Friday, April 13, 2012

Sooner or later, it becomes just too painfully obvious.

Michael Weiss does a withering job of laying out the evidence: "Barack Obama’s foreign policy prescriptions are rooted in a deeply conservative and nostalgic tradition. When it comes to Russia, the tradition this White House channels most is that of Richard Nixon. This seemingly incongruous resemblance was well illustrated in a recent controversy over the nullification of a Nixon-era piece of legislation, the Jackson-Vanik amendment, which binds U.S. trade relations with autocratic regimes to those regimes’ human rights records."

As I was saying only a few weeks ago, drawing on a slightly different analogy: "Well, bite me, because after McChrystal’s cashiering came a series of Pentagon career-enders and State Department demotions and White House defenestrations until all that was left was Joe Biden and a stratagem that would make Henry Kissinger blush."

Marty Peretz, January 2011:"My point is that across the depths of Africa--from Egypt in the north to Zimbabwe in the south (and dare I say South Africa itself?) and in Congo and Sudan and a dozen countries besides--the killers and the humiliators are free to kill and humiliate without even a chastising from the United States. So where are the idealists and youthful human rights champions? Nowhere. Darfur was only an issue when they could taunt George Bush about it."

Nick Cohen, January, 2010: "I accept that readers may find this a hard sentence to swallow, but when it comes to promoting democracy, the emancipation of women and the liberation of the oppressed, Barack Obama has been the most reactionary American president since Richard Nixon."

2 Comments:

Blogger James O'Hearn said...

Terry, it almost sounds like you're trying to get the Republicans elected!

I wonder what the reason for this is. Is the influence of Chicago-style realpolitik?

The Bush Republicans had eight years in power, and everyone seemed to think they were some hyper-powerful well-oiled machine. Me? I think the Clintonites had eight years in power, then eight years in opposition, and by the time the next election rolls around, they will have had 20 years of experience, which Obama is using to his best advantage. And one lesson the Clintonites absorbed deeply is that of Somalia - that getting involved abroad rarely pays political dividends domestically over the long term.

8:43 AM  
Blogger Terry Glavin said...

No, James. Nothing I write on this wee web log will hurt or hinder the Republicans' chances against Obama, so we can all relax. Maybe I'm being too hard on the Democrats. It just seems to me that this radical shift in U.S. policy should be noticed, is all.

9:48 PM  

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