A quick synopsis. Obama does not want us the be the biggest bully in the world. He does not want to spread the influence of our business interests behind the disguise of spreading democracy. Frankly, this is a good thing. We must try to be a city of light on the hill, a beacon to the world. This does not happen through the sights of a weapon. The author wants us to be the biggest, baddest cop in the world, the one with a long list of police brutality complaints.
"Bully" is a rather emotionally charged word, one I would not choose. That's a bit like somebody on the right saying that Obama (or pick your favorite Lefty) likes to "Blame America First."
I apparently favor a more activist foreign policy than you do. (My libertarianism differs from that of Rand Paul and a whole lot from that of the neo-isolationists on the Left.) However, there are intermediate steps between crawling into a hole and pretending that the outside world does not exist on the one hand, and overthrowing elected governments (e.g., Mohamed Mossagegh) on the other.
I am not particularly concerned about how other nations see us. I suppose it would make us feel good if a world-wide poll revealed that we were number one in popularity. But our concern should be to further our national interests. It was widely believed that Saddam Hussein's invasion of Kuwait represented an existential threat to Saudi Arabia.
If Saudi Arabia's principle exports had been vegetable fats and animal hides, we could have limited our reaction to rhetorical and other non-military responses. But with oil so vital to us and our allies, something more than words was required. Or do you feel, as did a number of Democrat senators, that the U.S. should have done essentially nothing in 1991?
What I found must telling is how the author thought it was wrong to have a jobs programs that would build up our infrastructure, which in turn would strengthen our country for generations, the author wanted to build more arms. We are already the biggest arms merchants ever in the history of the world. Most of them are sold just to keep our arms industry humming. Is that what he said? I don't think so. Abrams' point was that we need to maintain our military strength, and expenditures on military hardware and software does help the economy while at the same time keeping our defensive capability strong. I think Abrams sees defense as part of our infrastructure; he is not, I am sure, opposed to building bridges or repairing sewers. (Though as BHO has admitted, the "shovel-ready" jobs were mostly illusory. In this particular case, your complaint should be taken to the President.)
I find it disgusting a that a conservative is complaining that Obama does not care about the poor in the world and spreading democracy in the world, when here at home the conservatives do all they can to prevent helping our own poor, and do all they can to suppress voting by people they expect will not vote for them. Typical conservative hypocrisy. Abrams' charge is that considerations other than protecting vital American interests motivate BHO. In short, Abrams makes the case that Obama believes that America needs to be brought down a peg or two. Or maybe three. Here we get to the question of Barack Obama's core political beliefs. Much of what Obama has said and done lead me to believe that he sees the United States, above all else, as a deeply flawed nation, unworthy of respect or even love of country. That indeed makes Obama unique in the history of the U.S.A. Even Jimmy Carter does not hold that view. He has learned that it is no longer permissible to say some of the things he said on his apology tour. That does not mean that he is suddenly as big a booster of America and American exceptionalism as were JRK and Ronald Reagan.
Just what does Barack Obama believe about the U.S. and its place in the world? Do we know what classes he took, especially at Columbia? Do we know who were his favorite and most influential professors? What did he learn about the world as a child in Indonesia? What history and political science books did he read and find most persuasive? Are any of his term papers available for study? The man's intellectual foundations seem to be an enigma. All we can go on is evaluate his actions as President.
Does Barack Obama care about the poor of the world? Well, yes, I guess he does in some very abstract way, which makes him not unlike millions of other people. However, Abrams concludes that Obama has other, if not bigger, fish to fry. His is an almost messianic vision of changing the most powerful nation on Earth into just a member of the club, not so different from Botswana or Moldova. He certainly has said openly, and recently, that we should not act in a decisive way until we get permission form the United Nations. This is either disingenuous or evidence that the President is delusional with respect to the UN. The United Nations, dominated by countries that either don't like us much or a openly hostile, is a bigger failure than the League of Nations. And that does not even consider the obvious fact that all nations do and should act in ways designed to further their national interests. They don't wait to get permission from some unelected international body before taking action. Would Putin? Would the French? Would the Chinese? I'm sure that in capitals around the world, leaders either scratch their heads or laugh when they hear some of Obama's statements.
It is people like Elliot Abrams that drug us into the fiasco that was our war in Iraq. Certainly any advice that he has is best taken as what not to do.
By the way, Drone, what foreign policy did George Washington tell us to follow? Washington lived in an era in which it was possible to pull up the drawbridge, close the windows, and do quite well without dealing with the outside world. I do agree that any actions we take should be well-conceived and based on our best estimate of what is in our national interests. But interests we do have. Was it in our interest to get involved in World War One? I think not. How about World War Two? I say yes, because allowing Hitler to control all of Europe and the Japanese to control all or most of Asia would have had serious, even catastrophic results for the U.S. How about the Cold War? Surely everyone now understands that confronting the Soviet Union was the right course of action. We should not forget, however, that there were plenty of Americans on the Left who were convinced that we, if not bearing total responsibility for the Cold, were just about as guilty as were the Soviets.
And there you have it. Deciding how to react in the event of serious international crises will always be difficult. But at least we can ask our Presidents to act in the nation's best interests, rather than take it upon themselves to "fundamentally transform" the country. When Obama made that statement just before his inauguration, we was telling us, in broad terms, what he had in mind. I suspect that the vast majority of U.S. citizens, including those who voted for him, had something else in mind on election day, 2008
AzWm
