Never happen, I hear you cry. Well, yes, you are probably right but then again you may possibly be wrong. And anyone seriously interested in geo-strategic problems always considers well ahead of time the possibilities along with the probabilities. So, consider: Obama told us in his own words (and it's on video) that we should judge him by the people who surround him. Well, Glenn Beck did just that and it turns out that one of his hand-picked 'czars' was a black, racist, revolutionary Marxist. He was forced to stand down, not because of his revolutionary activities for which he once went to jail, but because he turned out to be a 9/11 conspiracy theorist.
Now Beck has shown a video of a woman who is the White House Communications Director, and is also married to Obama's personal lawyer. During the campaign she was spoken of as one of the four top advisors to the candidate. In that video which is only a 4 or 5 months old, Anita Dunn, the lady in question, is shown giving a speech to the children at a Catholic High School. In it she states, loudly and very clearly, that she has two favourite political philosophers from whom she draws inspiration. One was Mother Theresa, and given that she was speaking at a Catholic school, that was unexceptional; but her second favourite was - Mao Tse Tung!
You can pick any number you like between 40 and 70 million human beings who perished directly as a result of Mao's dictatorship. When it comes to mass murder he makes Adolf Hitler look like a mere dilettante! But imagine the shrieks and howls if a Bush White House staffer had come out and quoted Hitler as an example to school children. Of course, Beck concentrated on the Mao Tse Tung quote but I was taken by some of her other words, for example:
But the two people that I turn to most to basically deliver a simple point [ie, Mother Theresa and Mao], which is, you're going to make choices. You're going to challenge. You're going to say, "Why not?" You're going to figure out how to do things that have never been done before. But here's the deal: These are your choices. They are no one else's. [...]
You know, you don't have to accept the definition of how to do things, and you don't have to follow other people's choices and paths, OK? It is about your choices and your path. You fight your own war.
Or in other words, children, ignore the dictates of society as taught to you by your parents and your teachers and your priests, and instead just do your own thing - and do it militantly - just like good old uncle Mao!
But outside the immediate White House entourage there are swarms of Left-wing activists, not just liberal Democrats, but people with ties to hardline revolutionary groups who have infiltrated many of the Obama-supporting organisations. Take Magarida Jorge as a typical example:
A few months ago, Margarida Jorge was a low level supporter of the Missouri Communist Party, working with ACORN, Jobs with Justice and the like. Now she plays a key role in a nationwide organization at the center of of the national healthcare debate. Her job is to defuse the opposition to Obama's health care reforms by applying the skills and techniques developed by her Communist Party friends.
Or this prize pair of radical specimens:
In 1995 former Weather Underground terrorists Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn helped launch Barack Obama's political career at a small function in their Chicago home. Bill Ayers also hired Obama to head the Annanberg Challenge, a $50 million fund which enabled Obama to fund organisations which could enhance his political career. Later Ayers worked with Obama on the board of the Woods Fund, together doling out millions to leftist causes.
It has been rumoured that Bill Ayers was the ghost writer of Obama's biography but Obama has denied it and since his run for office he has distanced himself from this couple - apparently!
Both the above quotes from the indefatigable Trevor Loudon at New Zeal.
I could go on but instead let me point you at Obama's foreign policy as it is slowly revealed. It surely amounts to no more than a gradual sucking up to every monstrous dictatorship in the world. Islam is kow-towed to, the Iranians now know that the US will do nothing about their nukes; Putin knows that he can dominate Obama as his recent unilateral withdrawal of the missile shield without a single Russian concession proves. Two allies, Poland and the Czech Republic, have been left looking foolish, and a severe chill will have fallen over the Ukraine and Georgia. The Chinese begin to flex their monetary muscles and the USA can do nothing as its currency sinks out of sight under the weight of Obama's reckless spending. It is only a matter of time before it is Chinese military muscle that is flexed. A tiny nation, Honduras, who applied its own properly constituted laws via its own courts to deal with a potential dictator have been leaned on by the Americans in an effort to force them to take him back.
The first thing that revolutionaries want and need is a domestic crisis. In that sort of maelstrom their simplistic slogans are made easy to swallow. I believe the USA is likely to enter another financial crisis as the dollar becomes a basket-case currency. This will impact in all sorts of ways and is likely to destabilise American society. At that time, I will not be surprised to see a physical attack on the president used as an excuse for the introduction of extreme emergency powers - and hey-ho, we'll be off to the races! It would be extremely useful for the militants if such a crisis can be engineered prior to the Congressional elections next year, perhaps permitting an emergency postponement during which their grip can be tightened.
I repeat, all this is just a possibility, but events need to be watched in case it moves up to a probability, and at that point, we, in Britain, will need to do some very hard thinking as we try to come to terms with a world in which the mighty United States of America ceases to be a defender of freedom and democracy but instead joins with the totalitarians.
"the Iraqis now know that the US will do nothing about their nukes"
Typo? Perhaps it should be "Iranians"?
It actually add a poignancy to your point. One (of the many) political gains of the Iraq war was to deter WMD proliferation in anti-Western states, by demonstrating that force would be used against those suspected of putting WMD aspirations into action (strengthened by the observation that it didn't even matter too much whether the suspicion was later found to be more aspiration than action).
Obama has ensured that political capital is now completely spent.
Son of Duff
Posted by: Lawrence Duff | Saturday, 17 October 2009 at 16:25
Thanks, Lawrence, signs of senility, I suppose!
Well, to be fair, I think Bush, himself, (and Rumsfeld, I suppose)did more than enough to undermine the strategic possibilities of establishing a powerful American base in the heart of the middle east.
Posted by: David Duff | Saturday, 17 October 2009 at 18:42
I beg to disagree with you there, Pater!
There are 130,000 American troops in Iraq today. Have you noticed how no-one seems to care whether they stay or go now that things have calmed down in Iraq, and Afghanistan is stealing all the limelight? It’s not in the interests of America to withdraw its troops from Iraq for the reason you’ve noted: the political influence that a strong military presence in the Middle East confers, and, the serious disruption that fighting the hairies on their own soil brings to their ability to fly airplanes into our tall buildings and detonate themselves on the London underground. The problem with just staying there and bashing the hairies is the whining, lily-livered Western masses, otherwise, well, we would just stay there and let the armed forces get on with the job we’ve paid them to do.
However, this problem has been resolved in two ways.
Firstly, the American war and statecraft machines have learned and applied many profound lessons on how to take and hold foreign soil in the Iraq campaign: all the “buy the locals when you have to, and how to bash them when you don’t have to”, “he may be a bastard, but he’s our bastard” (now who said that?) stuff that the Brits were so awfully good at in the preceding couple of centuries. The result in Iraq speaks for itself. And there’s nothing like actual military results to take the wind out of the whining, lily-livered Western masses.
Secondly, by distracting the whining, lily-livered Western masses with another campaign, with all the rights and wrongs, pros and cons, successes and failures, especially one that has greater moral high ground (where did AQ have all their training bases?), the empire can sink its roots deep into Iraq alright, and thereby establish an enduring and powerful base in the heart of the Middle East.
So everything was heading in the right direction. Then Obama came along.
S.o.D
Posted by: Lawrence Duff | Saturday, 17 October 2009 at 20:04
I don't agree! The whole concept of taking over a country and teaching it 'democracy', or as close to it as it can get, is hopeless. Iraq is a prime example. In 19th c. empire terms, we should have gone in, killed the first level leadership and then installed the second level, ie, the Baathists, or possibly, the army, as the new puppet regime. But that was in the days when communications were rudimentary. Today, every facet of military occupation (especially casualties) is on TV world-wide. Home audiences, or electorates, simply will not stand for the sort of brutal real politik that is required in empire building.
I am very much more in favour of what the 'cousins' call 'Trash 'n' Dash'. That sort of operation is much cheaper, and in this technological age it sends the message to the people who count, that is, foreign governments and their bureaucrats. It is good old 'projection of power' but with none of the messiness involved when you outstay your welcome.
Posted by: David Duff | Sunday, 18 October 2009 at 10:58