Interventionism, Obama-Style
- From: jose <josefsoplar@xxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Thu, 28 Feb 2008 09:28:00 -0800 (PST)
Interventionism, Obama-Style
By Ray Robison
Can you imagine the international outcry if a President of the United
States went to the United Nations and demanded that a UN military
force invade a hostile, sovereign country? Sure you can; we already
lived through that over Iraq. Now imagine that President Bush had made
the demand that our allies like Canada and Australia should invade,
but not offer a single US infantry soldier beside them. Wouldn't that
be a bit embarrassing?
Then get ready for the foreign policy of an Obama Administration.
Of late, Obama has sung a decidedly noninterventionist tune. But it
wasn't always so. The senator sounded quite hawkish just a few years
ago in 2005,when he urged military intervention in the Darfur
conflict. Senator Obama coauthored an op-ed piece for the Washington
Post in which he lauded the Bush Administration for trying to end
that conflict, a fight that has little to do with US national
security. He urged an escalation, a surge if you will, of American
diplomatic and military support to end the humanitarian crises created
by ethnic-religious conflict. He wrote, "It has become clear that a
U.N. - or NATO-led force is required" to end escalating violence in
Sudan.
However he did not say US forces should be in direct combat roles. So
what exactly did he mean?
The Senator continued to push for stronger outside military
involvement in the Sudan civil war in late 2006. He told the Chicago
Sun-Times "my overarching sense is the great urgency to get a United
Nations protective force on the ground."
Again, this sounds like an interventionist policy.
Can that be right I wondered? Surely no reasonable American leader
would demand an escalation in military commitment by our friends
without a willingness to lead with our own forces.
But that is exactly what Senator Obama was pushing. PBS's Gwen Ifill
asked the Senator to clarify his position on what the US should commit
to in Sudan:
I'll turn this question to Sen. Obama, if NATO gets involved, does
that increase the chances that there will be US troops involved on the
ground?
Senator Obama's response is just shocking:
Well, I don't think that the issue right now is US troops. The issue
is US leadership.
......
In the interim, having NATO forces there that could be supplied by
some of the middle powers, Canada, Australia, others that have
experience in peacekeeping would be absolutely crucial.
Evidently, what Senator Obama wanted was for the US to demonstrate
leadership by pressuring our allies to conduct a mission to which he
wasn't prepared to commit our own forces. It might be understandable
if he were talking about just the African or regional forces already
involved. But no, he specifically said we should demand that our NATO
allies risk their soldier's lives while we were going to sit it out.
Later, when asked a direct question about his opposition to staying in
Iraq despite the threat of increasing the humanitarian crises if we
left Iraq, he stated:
"Well, look, if that's the criteria by which we are making decisions
on the deployment of U.S. forces, then by that argument you would have
300,000 troops in the Congo right now - where millions have been
slaughtered as a consequence of ethnic strife - which we haven't
done," Obama said in an interview with The Associated Press.
"We would be deploying unilaterally and occupying the Sudan, which we
haven't done. Those of us who care about Darfur don't think it would
be a good idea," he said.
So Obama can be said to have a noninterventionist policy -- unless he
can make someone else do the dirty work. Is that what passes for
Democratic leadership now-a-days? JFK would be rolling in his grave.
Thereby Obama stakes out an appearance of hawkishness as long as it is
to help the weak and innocent, yet a certain amount of dovishness (for
the liberal base) in that he doesn't want to intervene unilaterally --
conveniently forgetting that the US has had forces in Iraq under UN
mandate for many years now. Sprinkle in some multicultural balderdash
and viola! -- our enemies will kowtow and our friends will love us for
it.
And this is the man that is going to "restore" our standing in the
world? Any guesses as to what Canadians or Australians might say to an
American president who made such a demand?
The truth is that any American president who wants to lead this world
into a better state by spreading democracy, economic prosperity, rule
of law and American largess must consider the use of force from time
to time. A courageous Commander and Chief must be willing to accept
the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune that comes with leading
troops into battle. Claiming the moral high ground by making a
grandiose show of your willingness to fight for the poor, yet pawning
the dirty work of actually fighting off to friends is simply craven.
Would you want a friend who pawns the dirty work on to you while he
claims the credit?
.
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