Oh, the promises we hear on every campaign trail, full of grandiose bravado, insisting that “change” is right around the corner. Question: what sort of “change” are we speaking of? Reactionary Change (a reversion to how things used to be), or Transformative Change (moving forward to uncharted territory)? Imagine Obama on his soapbox saying, “We’re going to change this country. Change change change. ‘What does that mean?’ Well little girl, we’re going to go back to the long since forgotten era of Clintonism.” AKA we’re reverting back to something old rather than doing something new. Grant Obama some wiggle room given the immense battle he’s up against, yet lets not act like we weren’t fooled on the campaign trail as we always are. Although our lovely little super-power nation is being led by the second coming of Jesus (manifested in our new President), we still have a taste for terrorist blood....
Gregory D. Foster, a professor at the Industrial College of the Armed Forces, National Defense University, Washington DC, recently wrote an article entitled “The Obama National Security Team: Old Wine in Old Bottles.” In it he does well in summing up what I am tripping over myself to say-
“The problem is that there is little to distinguish Democrat from Republican or liberal from conservative members of the card-carrying national security establishment. It is a closed, inbred, elitist clique whose members- as the price of entry, acceptance, and retention- all buy into and perpetuate the same tired ideas and ways of thinking. At root, they are hard-wired realists who think of security as national security, not as something grander (global security) or more primal (human security); who tend, notwithstanding occasional rhetorical diversions and deceptions about “soft power” and “smart power,” to equate security with defense and to concern themselves with the accumulation and exercise of national power defined primarily in military terms; who believe national interests actually exist and can be identified, not that they are mere rhetorical contrivances politicians use to rationalize action or inaction for other reasons; who similarly believe there are real threats to those interests that objectively exist, rather than being mental constructions manipulative politicians generate to engender fear and galvanize unity; who subscribe to the enduring primacy of state sovereignty over human sovereignty; who see the future as an inevitable continuation of the iron laws of the past, not as a tabula rasa that can be written anew; and who, unquestioningly and unimaginatively, cling to a singular conception of the military as an instrumentality whose supernal purpose is to prepare and wage war.”
"What we can expect from them, therefore, is a focus on the little-picture tactics of crisis management that consume politics today- reacting to headlines, shaping messages, projecting imagery. But what the new President, the American people, and even concerned external audiences should demand of them is a bolder, more elevated- in other words, strategic- thought and action."
(Kudos if you read that whole thing.)
The Point being?... Obama is no pacifist. (Sorry hippies.) Also, it helps to be mindful of the fact that Democrats like war too, they just like it for different reasons. Rather than blatant material gain as a central motivation for putting our young military homies into dodgey domains, the “liberal” wing of this oligarchical democracy of ours would have us kill others for a more pure objective- to show those whom we are killing that killing is wrong. (This is an ironic position considering one of the most fundamental principals of their religion [assuming most of them are Christians {what are the chances of that?!}] is the sacred the Golden Rule. Treat others as you would have them treat you, the essence of the great debate between Retributive and Rehabilitative justice.)
Although there's more than one way to skin the statue of the newly overthrown dictatorial leader whose capability in rising to prominence was largely due to US material and intelligence aide, status quo says we’re fucking killing fools with our absurdly gigantic military. Change is in the air? Yeah right…
Gregory D. Foster, a professor at the Industrial College of the Armed Forces, National Defense University, Washington DC, recently wrote an article entitled “The Obama National Security Team: Old Wine in Old Bottles.” In it he does well in summing up what I am tripping over myself to say-
“The problem is that there is little to distinguish Democrat from Republican or liberal from conservative members of the card-carrying national security establishment. It is a closed, inbred, elitist clique whose members- as the price of entry, acceptance, and retention- all buy into and perpetuate the same tired ideas and ways of thinking. At root, they are hard-wired realists who think of security as national security, not as something grander (global security) or more primal (human security); who tend, notwithstanding occasional rhetorical diversions and deceptions about “soft power” and “smart power,” to equate security with defense and to concern themselves with the accumulation and exercise of national power defined primarily in military terms; who believe national interests actually exist and can be identified, not that they are mere rhetorical contrivances politicians use to rationalize action or inaction for other reasons; who similarly believe there are real threats to those interests that objectively exist, rather than being mental constructions manipulative politicians generate to engender fear and galvanize unity; who subscribe to the enduring primacy of state sovereignty over human sovereignty; who see the future as an inevitable continuation of the iron laws of the past, not as a tabula rasa that can be written anew; and who, unquestioningly and unimaginatively, cling to a singular conception of the military as an instrumentality whose supernal purpose is to prepare and wage war.”
"What we can expect from them, therefore, is a focus on the little-picture tactics of crisis management that consume politics today- reacting to headlines, shaping messages, projecting imagery. But what the new President, the American people, and even concerned external audiences should demand of them is a bolder, more elevated- in other words, strategic- thought and action."
(Kudos if you read that whole thing.)
The Point being?... Obama is no pacifist. (Sorry hippies.) Also, it helps to be mindful of the fact that Democrats like war too, they just like it for different reasons. Rather than blatant material gain as a central motivation for putting our young military homies into dodgey domains, the “liberal” wing of this oligarchical democracy of ours would have us kill others for a more pure objective- to show those whom we are killing that killing is wrong. (This is an ironic position considering one of the most fundamental principals of their religion [assuming most of them are Christians {what are the chances of that?!}] is the sacred the Golden Rule. Treat others as you would have them treat you, the essence of the great debate between Retributive and Rehabilitative justice.)
Although there's more than one way to skin the statue of the newly overthrown dictatorial leader whose capability in rising to prominence was largely due to US material and intelligence aide, status quo says we’re fucking killing fools with our absurdly gigantic military. Change is in the air? Yeah right…
