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NEWS: The book The Code for Global Ethics:
Toward a humanist civilization
[www.TheCodeForGlobalEthics.com]
will be available on Sept. 1, 2009. ***
Lisez des extraits du livre du Professeur TREMBLAY : Le code pour une éthique globale Janvier
2009 ISBN: 978-2-89578-173-8 Sunday, June 14, 2009 The Obama Enigma: Imperial Interventionism and
Militarism
"We
do not want a PAX Americana enforced on the world by American weapons of war.
Not the peace of the grave or the security of the slave. I am talking about
genuine peace, the kind of peace that makes life on earth worth living, the
kind that enables men and nations to grow and to hope and to build a better
life for their children — not merely peace for Americans but peace for
all men and women — not merely peace in our time but peace for all
time." President
John F. Kennedy, 1963 "I
will not hesitate to use force unilaterally, if necessary, to protect the
American people or our vital interests wherever we are attacked or imminently
threatened. ... We
must also consider using military force in circumstances beyond self-defense,
in order to provide for the common security that underpins global stability
— to support friends, participate in stability and reconstruction
operations, or confront mass atrocities." Sen.
Barack Obama, Foreign Affairs (July/August 2007) "Our
interest in Afghanistan is to prevent it from becoming a haven for terrorists
bent on attacking us. That does not require the scale of military operations
that the incoming administration is contemplating. It does not require
wholesale occupation. It does not require the endless funneling of human treasure
and countless billions of taxpayer dollars to the Afghan government." Bob Herbert, The New York Times, January 6, 2009 Those who thought that the election of Barack
Obama as American President would mean a fundamental shift in U.S. foreign
policy should have lost their illusions by now. Faces change but the system
remains. When you want change, it's necessary to look beyond a single
individual and evaluate the team he is working with ...or for. And the Obama
team is what can be called a soft neoconservative team, all devoted to
maintaining the military-industrial
complex, and all sold out with the ideology of permanent wars
rather than permanent human progress. The truth is that during the last election,
both candidate McCain
and candidate Obama
were favorable to the policy of permanent
wars under the cover of fighting terrorism. That is the reason
I had concluded then that candidate Obama was only marginally superior to
candidate McCain, but not fundamentally different. In fact, I believe that as
far as character goes, McCain was probably more his own man than Obama, who
has demonstrated a tendency to align himself with powerful interests in order
to bolster his political career. There seems to have been a deal here: Obama
will be kept busy shaking hands, traveling and delivering grand speeches or
sermons, while Chief of cabinet Rahm
Emanuel would run the White House. Everything then felt into
place: Marine Corps General James
Jones was named National Security Advisor (N.B.: The national security adviser heads
the National Security Council, which is the part of the White House structure
that deals with foreign policy), and
Bush's Defense Secretary Robert Gates was asked to
remain at his post. This alone should have persuaded most everyone that U.S.
foreign policy would only change in tone, not in substance. By enlarging and expanding the Afghanistan-Pakistan
war just as
U.S. troops reduce their unwelcomed presence in Iraq, Obama has de facto endorsed interventionism and militarism as
the cornerstone of his foreign policy. This is a failed policy, besides being
immoral, because it requires the pursuit of a contradiction, i.e. killing civilians
and supporting authoritarian regimes while attempting to obtain the support
of a foreign population in favor of democracy. What is more, Obama is enlarging a war that has no
clear rationale behind it and no clear objectives. If the main rationale is
to build his political image as “commander-in-chief”, then Obama
is falling into the same trap as George W. Bush. The Afghanistan-Pakistan war
will be his war and it will be a quagmire. When he signed an order increasing
U.S. troops by 17,000 combat and support personnel in Afghanistan, then newly
sworn in President Barack Obama said the war in Afghanistan was
“still winnable”. What did he mean? Does it mean that the U.S.
will have troops over there for decades? It seems that nothing is learned from history and
that everything has to be relearned. —Such a policy failed miserably in
Vietnam,
and it is most likely to fail again in Afghanistan-Pakistan, two countries
whose borders are highly artificial, having been imposed by imperial Great
Britain in the nineteen century. It also failed for the Soviets who had to
withdraw from Afghanistan after eight-and-a-half disastrous years. Soon
after, the entire Soviet regime collapsed. Indeed, by enlarging the Afghanistan-Pakistan War,
President Obama is embarking on a course of action that could eventually destroy
his presidency. It will be a repeat of President Lyndon B. Johnson who was
destroyed politically with his Vietnam War,
even though this was a war he had not started. As in Vietnam, the
ill-conceived Afghanistan war will become a war of attrition that will drain
public support and finances as the war becomes more and more americanized.
This will be another tragedy. If Obama listens to the military, as he obviously
seems to do, he will be fed the deadly pablum that every problem in the world
is a military problem. But this is false and counterproductive. In fact,
bombing civilian populations will only enrage them against the invaders, just
as bombing the United States would naturally enrage Americans. On that, Obama
and his team are on the same wavelength and on the same path to disaster as
Bush-Cheney and their neocon sycophants. –This is too bad. President Barack Obama is quickly
wasting his political capital and his political credibility. And once lost,
it will be difficult to regain them. Rodrigue Tremblay is professor emeritus of economics at the University
of Montreal and can be reached at rodrigue.tremblay@ yahoo.com. He is the author of the book 'The
New American Empire'. Visit his blog site at www.thenewamericanempire.com/blog.
Author's Website: http://www.thenewamericanempire.com/
Check out Dr. Tremblay's coming book
"The Code for Global Ethics" at: http://www.TheCodeForGlobalEthics.com/ *****The French version of the book is now available. See: http://www.lecodepouruneethiqueglobale.com/ Or on Amazon
Ca. Posted, Sunday, June 14,
2009, at 5:30
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