some ready-made phrases, some familiar, acceptable-in-some-quarters ideological “structure,” that will lend credence to the deeds that he feels he must ask U.S. forces to engage in — though judging by his pseudo-folksy, seemingly almost sick-to-the-stomach appearance on “60 Minutes” last night, Obama's own belief that any of this will result in much more than buying time, in the ME and politically on the home front, is close to zero. If so, is this better or worse than if he were an actual neocon convert? I don’t know, but if Obama's essential fecklessness probably precludes true attachment to the necon creed, one can see him dabbling his way into a genuine neocon adventure nonetheless.

[Cee]

Col Lang,

I agree. They have said Jeb is running. Oh, yes, God save the republic.

[robt willmann]

"Obama as a neocon convert".

What is the evidence that he is a neocon "convert" and was not a neocon all along?

Someone might say Obama has not launched a military attack on Iran and the neocons want one. But even George Bush jr. and Dick Cheney were not able to start an overt war on Iran.

What the U.S. has been and is doing in Ukraine is what the neocons want. And Obama's point-person on Ukraine is Victoria Nuland, wife of neocon Robert Kagan, who was one of the main pushers of the Project for a New American Century.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_for_the_New_American_Century

What Obama has been and is doing in Syria is what the neocons want. He was ready to bomb Syria until he ran into a political problem when the phony story that Assad was gassing his own people started to collapse. He has signed or has not cancelled presidential "findings" authorizing covert actions against the Syrian government, obviously for the purpose of overthrowing it.

http://original.antiwar.com/giraldi/2011/12/07/washingtons-secret-wars/

I remember during the 2008 presidential campaign, as the financial scams were starting to be exposed a little, that the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) law was introduced in Congress, and Obama said, while campaigning, "This bill must pass". That was the first big bailout law in which the secretary of the treasury, one Henry Paulson, was given the unilateral and unconstitutional authority to hand out up to $750 billion of your tax money.

As is so painfully obvious, if the U.S. had not meddled in the internal affairs of Iraq and Syria, none of deaths, property destruction, and creation of refugees would have happened; as to Iraq it has been going on for 23 years, and most intensely for the last 11. There would be no "jihadis" running around Syria and Iraq committing acts of violence. So now the number one question is, "Miss him yet?"--

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fxHtQ1__qUc

http://www.nj.com/opinion/index.ssf/2014/07/saddam_hussein_miss_him_yet_you_should_mulshine.html

http://www2.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/special/iraq/

[Phil Cattar]

The black democrats pushed Obama ahead of Hillary.If Obama was exactly the same as he is in all areas except he was 100% white there was no way he would have beaten Hillary.The primary in South Carolina was the turning point........Bill Clinton really swallowed the idea he was "the first black president" and overplayed his hand...............There was a critical mass moment in the South Carolina primary and the blacks who vote in a 90% bloc turned on the Clintons.

[The Twisted Genius]

I saw a report last week that James Webb is thinking about a run for the Presidency in 2016.