After the war on terror »
Posted By Beau7890 1 year ago in Political NewsIn his first White House televised interview, with the Dubai-based Al Arabiya news network, President Obama buried the lead: The war on terror is over.
Yes, the with-us-or-against-us global struggle --the so-called Long War--in which a freedom-loving West confronts the undifferentiated forces of darkness comprising everything from Al Qaeda to elements of the Palestinian national struggle under the banner of "Islamofascism" has been terminated.
What's left is what matters: defeating terrorist organizations. That's not a war. It's a strategic challenge.
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Beau7890
A chicken walks into a bar holding a violin case. He’s wearing a chrysanthemum in his lapel. He sits down at the mahogany bar ...
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Progressive1 year ago
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I couldn't agree more with this part:
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That's a significant ideological leap for an American leader, from the post-Cold War doctrine of supremacy to a new inclusiveness dictated by globalization - from "the decider" to something close to "mediator-in-chief."-
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Beau78901 year ago
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I also liked the last line I included in the summary above, which supports the part you like so much. So refreshing to hear inflammatory rhetoric being toned down and intelligent consideration of strategy and tactics taking precedence.
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hyperbola1 year ago
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So far Obama's actions do not measure up to the rhetoric. This is especially the case with Iran where Obama has appointed a zionist ethnic cleanser (Dennis Ross) as his "special envoy".
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Obama, how do you ask a man to be the last man to die for a mistake?
Every day that United States government soldiers spend on “beginning” to leave, instead of actually leaving — every day that is spent on that “responsibly” instead of that “leaving” — every day that is spent in the “forging” of peace in Afghanistan, rather than in the practicing of it, by withdrawing all United States government soldiers immediately and completely — is another day when innocent Iraqis and Afghans and Pakistanis will be killed by this Peace President’s army and his policy of gradualism. Another day when yet more innocent people will be killed in the name of prolonging the final end of wars now universally acknowledged as catastrophic failures and stupid mistakes.
Yesterday in Iraq, Barack Obama’s “responsibly leaving” army....
On Friday, in Afghanistan, Barack Obama’s army forged peace by trooping into Laghman province, surrounding houses in a village, and then launching a raid where they killed 16 civilians — 2 women, 3 children, and 11 men — with gunfire and “precision” bombs dropped from planes.....
...On Friday, in Pakistan, Barack Obama’s army forged peace by firing missiles repeatedly into houses in several villages in the Waziristan region. Barack Obama’s missiles killed twenty-two people, about 15 of them civilians and at least 3 of them children. The idea was to help create the conditions for a lasting peace....
...Every one of these deaths is blood on Barack Obama’s hands. Every one of these people who were killed, were killed on Barack Obama’s orders and in the name of his war policy. Because Obama wants to wash his hands of the United States government’s war on Iraq and its war on Afghanistan, every day that he delays getting out, completely — delays getting out in the name of “exit strategies” and “central fronts” and “responsibility” — which is to say, delays that happen because he is still convinced that, with the right sort of gradualist policy, he can somehow try to win wars that should never have been fought — is another person who is killed so that Barack Obama, after being elected as a peace candidate, can adopt and prolong the collossal, catastrophic mistakes of a disastrous failure of a predecessor, so that he won’t come off as being soft on national defense.
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berkeley1 year ago
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i'm willing to believe that obama truly knows language is important.
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i'm also willing to believe that he will do his best to act on that.
the problem is the rest of the military-industrial-congressional complex. they are so into WAR that anything less is unacceptable. and even if there is a wave of support for obama from the people, either here or elsewhere, the media will bury it.
he needs support or we're all relatively doomed. -
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Beau78901 year ago
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After Ahmadinejad's display yesterday of his "clenched fist" (as Obama put it in his inaugural address), it'll be interesting to see if the people of Iran will reject him in their upcoming elections.
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Obama may be trying out the Republican strategy of triangulation to divert the support of their people from difficult world leaders...that'd be an interesting idea.
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Beau78901 year ago
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In answer to both of you (berkeley and tehranchik) above, I'd say our hope of changing the way we react to perceived threats depends on the Obama's ability to move Congress and the DoD away from the line of thinking that believes military force is the best way to resolve conflict, and away from its dependence on money from military contractors.
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We'll probably know if progress is being made by the end of 2009.-
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hyperbola1 year ago
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That is not what those who arranged Obama's career gave him political support to do.
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The Obama Spectacle: History, Hypocrisy, and Empire
http://www.propeller.com/story/2009/01/29/the-obam...
For the majority of Black, Brown, White, Red, and Yellow peoples, the “dream” to which the late Langston Hughes referred [in the poem A Dream Deferred] has not only been “deferred,” it has been obscenely and grotesquely disfigured and distorted into something almost beyond recognition. Barack Obama’s presidency is not a step forward nor is it a step towards the fulfillment of the struggles by Nat Turner, John Brown, Harriet Tubman, Malcolm X, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and so very many others. Rather, he is the slick pro-apartheid Zionist antithesis and perversion of the fulfillment of these struggles.
Barack Obama has already begun to repeatedly and shamelessly call upon the people of this nation to make “sacrifice[s],” as if the everyday people of this country have not already made enormous, heart rendering sacrifices. How about having Obama’s elite corporate backers in Lockheed, Goldman Saks, and the insurance and banking industries make some meaningful, ongoing, and painful sacrifices?! How about reversing the government’s criminal financial bail out of the big corporations [which government bail-out Obama enthusiastically supported], and passing those billions upon billions of dollars back directly to the everyday people of this nation - no strings attached?! How about immediately stopping all U.S. wars of aggression, and bringing our men and women in uniform home right NOW - no strings attached?! So many of these men and women have made the ultimate sacrifice in the name of so-called U.S. “national security,” which false “security” has meant their being the perpetual working-class cannon fodder for Halliburton and other avaricious corporate components of the U.S. “military / industrial complex.”
Barack Obama, though the first African-American “presidential” figurehead of the U.S. Empire, is actually the last best hope of continuing U.S. international hegemony under the fake cloak of democracy and justice at home and abroad. Therein is Obama’s appeal to the political and economic ruling elites. He is a conscious, willing, and potent tool of the power elite, and should be understood and dealt with as such. He is neither a progressive, nor a leftist or socialist. He is a cynical opportunist and a shrewd politician, who cloaks his double-speak in glitzy so-called “progressive” sounding rhetoric. He is arguably the most dangerous U.S. politician, to the actual economic and political well being of everyday people of all colors, thus far in this 21st Century. -
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GehlLady1 year ago
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Candidate Obama campaigned as a war candidate, he just disagreed on where the war should be waged. All through the campaign he said he would redeploy our forces into Afghanistan, and go after OBL into Pakistan with or without cooperation from Pakistan.
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President Obama is doing just that, with the exception of getting out of Iraq as fast as he said he would during the campaign.
We need to come home. Going after and actually killing OBL will not stop, and may escalate, terrorism. He would then be a martyr, forever. I want him dead, don't get me wrong, but not at the expense of more of our troops lives lost in the mountains on that border.
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JimBland1 year ago
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Beau: Although I agree with your position, I was struck by the phrase;"money from the (defense contractors)." I have long felt the war, both in Iraq and Afghanistan, is, above all, a pretext by which the military-industrial complex can loot the treasury.
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TheNewsseeker1 year ago
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I am convinced that Obama started it the right way! "Respect" is one of the most important terms in deplomacy and I can´t remember Mr. Bush having made use of it too often. There seldom is a clear separation possible between "black" and "white", between "good" and "evil". This dualism might work in religion, but not in policy. I am very hopeful that with Obama´s presidency a new intercultural dialogue will start as a fundamental base of enduring peace in the Middle East!
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nostalgia1 year ago
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FTA:
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President Obama buried the lead: The war on terror is over.
Really?? You have to keep up with what Obama says in different places. He has a tendency to "speak to the audience"
From Mother Jones Blog:
Has Obama Ended the "War on Terror"?
At Robert Gibbs' first briefing as White House press secretary on Thursday afternoon, I asked if the president had booted the war metaphor. Gibbs replied that Obama had used language that was consistent with his inaugural address. In that speech, Obama had indeed said that "our nation is at war, against a far-reaching network of violence and hatred." But he did not use the standard "war on terror" phrase. Instead he threw the word "war" against a specific target.
At the press conference, I followed up and inquired if Obama had decided not to deploy that phrase as president. "Not that I'm aware of," Gibbs answered.
De-emphasizing the war metaphor would be a significant change. But if it is a deliberate change, the White House does not want to acknowledge it.
Speaking at the State Department later in the day, Obama characterized the battle against terrorists as a "twilight struggle." But when listing the national security challenges the nation faces, he quickly ran through the line-up: "the war on terror, sectarian division, and the spread of deadly technology."-
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Beau78901 year ago
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Roger Cohen explicated that first sentence you quote in the succeeding paragraphs. While Obama may still be judiciously using the term "war," he has certainly toned down the "with us or against us" rhetoric, which to my mind is a definite de-emphasis of the war metaphor, and an acknowledgment of a deliberate change.
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Hhussk1 year ago
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As to the comments made in this thread, I am beginning to have great doubts that any of you have spent time in the Middle East. Specifically, I'm referring to the cultures there who believe this is a sign of weakness.
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For example: Since President Obama's "no precondition" rule on talks with Iran, he is now rejected because Iran has decided to impose preconditions. Globally, Iran has taken control of the diplomacy, determining when the USA can meet with them. In the eyes of the Middle East, this is already a victory, making Iran look stronger.
As well, when President Obama changes his wording and his tone, this makes him appear indecisive and weak to the Middle Eastern people.
But don't take my word for it. Just wait and see what happens.-
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Beau78901 year ago
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Iran hasn't taken control of diplomacy. I have not seen Obama issuing the apology Ahmahdinejad demanded. And as the president said at his inaugural, he will speak to those who unclench their fists. If Ahmahdinejad doesn't do that, then I'll take Obama's word about how he'll respond.
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Governments and natives of Middle Eastern countries do not all work according to your oversimplified preconceptions of their cultures. They are not the Romulans, and the situation in the Middle East is not as simple as a television show.
I won't take your word for what you say, but I will wait and see what happens. If Obama's approach doen't work, I'm certain he's not so rigid in his ideology that he can't modify it.
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Charlson1 year ago
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Obama is giving moderate Muslims something to hang their scarfs on with his message of engagement, compromise and inclusion. It will take a power shift in the Middle East from the powerful radical Islamists to a more moderate and practical Islamic majority that can marginalize and eventually defeat the terrorists.
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