Introduction to O-bushian Nationalism 101

A decade later and we are still in Afghanistan. Those on the campaign trail for the GOP nomination are pontificating out the sides of their necks, John McCain is inveighing nonsense and the Obama administration is taking hits left and right – and rightly so. I have expressed my view on the US occupation of the central Asian nation eve prior to Obama, but clearly to no avail. I regrettably do not have the ears of the President or media pundits. And God knows I would love to hear urban radio adduce such a discussion with clarity. However, it seems that discussions on the photographs of Whitney Houston in her coffin, her nineteen year old daughter and wondering whether or not Chris Brown and Rihanna will get back together are more important conversations to have in our communities. Not to mention any topic that panders to the absolute support and defense of President Obama regardless of the cost or reality.

First I need to address the assassination recently carried out by a US solider (Robert Bales) in the heart of the region. Since the event, I have only heard sentiments of justification of his behavior, namely that he must have been mentally ill. I agree. But what strikes me as bazaar was that no such acceptance of mental illness (which is obvious to me) was ever pronounced for Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, the U.S. Army psychiatrist who allegedly opened fire inside Fort Hood in Texas killing thirteen people and wounding 30 people. Any who.

To properly understand our central Asian foreign policy, a brief history of our approach to foreign policy philosophy is in order. After World War II, the significance of American exceptionalism supported and justified our interventionist policies. Basically, that as the “cosmic policeman”, righteousness of our nationalism evinced the position that only the U.S. was the last best hope of mankind and the world. This was code for American aspirations of hegemony over much of the world and defined overtly that democratic globalism rather than the national interest of the United States were the central issues at heart when considering the utility of military intervention. As if our self-proclaimed moral righteousness was eugenically paramount over pragmatism.

Although the Cold War mentality was supposedly over, it continued to exist and it legacy revamped, via a conservative movement that pursued no strategic alternatives in our foreign other than military action. That leads us to present day Iraq and Afghanistan. First, we fail to recognize our approach to borders versus the people is setting us for failure. Until we deal with such as a Pashtun issue, we will continue to run around like a chicken with its head cut off. The region is occupied by what history would call the Scythians or the Saka, those folks who live on the land from the Black sea to china. This is where most of our concern is presently and our presence is cloaked under the guise of wanting a stable democratic government fin the region albeit facts assert that the characteristics required for the formulation of such governments are not existent in Afghanistan or Iraq.

This however has not stopped Bush or Obama for attempting to produce such an outcome. Even Bill Clinton, who supposedly was a progressive, had the same approach to foreign policy in Central Asia. All three have never provided any well defined objectives other than perpetual peace through the dream of a universal democratic order on the American model. This desire to see American political structure manifest in other regions is a consequence of our historical imperialistic and colonial roots and is no different under Obama as it was Bush. Look at Yemen for example. It is really just another open ended war designed to make us look good and feel good. But all it accomplishes is to add more debt and more ant-American sentiment in the region. Before this there was Iraq, a nation of only 24 million that was destroyed by U.S. military power with a 12-year U.S.-led economic embargo prior to the war and daily bombing which our Air Force destroyed most of Iraq’s water purification plants and sewage systems, resulting in the deaths of more than 500,000 children from water-borne disease and lack of medicines alone. And all to protect the people and bring about peace through democracy. One thing we were able to accomplish was to increase the presence of Shia death squads that inflicted untold violent acts on Sunnis. Paul Wolfowitz, said that invading Iraq would cost a mere $40 billion and would be paid for by taking over its oil.

Post-Saddam Iraq will not be a pro-Western model of democratic stability. In particularly under the autocratic rule of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, It will be a quasi-democratic state with a strong pro-Iranian orientation. Likewise in Pakistan, we will be left with a corrupt and ineffectual government run by President Hamid Karzai where the Taliban remains at full strength and growing. Was this what was our desire for producing a democracy under of the US model in a pursuit for universal peace?

I can’t answer this, but I will assume the answer is no or else we would have not entered Libya. I mean, it too was based on humanitarian principles, to defend the civilian population based on the “responsibility to protect” doctrine that was used to justify Libya. Strange since it is used selectively – not for Syria or the Sudan. Especially given that such an argument is more valid for Syria and the Sudan than it did in the case of Libya. Assad’s and Umar Hassan Ahmad al-Bashir’s militaries have killed way more people compared to just a few hundred deaths at the time of NATO’s intervention against Gaddafi.

Fact is just as the Neoconservatives in the Bush administration, Obama is on a similar crusade to transform the Middle East. Both the Bush and Obama administrations have hidden the cost of our current Central Asian interventions from the American people by refusing to pay for it through taxes. Both continue the post-cold war legacy of the quest for universal democratic order based on the American democratic model and the desire to transform the Middle East and central Asia. The question is how are American interest defined in these military interventions outside of emotional terms? It is as if we have not received the memo.

Remember it was Hillary Clinton’s State Department who suggested that Egypt appeared stable and opposition forces would not topple Hosni Mubarak’s dictatorship. WRONG and what we do know after elections is that a democratic Egyptian government won’t be pro-U.S.

This is the definition of O-bushian nationalism. It means we spend trillions of dollars and the lives of thousands for the purposes of accomplishing nothing but establishing and entrenched hatred for America across the Muslim world with nations being more dangerous than when our troops first arrived. And all for merely not wanting to show weakness politically, for wanting to develop a stable democratic government without the request of the occupied nation with merely a threat on our emotions called terror and no US interest involved.

Obama's State Department Turns Away From and ignores Sub Saharan Africa

President Obama is quick to join the protest against Republicans both inside and outside the Beltway. Likewise, his “on the job training” in dealing with social unrest in North Africa and the Arabian Peninsula is also prominent, especially when it makes him looks grand standing on the side of Democracy In Tunisia and Egypt. This is in stark contrast to the manner in which he deals with similar issues in Sub Saharan Africa.

There are several troubled spots in Sub Saharan Africa currently that neither the media, President Obama or his State department have addressed publically. Most prominently are what is occurring in Uganda, The Ivory Coast, the Sudan or even what is occuring in Zimbabwe. If Fact until today, Obama has been basicaly quiet on what is occuring in the Ivory Coast.

In Uganda, President Museveni, the formal rebel leader has been in power ever since he took control of the nation twenty five years ago. He is a very close ally of the United States and receives 100s of millions of dollars in Aid annually – while the populating is gripped in extreme poverty and joblessness. Obama has never addressed or spoken about the dozens of deaths over since 2009 occurring during youth protest against the government. Even this week, thousands took to the streets of Kampala but they are ignored and portrayed as invisible by the present US administration.

In the Ivory Coast, after free and fair elections, Laurent Gbagbo still refuses to step down after losing the presidential elections this past November. Although this past December, President Barack Obama urged Ivory Coast’s incumbent leader to cede power to the “legitimate winner” of the polls, he was not as forceful as he has been with his counterparts in North Africa or even in Iran. The United States has agreed with Ecowas that sanctions should be put in place but outside of that has shown no leadership on the issue. Mean while, Ivory Coast's incumbent leader has seized four major international banks that had shut down operations because the banks did not respect the law and closed without proper notice. The banks included offices for Britain's Standard Chartered, France's BNP–Paribas and Societe Generale along with U.S. bank Citibank.

In the Sudan, students, mobilized by online social networks, rioted in Khartoum, throwing stones at police cars and chanting. Unlike the recent uprising in Tunisia and the ongoing one in Egypt, but there is also the issue of southern Sudan's recent referendum vote, which approved secession from the north. As Khartoum is located in northern Sudan, it remains unclear what relation, if any, the uprising has to the recent referendum. One thing is clear, however: the winds of change are blowing across Africa and the Middle East, and whether they will bring stability and democracy or more civil war and dictatorship remains to be seen.

Prior to Tunisia's popular revolt, Sudan was the last Arab country to overthrow a leader with popular protests, ousting Jaafar Nimeiri in 1985. And just like the other recent revolts, the Sudan is in an economic crisis associated with government overspending and bloated import bills caused foreign currency shortages and forced an effective devaluation of the Sudanese pound last year.

America's new Foreign Policy Entanglement

The events of the past weeks have served as a dramatic wake up call for President Obama and his retinue of advisors, as well as America as a whole regarding re-thinking their approaches to foreign policy in North Africa, the Middle east and worldwide. Although Most African Americans are familiar with Egypt and the turmoil occurring across its chronicled cities and other nation states in the region, grievously most have a curbed comprehension of the impact these occurrences have on President Obama and any policy deliberated as a function of these events. For President Obama and his administration, the conundrum from this vantage point is not purely formulating policy for America, but conspicuously deciding how to formulate policy on behalf of Israel and ally’s in the region or the inchoate masses of the secular populations in revolt.

First and foremost is dealing with addressing emotion, better know as terror as a singular attribute that Americans alone confront in concert with dealing with autocrats all for the good of us, under the guise of peace and Islamic fundamentalism. Mistakes made some 30 years ago in Iran, and what we have observed in Egypt and Libya, still fall on deaf ears – even for the prophet of all prophets Obama. In addition, our monolithic approach to supporting what is best for Israel and a myopic focus on Al Qaeda is misplaced and may do more harm than good. Common sense would advocate looking at all nations singularly but our focus on terrorism prevents such. There are differences between military dictators and monarchs, but starvation, repression, discrimination and poverty are least common dominators if one accepts and place the people of nations first.

In Libya, The United States is openly spoken out against the violence in the country’s second-largest city, Benghazi, where there are reports of security forces firing on peaceful protesters and where human-rights groups say many have been killed in recent days. In Iran, unconfirmed reports of anti-government gatherings on being broken up by a security police and members of the feared pro-government Basij militia patrolling the streets again he has spoken out.

The hand he is dealing with is progresively getting difficult to contain. There is Raymond Davis, the American who shot dead two men in Lahore, triggering a diplomatic crisis between Pakistan and the US. A former CIA agent, he opened fire with a semi-automatic Glock pistol on the two men who had pulled up in front of his car at a red light on 25 January. The 36-year-old former special forces soldier fired 10 shots and got out of his car to shoot one man twice in the back as he fled. A third man was crushed by an American vehicle as it rushed to Davis’s aid. Police confiscated from his car: an unlicensed pistol, a long-range radio, a GPS device, an infrared torch and a camera with pictures of buildings around Lahore. Plus, the possibility of unrest growing and spreading in the region and its impact on the price of Oil and the recovering US Economy makes all even more difficult. We have already seen militant actions lead to blowing up Iraq's largest oil refinery.

This is the position Obama is in. His taciturn inactivity places us in more danger by ignoring this for the people which make matters worse, for they will not forget either his inactivity or ineptness when orating support for the likes of King Abdullah of Saudi, a Mubarak of Egypt, Bashar Assad of Syria, or King Hamad bin isa al-Khalife of Bahrain. President Obama needs to make a decision regarding what is next for Libya and the Middle East. He must no make the mistake of the past and be able to see that the protest in North African and the Arab world are closer to the protest observed here in America during the 60s and the civil rights era. For one they are the youth of these nations just like it was the youth in the united sates that hit the streets then.

It will be difficult. On the one hand he will need to defend individual policy parameters that support nation building, democracy and human rights; not just in North Africa and the Middle East but Russia and china also. He must in addition, re-establish US credibility, and form new relationships with the new leadership of Egypt, Tunisia, and other places if such comes to fruition. And if not, engage the opposition leadership while maintain close ties with the military of said countries.

This will mean changing the US Foreign policy assumption of a one sixe fit all approach. Although outside of the region, we may be able to learn a thing or two from the riots in Greece and India, and use this to re-evaluate what we did wrong for example in Iran in 1979. Regardless, this is a difficult situation he faces since it is obvious his noted difficulty is siding with the ideas of freedom, liberty and democracy for the citizenry or maintaining an autocratic association with a dictator for the sake of a quasi-peace for Israel, and good standing of the US in the eyes of the regions other despots.

The President’s talk has been top shelf; demanding change now but it is rhetorical seeing that he and his state Department are torn between advancing democracy in the region and the old school, approach that change “taking time” Obama’s decision will become even more difficult in the future and will range from the role of Islam in politics. He should take into consideration that polity should be based on security and the well-being of the US first and foremost.

Things in the Arab world will continue to surprise and if Obama is to maintain any type of control, he must become a student of history and learn from the mistakes in US foreign policy of the past. he does have one advantage, he was opposite Rush Limbaugh, Glenn beck, Newt Gingrich, and Mike Huckabee who criticized the President for not Support Mubarak.

The Two face Hypocrisy of US Foreign Policy

I have been writing and expounding on US foreign policy since the early 1980s. My first or one of my earliest essays was called “Israel’s fascist Penumbra” which was published in the Black Students Association Journal at Memphis State University in 1985.

It addressed the “do anything” for Israel mentality and our traditionally mistaken monolithic conviction of Arabs and Africans worldwide, that we often dissemble under the shadow of peace and agoraphobia. What is common regarding now and then and even times prior is the “do as I say and not as I do” legacy of colonialist and imperial belief orientations that place all European in origin at the summit of rational behavior and what is deemed to be acceptable.

On the one hand we vilify the Arab and African States for their desire for governments to run as theocracies, yet we do the same here. Promulgating policies based on religious beliefs and biblical guidance. Our own founding as a nation saw the assertion that Africans were less valuable and more akin to live stock than human beings. An edict that presented itself in policies from slavery to Jim Crow and segregation. In Oklahoma, a law was recently passed that bars courts from considering Shariah law when deciding cases was put on hold. And we are well aware of the tense debate facilitated via the discussion of abortion.

We condemn terrorist for their no holds barred attacks on America, yet we support going to Somalia and just killing everyone in sight as if their lives are less important than ours to avenge the deaths of four Christian Missionaries who were not asked to come to their country in the first place. We support invading and occupying Afghanistan and Iraq and manufacture policy and war to remove leaders we label tyrants and dictators and autocrats yet give similar men billions in aid annually and historically and invite them to the Whitehouse for dinner pretending as if their blood is not on our hands from the tanks and fighter we give them.

We supported Chiang Kai-Shek’s ROC government from the 1930s to 1949 in a civil war that saw the murder of tens of thousands. In Chilie we funded General Augusto Pinochet who murdered and tortured thousands from 1973 to 1990. Then there was Suharto in Indonesia and Papa and baby Doc in Haiti.

But it is to only be expected for unfortunately we too are a nation of terrorist and celebrate such resonantly. In Mississippi, there is an attempt to venerate Nathan Bedford Forrest, a man whose image on horseback I road past almost daily in my home town of Memphis, Tennessee. Yes, 150 years after the start of the Civil War people want to celebrate a murderer who founded a terrorist organization called the Ku Klux Klan. An organization from its inception main goal was to conduct inordinate acts of violence solely on African Americans in the South eventually including the bombing deaths of four girls attending Sunday school in a Church in 1963.

This man was also known for what he did on April 12, 1864 at Fort Pillow, Tennessee, when General Nathan Bedford Forrest captured the fort with his 1,500. In the process, according to eyewitness accounts like General Kilpatrick (USA), Forrest “nailed Negroes to the fences, set fire to the fences, and burned the Negroes to death.” More than 300 African American Union troops were massacred then.

But let me not digress, the point is that US foreign policy is the result of constructs that are two-faced. For if other did to us what we did to them we would be extremely upset and throwing hissy fits. We are so shallow, self-centered and heedless. Yes we are hypocrites and this hypocrisy may be what destroys us, just as it leads to behaviors that spoliated ancient Rome.

Our Foreign Policy Faux Pas

With our fascination of celebrity, it is not unexpected that a few events that happened around the globe went basically ignored. And I suspect that the current administration may have applauded in silent appreciation for the lack of coverage of these events. Now me on the other hand, can see what may be building up on the fore front. With all of the focus on the American Economy, our foreign policy has only focused on the Middle East, and this includes Russia. However there are several other issues that much be addressed and all in concert with the global market place and the future policy making of America.

On the 28 of last month and mostly unspoken in this country, Argentina and Uruguay held elections that may represent a shift in the South American political spectrum. If is any indication of what is to come in the region, it may be a preview of what one may expect to occur in future presidential elections taking place in Brazil, Chile, and Uruguay in 2009 and 2010.

I say this because we did not foresee or even were prepared to deal with what occurred in Honduras. No to mention it is essential that we reach out in advance to such nations especially if want to be in a better position to work with Russia and deal with our growing discordance with Iran. It will be difficult to truly enhance our relations with Russia especially with the growing pro-democracy movements in Ukraine and Georgia, Add to that the concern for Kosovo’s independence; the Obama administration will have its hands full for the Russians have not forgotten his threat to keep them from becoming a member of the World Trade Organization.

Throw in the mix China, which will most likely side with Russia before us and the gumbo thickens. The Nation has just past the US as the largest trading nation with Latin American nations and may have a player card on deck with out current nuclear conflict with North Korea. In order to pull rank on China, Obama needs to make them re-evaluate the impact of having a nuclear powered North Korea across the street seeing that they have been historically the biggest support of the current regime. But this will prove difficult for Obama given the recent violence in China’s Xinjiang region, where members of the mainly Muslim Uighur ethnic group have been battling with the military and police. Add to that the recent US Cap and Trade Bill, China may attempt to stall any diplomatic efforts the current administration has planned with any of the aforementioned countries. The Bill requires the president, starting in 2020 to impose special import taxes on goods from countries that do not have a similar cap-and-trade policy. China has been on the record saying that this is just a form of American "trade protectionism in the disguise of environmental protection".

The truth is that the Obama administration in concert with United Nations, Japan and South Korea have been ineffective in dealing with North Korea, and will need the assistance of Russia and China on this as well as with diplomatic outreach to Iran. Thus trying to turn the heat up on either China or Russia would not be productive. We can not depend on the G8 and the Obama team need to get with the program for we are in a global economic world and even ignoring the little man, as he have done with respect to Honduras, and not to be forward thinking is both a sign of poor planning and a lack of understanding with respect to the inter-connectedness of foreign policy. In stead it appears that we have merely a faux, a social blunder in the making. So Mr. President, time to hit the books and get to work, the smile and your blackness can’t do all the work for you to be a success.

McCant

Now I value the first amendment right of free speech and as such, use this right to express in speech and written form, being critical of each and every administration when need be. However, my criticism is often directed toward valid policy issues based on substance and that have some impact on the US populous.

Unfortunately in the American body politic, some folks cannot be as objective. It seems as if partisan ship and cynicism runs supreme when compared to the objective political reality of common sense. I read where John McCain, Pete Hoekstra and several other prominent members in the Republican Party have criticized President Obama with respect to his statements and the time of such statements regarding the protest in Iran. In essence, that he was not hard enough on the Iranian administration, took to long to make a statement, unsupportive of democracy for Iran, and not picking sides in terms of the opposition leadership. I have even heard folks complain that while this was going on, that he selected to go and get ice cream with his little girls. Saying that when George Bush was out playing golf he was vilified in the media. Let us not forget Bush 43 had started a war on false pretense and no such action has been taken by the current administration.

Obama supports both declarations of condemnation proffered by the House and Senate. But there is nothing more he can say or do. First McCain is the last person I would take advice from given that while on the campaign trail he openly admitted he wanted to go into Iran and bomb it just as we did Iraq. And Pete Hoekstra, well the first three letters in his last name says it all. Only an idiot would select that we pick sides. We stand with all the people of Iran in protest and to do such may place these very same individuals in harms way more so than currently. True, the announcement of the winner by the Supreme leader before the votes were counted is suspect, we must admit that we do not know who won the election and even if we did it would not change our current political relationship or approach with Iran, for we have NO diplomatic relation with this nation.

Obama has to be cautious because being wrong would be the worst outcome if he was to make a cursory decision at this moment. Thus it is wise for him not to pick sides. So to all of them representing that set known as the GOP – squash it. Especially you Mr. McCain, for according to your logic the solution like the former president would be to invade and occupy, since the actually do have nuclear capacity and the people are being controlled by a tyrannical regime. You really cannot compare us to the governments of the European Union because they have made statements regarding the unrest, for they have diplomatic relations with Iran as I stated earlier and we do not. Dang, maybe you need to attend senate sessions more, for it makes me think I know more about US foreign policy than you Mr. McCant, I mean McCain.

An Hour Away

Being so caught up on loot and the current economic crisis I am often forgetful of the importance of being informed on a worldly stage. But I was just reminded of this. I mean I was asked to write an essay by this news weekly in Atlanta on Obama and his trip to the Summit of the Americas this past week, so I did. Sure I burst open a few GOP perspectives and nonsensical projections, but overall, I was only reminded that Mr. President has big problems and needs to step his game up.

We still have major problems in Afghanistan and especially its neighbor Pakistan. It seems that The Taliban is advancing more and more each day. Not only in the ability to run the courts in feudal courts in both of the nation states above, but all so in their ability to influence the local inhabitants and occupy more territory. They are all over the Swat Valley in Pakistan and looking as if they are becoming entrenched in the area northwest of the capital

How much are they in control? Well let us just say they are patrolling the roads military style and broadcasting messages on loud speakers throughout the area. Which tell me that the so called peace effort offered by the new government has no weight and will likely fail? And this is just a week after the Pakistan's president signed off on the peace pact. The Swat Valley has seen some of the heaviest fighting between the Taliban and security forces over the past year. But it also seems that the new government’s agreement to impose Islamic law in Malakand in an effort to end the fighting with the Taliban may back fire. It is hard to know what is true and fact however, they do this in Pakistan but in Afghanistan, the Taliban denied they were holding peace talks with the government and continue to be able to conduct “high-profile attacks” even as US troop strength continue to grow.

I know Obama understand that Pakistan is a major problem with what we confront in Afghanistan. Unfortunately, he may get his wish and have troops up in that camp before we can say another US bank has failed. For the Taliban is now in control of another district in the country's northwest just 70 miles from the capital. They have also banned music and television and stopped women from entering into a popular shrine of a Muslim saint.
The Taliban has placed the ball in our court now and I wonder what the President will do or plans to do for I have not heard in detailed plans to deal with Pakistan in concert with the Taliban. I just hope he don’t wait until the last minute like Bush 43 or until the government is over thrown and the Taliban running thangs up in that camp. They way I see it, now the Taliban is only an hour away from the capital, and if history is correct, they aint got no problem with taking over and ousting a sitting government.