America cannot bend the world to its will - The Independent »
Posted By gamahuche 4 months, 4 weeks ago in Political OpinionThe real surprise is that it has taken so long. After five months, President Barack Obama's foreign policy is now under assault, from both left and right. For some liberals, he is little more than Bush-lite. US troops are still in Iraq, they complain, and even more of them are being despatched to fight America's other war in Afghanistan. Guantanamo Bay is still open, complete with revamped military tribunals.
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gamahuche
"I would rather be a square peg than fit in a pigeon hole" -
an essay which won me the "Lamb Essay Prize" at the Religious ...
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gamahuche4 months, 4 weeks ago
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It may be shocking for US citizens to have to be obliged to confront the simple reality that the US has never been issued with a licence to run the world.
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After GWB ran the US Empire into the ground Barack Obama has become the first de facto post-Imperial President since the Second World War to have to face that reality - and the rest of the nation will need to swiftly get up to speed..-
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beavith14 months, 4 weeks ago
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hyperbola4 months, 4 weeks ago
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Actually the idea that the US runs the world is an illusion sold to Americans to grease the corruption in our own country. We do not have a real "foreign policy", but rather run our relations with the rest of the world according to what kickbacks they generate domestically. If we have to kill some foreigners to generate those kickbacks, so what.
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libsRfunnyComment removed: Hard Banned1 Reply
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gamahuche4 months, 4 weeks ago
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FTA: Mr Obama is attempting something else, that offers an equal contrast with his predecessor. Subtly, but unmistakably, he is telling America about the limits of its power. Maybe he would have preferred not to criticise Iran so harshly, knowing that his words would only enable the regime to blame the US for all its ills, and depict its opponents as stooges of "the Great Satan" – in essence the strategy used by Fidel Castro in his half-century of successful resistance to American pressure. But the violence left him no alternative. Not by coincidence, Mr Obama is reshaping Washington's bankrupt Cuba policy as well. In both instances, the underlying message is the same. However much it might wish it, America cannot bend the world to its will.
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libsRfunnyComment removed: Hard Banned2 Replies
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orndorffter4 months, 4 weeks ago
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Fine Article Obama has done a very excelent job but there are people out there who seem to be as the Bush adminastration and keep on complaning he just cant do enough for them and their Evil ways. I think they better just let him handle things in his own way, he did a good job ao far and mush more then our former president would have done. why dont they just leave him alone and let him do what he has to do?
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Natureboy4 months, 4 weeks ago
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"The true lesson of these five months is not that Mr Obama has been too liberal or too conservative. It is that in foreign affairs he is a realist, a gradualist and a pragmatist. Compared with what went before, that is the biggest change of all."
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This is the author's thesis statement. I would rephrase it and say that Obama's approach does differ with regard to elements of style. But his goals do not differ significantly. So, we have different speeches about the Middle East, and we have somewhat rearranged the deck chairs on the Titanic which is our military occupation of the region, but the agenda of US hegemony in the Middle East persists.
Are you satisfied with a change in style, or is the change you can believe in change of a fundamental sort - a real change in direction? -
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Newperson4 months, 4 weeks ago
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Americans have always wanted instant gratification with everthing. This is going to be a slow and hard road to get this country back on track. In three and a half years if people are not happy with the way things are going. VOTE!
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See you can do that in America. But for now the people have spoken. So give the man a chance. -
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rightfromwrong4 months, 4 weeks ago
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Nice post Gam .... we all want to see a democratic Iran & N Korea but not necessarily where the rich and lobbyists call the shots like they do in the USA.
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As far as I know there are still 40,000 troops in Saudi Arabia which are there propping up a dictatorship where women have very few rights, rich princes and sheiks have their way with little girls and boys who are basically slaves-
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beavith14 months, 4 weeks ago
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check your facts.
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the last US troops left SA in 2003
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/09/22/world/the-strugg...
i guess in this case you're wrong, rightfromwrong.
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jimdoze4 months, 4 weeks ago
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So Freedom and Representative Democracy are not all they are cracked up to be? It seems that a little more tolerance of despots and dictators should be in order I guess?
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This is simply a call for a rerun of Realpolitik. Only this time, there is no other super-power providing the only credible reason for the U.S. to practice Realpolitik in earnest.
America has not been trying to bend the world to its will. That is a nonsensical canard. Bringing representative government to Iraq to replace the previous creation of Realpolitik is not bending the world to our will. It is making the world a safer place for all... and, at the same time, gives peaceful freedom in Iraq a chance.
I find it very odd that the same people who are quick to denounce the west for the way it partitioned the world post-wars... and then the way it meddled in internal politics to match the way the Soviets were meddling... are now the same people who denounce the removal of the detritus that resulted from that meddling.-
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gamahuche4 months, 4 weeks ago
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The Iraq segment of your worldview would have a little more credibility if it had been a little less about resources and contracts for Halliburton - and if the actual conditions on the ground had even physically returned to normal.
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With some of the biggest and most lethal bombings taking place just this week it hardly seems the moment to be describing Iraq as being in a state of "peaceful freedom".
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Poulenc4 months, 4 weeks ago
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When a revolution--or at least a national protest-uprising--can be ordered up on Facebook, well, the world has decidedly turned a corner.
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What we feel now, and will continue to feel, is the growth pains of a new post-totalitarian order. And America, like every other nation, will have to find its bearings in a world in which power must be shared. -
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getreal14 months, 4 weeks ago
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We have enough irons in the fire from the world leader quest of the Bushes. We have a mess here at home, it's called survival. If we don't get our country out of this economic crises, we won't be doing much to help our military that are stuck in Iraq and elsewhere. I don't know how but it seems that the Bushes meant to destroy our well being as a nation. They did this by chopping away at our work forces, our money flow in our ecomony. They have reduced the every day citizen to barely getting by. Obamma doesn't need to get in the Iran situation. they seem to be handling it themselves. The Republicans are the ones that want him to jump in it. That might make them smell better. All the Fed, state and local governing bodies of America need to be frisked for the taxpayers money. Both parties. The only way to help our people over there starts here. As for Iran, if their people are willing to fight and not stop then they will get freedom on their own. Amdiejab doesn't seem to understand that his actions speak louder than words to his people and some one will take him out no matter how many he takes out. Crookedness always catches itself. He can blame this on America or any other country but it all comes down to the way he has treated his people. That is where the blame goes. Him!
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Icantwait4 months, 4 weeks ago
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My Fellow Americans: Two inept leaders blaming everyone else for their Ills, (Kind of a Pun). Oh we got all those little Obama hate typist going crazy tonight. Remember flunkies stick to the hate script we would not want Obama sending you all to his Wifes Garden, you little sharecroppers you.
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Ironic isn't it, same statements every time, from the same insane, they just can't come up with one logical or original statement. Same corny Bush statements that Obama spends hours in his hot tub making up. We conservatives actually wish you lame brains, would put your heads together, and see if you can come up with one reason why you don't see your President destroying your lives.
Rant and Rave about how, what's his name, ruined this country. Ruined the fact that almost everyone was working, why everyone was preparing for their retirement with a little money to enjoy, ruined the fact that our taxes were actually keeping the layabouts, laying about, ruined the fact that banks remained open, ruined the fact that the government did not own the car companies.
Yes, they just love the fact that all of that will no longer exist, love the fact they will be living in the streets, they love the fact that they will never own an American Car Again, and love the fact that they will not be getting layabout money anymore.
Tell us Liberals why you can't see the destruction that is being done to our country. You can't be serious about the stupid things you say just to try and get us upset. You can't be that foolish. Well I guess you Can. The Real American -
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truthiness4 months, 4 weeks ago
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America has no business telling sovereign nations how to run their affairs. we wouldn't put up with it, why should they?
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there has always been this crazy notion in America that somehow we have a god given right to tell other people how to behave. You can see it in the history of our doctrines and philosophies: White man's burden, Manifest Destiny, Monroe doctrine, Imperial Presidency, and so on.
We are just one more nation among many, a house in the neighborhood. Our interference in the affairs of other nations is both immoral and detrimental to our own well being.
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