The Hammer of God

I’m glad Obama has decided to close Gimo and that he also wants to end the CIA’s practice of torture so we must give credit where credit is due. The bad news is that while I am grateful for ending torture this is still part of the idea of making imperialism easier to swallow. For now that we will end torture we are once again among the righteous, the hammer of God, and all that is good and clean in the world as we continue to smite those dirty brown heathens who we deem as abominations.

Unfortunately Obama’s rhetoric continues to be much the same regarding the global war on terror as it was during his campaign. According to Obama Iran is still a threat though we never hear exactly why it is a threat other than a theoretical guess that Iran is pursuing nuclear weapons. But we must keep in mind that it is not all that important whether our intelligence agencies got right or wrong in their NIE report which stated that Iran was likely not pursuing nuclear weapons because intelligence that is gathered by our agencies is not what our foreign policies are based on rather our agencies merely feed our leaders information that our leaders want to hear whether or not it has anything to do with reality or indeed if even these agencies know that it is false.

On Iraq and military withdrawal the timetable for an actual withdrawal keeps receding to an ever more distant horizon as Obama changes his rhetoric padding it with words like “responsible” as he listens to the gathering of war hawks he has surrounded himself with. For myself I never ever believed that we would withdraw and Obama himself, even from the beginning, always said that some troops would remain. And here lies the rub for words are important as well as their definitions and meanings for “some” troops could mean anything from 30,000 to 50,000 or even more. I would hardly define that as withdrawal.

This now brings us to what shall likely be Obama’s greatest mistake which is his plan for escalating our war against terror in Afghanistan as well as Pakistan. Afghanistan is not Iraq which was an easy target due to its terrain, years of destructive sanctions further weakened by being the favorite bombing site for our macho presidents from H.W. Bush to Clinton. To make matters worse the U.S. has never really had what you would call great generals despite what Hollywood would have you believe. During WWII European generals, for the most part, never thought much of American generals. What really gave America an advantage was the power of our industry which could manufacture vast amounts of weapons in a very short time period. However this will avail Obama very little in what would most certainly be a protracted war of attrition where conventional warfare would be of little value. And to what end? What is to be gained? This of course is where the ideology of the sainted “humanitarian” interventions comes into play which is so beloved by our Democratic leadership. In order to commit atrocities even the venal must justify to themselves their greed and avarice by describing imperialism as humanitarian interventions, a thin veil for the profit of the military-industrial-scientific complex that has overthrown our republic -- another byproduct of that great and good war WWII.

While being the hammer of God may give liberals their chance to prove once and for all that they are true patriots aglow in their own conceit of bringing the world, a world that they understand little, up to their own glorious standards the hammer that they wield with such enthusiasm is more liable to fall on their own foot and then we shall all feel their pain.

Dennis Perrin sums this up rather nicely with the following excerpt from his recent essay.

Link

States aren't moral agents. They don't have personalities or pet peeves. States represent the interests of those who rule them. And it's in the interest of our present rulers to reboot the American brand. Words like "morality" and "ideals" are smokescreens, blown in the faces of the public. Bush used the same words, but fewer and fewer people believed him. It was his own damn fault. A cheap failure in so many ways, Bush's recklessness made Obama's ascent not only possible, but inevitable. His actions weren't out of the mainstream of imperial thought, just riskier, crazier, more destructive. Bush's tactics were questioned, but not his crusade, which remains with us. His violence didn't seriously bother Democrats, as they continually helped finance it. So all this "new day" blather is utter bullshit. What's new is that we have a better, smoother bullshitter in office.