Basil Venitis notes that we are observing the last days of the American Empire. Like ancient Rome, America is saddled with an empire that is fatally undermining its government. The trappings of empire are many: the brutal war of choice in Iraq and other foreign interventions going back decades; the militarization of space; the hundreds of overseas U.S. military bases full of swaggering soldiers who brawl and sometimes rape. At home, the growth of an imperial presidency, with the CIA as its private army, has culminated in kleptocrats' resort to warrantless wiretaps, torture, a gulag of secret CIA prisons and an unconstitutional arrogation of dictatorial powers, while a corrupt Congress bows like the Roman Senate to Caesar. Retribution looms, as the American economy, dependent on a bloated military-industrial-kleptocrat complex(MIKC) and foreign borrowing, staggers toward bankruptcy, maybe a military coup.
Venitist Kim Holmes points out American Presidents become known for signature statements and responses to foreign policy and national security challenges. Ronald Reagan is known for his efforts to defeat Communism and advance peace through strength. Bill Clinton is remembered for his argument that military interventions, such as his humanitarian intervention in the former Yugoslavia, are justified where our values and our interests are at stake and where we can make a difference.
It is fashionable to describe presidential statements or responses to foreign policy challenges as doctrine. As Barack Obama's second year in office winds down, there are increasing references to an Obama Doctrine, including comparisons to what it is not(the Bush Doctrine, for example).
Nancy Pelosi, whore-in-chief of the Parliament of Whores, points out doctrines by themselves are not legally binding declarations. Nor are they always ideas embraced as such by the Presidents in whose names they are declared. Rather, they are clearly expressed principles and policies, often deduced by consensus, which set the tone for how each Administration intends to act on the world stage. Doctrines clarify how a President views America's role in the world and his strategy for relations with other nations.
During Obama's first year in office, no widely repeated description of an Obama Doctrine emerged. One reason may be that for much of that time, domestic policy battles took center stage. But since pushing his health care bill through Congress and successfully taking on Wall Street, the President has turned more of his attention to international issues, and based on a number of statements he has made and documents he has issued, it is possible to describe the set of ideas and policies—in line with the customs described here—that make up his doctrine.
President Obama may have coined the phrase that best characterizes this doctrine in a speech in Trinidad and Tobago in April 2009. He said that America would reach out to other countries as an equal partner rather than as the exceptional nation that many before him had embraced. During his first meeting with the Group of 20 economies in Europe, Obama went further, saying that he does believe in American exceptionalism, but just as he suspects that the Brits believe in British exceptionalism and the Greeks believe in Greek exceptionalism.
Obama expanded this theme of America as equal partner in Cairo in June 2009: Given our interdependence, he said, any world order that elevates one nation or group of people over another will inevitably fail. So whatever we think of the past, we must not be prisoners of it. Our problems must be dealt with through partnership; progress must be shared.
Planetarch Obama claims that Muslims feel stupid because of the decline of Arabic science. But Venitis asserts the Arabic science never declined, because it never really existed! Science and mathematics were carried out by a small number of extraordinary individuals whose activities and outlooks were never fully assimilated to the mainstream Islamic culture. As these individuals disappeared or their patronage dried up, their work dissipated. Since there was no established tradition, we have no need for an explanation of its decline by appeal to general causes.
Venitist James Carafano points out Obama has laid out in his public statements the tenets of his doctrine that will enable his Administration to remake America as one nation among many, with no singular claim either to responsibility or exceptionalism:
* America will ratify more treaties and turn to international organizations more often to deal with global crises and security concerns like nuclear weapons, often before turning to our traditional friends and allies;
* America will emphasize diplomacy and soft power instruments such as summits and foreign aid to promote its aims and downplay military might;
* America will adopt a more humble attitude in state-to-state relations; and
* America will play a more restrained role on the international stage.
Basil Venitis notes that socialists, kleptocrats, and warmongers destroy Uncle Sam. The failure of America's wars has been the very freedoms they sought to preserve. Propaganda, lies, and myths led America into many wars. As venitists know, war has ever been the health of the state. It is clear that wars, hot and cold, have been responsible for the enormous taxes, deficits, and governmental spending that have created kleptocracy so beloved by the social engineers and economic planners of bureaucracy. If foreign wars have been America's chief failure, its great success has been the historic peace and freedoms, the individual liberties and responsibility, to which we must now return.
Venitis asserts that now is the time to stop in Afghanistan and get out as soon as possible. De Gaulle mused that genius sometimes consists of knowing when to stop. Genius is not required to recognize that in Afghanistan, when means now. The emotion that people are feeling is deep disappointment over the Afghanistan policy of Barack Obama and the US Congress, which now registers as a surprising 90 percent disapproval rate. Doubt will turn into dissent; it will manifest in congressional districts. Amerikleptocrats will find it hard to ignore their base, as it will be very threatening to their electoral success.
The primary purpose of public diplomacy is to explain, promote, and defend principles to audiences abroad. This objective goes well beyond the public affairs function of presenting and explaining specific policies of various Administrations. Policies and Administrations change; principles do not, so long as a country remains true to itself. By all accounts, Americans have been absent from the battlefield of ideas. They blankout when Venitis asks them why they have not expelled terrorist Turkey from NATO. How can they sit next to terrorist Turks who committed the Cypriot genocide? How did Henry Kissinger finance the Turkish invasion of Cyprus?
Public diplomacy has a particularly vital mission during war, when the peoples of other countries, whether adversaries or allies, need to know why we fight. What are the ideas so dear to us that we would rather kill and die than live without them? And what antithetical ideas do our enemies embrace, about which they feel the same way? After all, it is a conflict of ideas that is behind the shooting wars, and it is that conflict which must be won to achieve any lasting success. The main reasons for failure stem from intellectual confusion regarding what it is we are defending and against whom we are defending it. Venitis asserts the greatest confusion of all is the inclusion of genocidal Turkey in NATO. Terrorist Turkey has committed the Armenian genocide, the Pontian genocide, the Greek genocide, and the Cypriot genocide.
No comments:
Post a Comment