I had to post this because - to their credit - on Thursday's ATC, NPR had on Katrina Vanden Heuvel of The Nation to give her reaction to Obama's War-You-Can-Believe In "President Obama is an ethical realist....a speech grounded in realism with elements of idealism ....could see why the Nobel committee awarded him this prize....had a humility and grace while confronting the paradoxes."Even Bob Siegel had to ask, "But you seem to be resolving this conflict between the wartime president, who's escalated the U.S. operation in Afghanistan and the peace prize winner, and the speech about peace rather easily. I'm surprised. I'm surprised you're not more stuck on that one." [Yeah, me too!]
Vanden Heuvel simply took another sip o' the Kool-aid and added,
"And I think it is up to the people, not only in the United States, but this world, to push him to live up to the words he spoke in the speech which was a complex speech. It was a, kind of a speech that could be taught in a college course on just war and America's role in the world."Wowzer! Even the pathetic Juan Williams was more articulate on Saturday's Weekend Edition:
"Well, I think it was a very militaristic speech....how does that relate to eight years of war that was based on weapons of mass destruction that didn't exist? And what does it say to us about dealing with Iran and their difficulties today?....here's a president who is advancing war - two wars at this moment - where is the peace? You know, where is the Martin Luther King? Where is the Mandela? The commitment to non-violence?"
4 comments:
That is why, with the exception of curmudgeon Cockburn and some other astute, unblinkered writers, the Nation magazine has less and less to offer these days to the true leftist.
Katrina Vanden Heuvel comes from a cross breeding of various rich bankers/media moguls over the last 500 years or so and is Princeton educated. She clearly identifies with the the warring classes and can't be trusted.
"President Obama is an ethical realist."
Actually, it's pretty easy to see that he is not, at least not in the case in question.
If he were, he would not have misrepresented his reasons for the troop surge in Afghanistan, which has far more to do with Pakistan than Afghanistan.
I wonder how "ethical" the Afghans think it is that Obama is using their country as a base for drone attacks in Pakistan -- and for amassing troops for joint US/Pakistani operations in Pakistan or a possible outright invasion of Pakistan in the event of an overthrow of that government by some group.
I wonder what the American public would think of Obama's ethics if they realized his Afgan surge is a simply a convenient way of subverting the Constitution and avoiding Congressional approval/declaration for a wider war in Afghanistan.
Truly ethical leaders do not provide (or even feel the need to provide) bogus reasons for their wars. A "Just War" premised on lies is an oxymoron.
Obama may be a "realist" in this case, but if so, he is not being ethical.
Or, if he is ethical, he is not being a realist, because, as Feingold and others have pointed out, Afghanistan simply does not represent a significant threat to the US at this point.
But he is certainly not both: not an "ethical realist".
correction for above "..for a wider war in Afghanistan."
should be "for a wider war in Pakistan."
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