Why I Do Not Trust Barrack Obama (Thank you Robert Kagan)

Sometimes it’s a good idea to take a peek over the fence and see what people are talking about on the other side. In politics, as well as all other sets of beliefs, there can be a tendency to rely on people who share your viewpoint to be the sole providers of information. There is also the inverse tendency to avoid information from sources with viewpoints that are the opposite of your own. Conservatives tend to rely on “right-wing propaganda,” like the Washington Post, while liberals get all their information from “commie rags” like the New York Times. I, personally, could be accused of relying too heavily on “conspiracy nut-jobs” for my information.

Yesterday morning, however, I came across a column published in the Washington post entitled “Obama the Interventionist” by Robert Kagan. I usually don’t read the Washington Post. I probably should, at least from time to time, just to catch another perspective and widen my horizons a bit. In this case reading an opinion piece about Barrack O’Bama, written by a man whose political opinions are probably the polar opposite of my own, proved to be a most enlightening and clarifying experience. Robert Kagan helped me make up my mind about Barrack O’Bama. Now, thanks to Kagan, I feel pretty confident in stating, I do not trust this man.

First of all, I should describe how I came across the article. I wasn’t combing the web pages of the Washington Post looking for a neo-conservative who had nice things to say about Obama. I was actually looking for information on Robert Kagan himself. Earlier that morning, I had read a hub review of a Kagan’s book “Of Paradise and Power.” (http://hubpages.com/hub/OfParadiseandPower)The title of the book struck me first, but then the first sentence of the review revealed the book's tag-line: “America and Europe in the New World Order.”

Whenever a “conspiracy theory nut-job” like myself sees the phrase “New World Order,” we get a little excited. It’s a phrase we hear a lot. When I see that someone has written a book with the phrase “New World Order” in the tagline, and when I read that the subject matter of the book has to do with issues of global primacy (in this instance American global primacy vs European global primacy), I decide its time to take a closer look at who this author is and what he’s been up to. As usual, I start with wikipedia.com.

I’m excited, but not all that surprised, by what pops up. Robert Kagan is a founding member of the neoconservative think-tank the Project for A New American Century and also a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, two groups that are believed by many conspiracy theorists (myself included) to be tied to a shadow government of economic and intellectual elites who are the true authors of America’s imperialist foreign and economic policy. The PNAC was an especially militaristic faction of this group who were essentially responsible for the Bush Administration’s “War on Terror” that lead to the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan. Many members of Bush’s cabinet, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, and others, were members of the PNAC and were calling for “regime changes” and “pre-emptive” strikes before the fraudulent events of 9-11 and the ensuing “War on Terror” provided them with the excuse they needed to use our military to accomplish these goals.

Needless to say, learning that Kagan was a member of the PNAC and the CFR did not incline me towards trusting him as an unbiased media source. Neither did reading that he had sent a letter to Bill Clinton on behalf of the PNAC in 1998, urging regime change in Iraq, or the fact that he is now a foreign policy advisor to John McCain. Instead, I think of him as a highly paid spokesman and policy theorist working in the service of the invisible corporate oligarchy.

After learning a little bit about the the philosophy and past affiliations of Robert Kagan from Wikipedia, I entered a Google search of his name and found the previously mentioned article from the Washington Post, “Obama the Interventionist.” What I read in the article is rather disturbing – Kagan, one of John McCain’s foreign policy advisors, is writing a glowing review of O’Bama’s past foreign policy statements. Kagan basically tells us he agrees with everything Obama has to say (at least, in certain contexts). Here is an excerpt:

“Actually, Obama wants to increase defense spending. He wants to add 65,000 troops to the Army and recruit 27,000 more Marines. Why? To fight terrorism.

He wants the American military to ‘stay on the offense, from Djibouti to Kandahar,’ and he believes that ‘the ability to put boots on the ground will be critical in eliminating the shadowy terrorist networks we now face.’ He wants to ensure that we continue to have ‘the strongest, best-equipped military in the world.’

Obama never once says that military force should be used only as a last resort. Rather, he insists that ‘no president should ever hesitate to use force -- unilaterally if necessary,’ not only ‘to protect ourselves . . . when we are attacked,’ but also to protect ‘our vital interests’ when they are ‘imminently threatened.’ That's known as preemptive military action. It won't reassure those around the world who worry about letting an American president decide what a ‘vital interest’ is and when it is ‘imminently threatened.’

Nor will they be comforted to hear that ‘when we use force in situations other than self-defense, we should make every effort to garner the clear support and participation of others.’ Make every effort?

Conspicuously absent from Obama's discussion of the use of force are four words: United Nations Security Council.

Obama talks about ‘rogue nations,’ ‘hostile dictators,’ ‘muscular alliances’ and maintaining ‘a strong nuclear deterrent.’ He talks about how we need to ‘seize’ the ‘American moment.’ We must ‘begin the world anew.’ This is realism? This is a left-liberal foreign policy?

Ask Noam Chomsky the next time you see him.”

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/04/27/AR2007042702027.html

Kagan might as well jump ship and join Obama’s Campaign. There doesn’t seem to be a lot on which they disagree. Obama’s nationalistic, militaristic rhetoric could have been lifted right out of the pages of any number of PNAC documents. The two supposedly opposing policies of the Democratic Presidential candidate and the Republican Presidential candidate appear to be identical.

This sort of information should be surprising to a lot of mainstream democrats who do not want a president like John McCain elected in 2008. It should also surprise mainstream Republicans who do not want to elect a president like Barrack Obama. It does not, however, come as a surprise to this writer, or the millions of other like-minded Americans who know that these two candidates look and sound the same because they are the same, two sides of the same fake bill, printed and distributed at our expense, by the corporate criminals who rule this country.