Neoliberalism and Foreign Policy in the Obama Adminisration

Undoubtedly the Obama Administration inherited a complete mess from the prior administration covering both the economy and foreign policy. And true to form, he in many respects has continued the aforesaid policies of the former president from the bail out of the Auto industry, TARP, extending the Bush tax cuts and even Bush’s neoconservative foreign policy undertakings. In the classic sense, a large assemblage would propose that Obama’s foreign policy strategy is diametrically opposite to the neoconservative hawks of the prior administration. Maybe, but in the verity of evidence suggest that the present administration has only morphed neoconservative dogma into neoliberal dogma.

This case can be made singularly by presenting the current Obama administration policies regarding Iran, Israel, Libya, and even tertiary nations like Nigeria, Somalia and the Congo, IT IS NOT FAR FETCHED TO draw the aforementioned parallel within a historical context. As a nation the foreign policy approach of the Obama administration to be fair, remains in the tradition of the fallacy of the first crusades which resulted in the capture of Jerusalem from the Seljuk Turks in 1099. This remains to be the premise of what we see between the west (US and Europe) and the East (Arabs, Persians and Asians).

What do I mean you may ask? Well today as then, the US is a representation of the crusader state – meaning that our goals through foreign policy are to promote a universal culture of values “that must be spread throughout the world in the righteous cause of peace.” This is the basic tenant of Wilsonian idealism the way I have understood political history and put in action by both Obama and Bush. Neoconservative appears to be conservative yet support and favor big government, interventionism, and hostility to religion in politics and government.

Neoconservatives played a small role in the Ronald Reagan Administration, but came out the closet during the George W. Bush Administration after 2001. In comparison, the same can be said of Obama whose primary foreign policy goal demonstrates zeal to expand world peace and preserve American exceptionalism at any cost.

As I recall, Obama campaigned against President Bush’s policies, yet he continues most of these policies today. Like Bush, he has increased funding for U.S. Special Operations Command (SOCOM) and has quadrupled overseas deployments. In Somalia for example, the Obama administration “has put in place policies to limit food aid to the region, using food as a weapon of war and killing hundreds of civilians weekly via its use of US drone strikes. Recently he has sent US troops to oil rich Uganda (Uganda has yet to produce a single barrel of oil) to intervene militarily to help Uganda fight the rebels of the LRA who are currently in the Central African Republic. Recently, more information has surfaced asserting that the U.S. Army has been making “preparations for possible direct military intervention in Nigeria.”

All I am saying is that the manner in which many pundits attacked neoconservative foreign policy was appropriate and the same amount of scrutiny needs to be directed at this new neoliberal foreign policy of Obama. The only difference between the two is not idealism but rather methodological. Bush proffered a less technological approach than Obama currently employs.

Although the present administration is providing the appearance of getting of Iraq and Afghanistan, Obama continues to stay the of Bush neoconservative policy in the Middle East pushing out longtime rulers, as was the case in Libya and as he is attempting to do in Syria. Albeit his first act as President was signing an executive order to close the facility holding terrorist detainees at Guantanamo Bay within a year, he still maintains the policy of the former administration as well as has continued a version of the Bush practice of renditions. I wonder how essential it was to hold and water boarded Khalid Sheikh Mohammed in a secret prison in Eastern Europe to help get info to identify Osama bin Laden’s couriers?

Also, Obama in concert with Eric Holder continue the practice of indefinite detentions and continue to trample the civil liberties of US citizens just as Bush did with the Patriot Act and the FBI’s ability to obtain certain phone records without warrants. The Obama’s Justice Department has given legal authority for the continuation of these policies.

Now I did not get a chance to speak on the example of Ira and Israel, but I will and soon, just not here. The only point I wanted to try and make that the neoconservative philosophy many conservatives applaud today has not been removed from the current Whitehouse. In fact it has changed and mutated into a more vile policy perspective, that has taken us even further back to the times of the crusades, one which says to the world it is our way or the high way. My only concern is that other nations don’t forget the pangs of neocolonial practices they see make nations like the US richer, while they barely have food to eat and water to drink.

Watch yo back folk

Point of order: My son turned 16 on Thursday. I sent him a text saying that if u picked up after 12am in GA u can be arrested. He texted me back saying “Pops, in action with a girl, we be home soon.” I responded “LOL”, was I wrong?

2] Only thing bout being at shop all day I dislike is not being able to cook, my daughter had cheese grits, next whiting, yams, Mac n cheese n greens, the fried chicken. Each time she grabs a dog bed and her baby and go to sleep – apple don’t fall far from tree lol. So I am buying what I normally cook

Now back to our regular scheduled thought crimes. First a disclaimer. I am no prognosticator as described by Fyodor Dostoyevsky in his Grand Inquisitor, nor do I own a 1-900 number or a crystal ball. Nor do I desire to see any harm come to anyone; unless they try to bum rush my shop or up on my 11 acres threatening me and mine, for I will bury them and they car.

But your folk just hit his global trip, first stop Afghanistan I think. Pundits say it is supposed to give clues about how he gone deal with foreign policy, particularly in the Middle East (aint no such place map wise it is Asia). Now what I am about to say is just me expressing brain cells that have yet to be depleted. Maybe it is my corpus of reticular formations or the inferior colliculus projections to the nuclei in my pons that are just as messed up. But this is it. I know the GOP are some dirt mother shut your mouths, especially after all the dirt they have slung at Obama courtesy of Mrs. Clinton. Knowing this one can see the desperation regarding winning this election in November at all and any cost. I hope I am wrong, but I just hope Obama watches his back while out of the country. These folks may plant a sniper some where in one of the countries where he is touring and just may try and take him out. That way, they cold blame it on terrorist and attempt to gather more support for this mess we already in proffered by the neo Cons, and believe me you, I don’t think the neo Cons would stop at anything to prove a point.

Not to mention the print media and TV has put this trip on front street unlike the trip made by McCain, which we barely heard a whisper about. So folk, if yo folk read this blog man, watch your back. Ok, Im through ruminating, dont get mad, like I said, thought and thinking arouses me so blame my Pons.

Addendum: Long live groupies, i mean do they make women like they used too - thanks to my homie candyrayne.

Kafkaesque

When I think of the current political climate in the U.S. with wars abroad and creeping protectionism, it almost seems surreal. I think that may be they way these neo-conservatives want it. Given their impetuous focus on preemption, regime change and benevolent hegemony, it is only logical that they continue to distort what is actually going on in the world around us in an effort to front as if what they do serves American best interest.

Such ideological predominance makes it seems that foreign policy is rooted on fake moral imperatives that only a few select folks seem to gain benefit from. By invading Iraq, the Bush administration created a problem they said they were trying to abate: they managed to make Iraq the new bastion for terrorism. I still cannot see how these folks concluded that democracy in the Middle East would be the solution to ending terrorism? This is the dumbest shit I have ever heard since Santa Claus.

This concept of benevolent hegemony is another errant concoction. The assumption is that America is benevolent, which is absurd in itself, as if a country founded on slavery and sustained on racist principles can be virtuous, incorruptible, inculpable, and/or righteous in the first place.

We need to re-think our foreign policy approach and do so quickly before we see more of our homeboys going off to foreign lands to fight wars that we gain no betterment from, as if they were the foreign legion protecting the great imperial nation state of America. Having no articulated approach to our foreign policy, especially in the Arab/Islamic regions of the world is another reflection of how little we know or care for what other think and borders on being Kafkaesque.

I suggest this because the Bush Administration has presented a distorted view of actually how dangerous folks in the Middle East are towards us. It’s not like it is anything new, in fact I would note that these views have been consistent since the Knights of Templar and the establishment of Israel. The terms come from the famous writer Frantz Kafka, who wrote two of my favorites (the penal colony and metamorphosis). Franz Kafka was one of the most influential writers of this century. His works were not even published until after his death and often presented a picture of a belligerent and detached world. This is the kind of world I presume President Bush projects based on his approach (if any) to foreign policy alone.