Obama's Jihad - Part II, Defending Zones of Democratic Freedom

Oh! most wretched of men, what evil is this that ye suffer? Darkness hath shrouded your heads.
[Homer, Odyssey 20.351]

Part I concluded with rejoining Polemarchus and Socrates who have just decided that doing harm to one’s enemies is not a very good definition of justice. Plato tells us that,

“Several times in the course of the discussion Thrasymachus had made an attempt to get the argument into his own hands, and had been put down by the rest of the company, who wanted to hear the end. But when Polemarchus and I had done speaking and there was a pause, he could no longer hold his peace; and, gathering himself up, he came at us like a wild beast, seeking to devour us. We were quite panic-stricken at the sight of him.

"Thrasymachus roared out: What bullshit has taken possession of you all? And why do you dick around with one another like a bunch of sillybillies? . . . I’ll tell you what Justice is, if you really want to know; only you’ll have to pay me first.”

Socrates protested that he didn’t have any money; but when others in the company vouched for him, Thrasymachus straightened up and after deriding Socrates for being a snivelling child in need of a nurse continued, more or less in this vein:

Listen up then, he said, so entirely deceived are you in your pretty ideas about the just and unjust that you haven’t a clue that in realty “justice” quote unquote is simply the deception the smarter criminal imposes on the lesser. You will understand what I mean most easily, if you consider tyranny, which is the most perfect injustice and which makes the unjust man most happy while it makes those who are wronged and will not be unjust most miserable.

Thrasymachus went on to explain: that robbery and violence are normally called "injustice," and those caught committing such crimes are punished and disgraced. But when plunder and violence are practiced wholesale by rulers, it is called "justice" which is simply the name we give to the interest of the stronger, the rulers. So it is that when a man succeeds in robbing the whole body of citizens and reducing them to slavery, people forget ugly names and call him happy and fortunate, as do all others who hear of his unmitigated wrongdoing.

"And that," Thrasymachus concluded, "is why I say, that justice consists in the interest of the ruler and stronger; no more no less."

Deus Lo Vult- The Sequel

Over eight years ago, the Gazette, took note [here] of how the United States, “intoxicated with self-righteousness and fired with bellicosity” was rushing headlong into a crusade against the Infidel in Afghanistan. We noted how medieval man preceded his wars with self-examination and pre-penance for what was about to be done. All those scribblings and remonstrances at least served the purpose of getting one to examine his cause. Intoxicated, Americans skipped this preliminary step. “This,” we wrote “is the surest way to disaster ... If we do not pause beforehand to examine ourselves honestly and humbly, we become mere agents of Fury which like a fire is only interested in consuming what it burns.”

It is now eight years on and our incursion into Afghanistan has produced nothing but wretchedness and destruction at a bankrupting cost to ourselves. None, but absolutely none, of the avowed goods have been obtained.

True to his campaign promise and faithful to the magisterium of the New York Times, Obama has stayed the course and continues to wreak death and destruction on an innocent country. Alas, there is no Ambrose to enforce a penance that is long overdue.

“Are not rather those to be called Christians who condemn their own sin than those who think to excuse it? The just accuses himself in the beginning of his words. He who, having sinned, accuses himself, not he who praises himself, is just.. Add not sin to sin by acting in a manner which has injured so many.” (Ambrose Letter LI, To Theodosius, 390)

Instead of confessing an erroneous policy and withdrawing from an ill-begotten aggression, Obama now compounds sin with a shameless and spurious claim of Just War. We Chipsters are no Ambrose, but Obama’s villainy needs to be exposed for what it is.

To this end, we shall take the doctrine of just war as a given assuming that if applied in good faith it would at least serve as a guide for an excusable resort to force. Line by line, Obama’s claims fail the test.

Pot-Holes in the High Road

1. The Opening Muddle.

"There will be times when nations ... will find the use of force not only necessary but morally justified.”

Why the juxtaposition? As has been seen, it is necessity of last resort that qualifies a war as “just” and there is no morally justified war that is not also “necessary”. The purpose of Obama's nonsense is to introduce a diffusion of thought which unwittingly accepts that a war could be moral even if not necessary or necessary even if not moral.

The real juxtaposition should be between “expedient” and “necessary” or “convenient” and “moral”. But the Obama’s false dichotomy allows him to create a fall-back position; namely, that the war would still be “necessary” even if he has failed to morally justify it. In other words, at the outset he informs us that he wins his case even if he fails to make it.

2. Mutilated Synopsis of the Legal Rule

Embarking on his proof, Obama distills the doctrine of just war as one which is sanctioned “if it is waged as a last resort or in self-defense; if the force used is proportional, and if, whenever possible, civilians are spared from violence.”

Obama’s formulation sounds so right it might as well have been lifted out of the very pages of Aquinas himself. But like an expert thimblerigger, Obama has shuffled out the most important pea of all; namely that the war be excused by a just cause.

It is true, as has been seen in Part I, that self-defense is sufficient justification for restoring to force; but it is false to say that waging war “as a last resort” constitutes a just cause. The doctrine of just war provides two restraints: there must exist a just cause (e.g. self defence) and, in addition to that, the war must be waged only as a last resort. Under Obama’s formulation the other parties’ mere refusal to meet specified demands would justify recourse war.

We asked them to cut out their tongues. They refused. We asked again. They refused again. We asked a third time and they still refused; so we nuked ‘em.

But, it will be said, the “or” was inadvertent. No it was not; and it was not because Afghanistan never attacked the United States. The war was launched, as a “last resort” when the Taliban refused demands to turn over Al Qaeda operatives on asserted but unproved allegations that they were “behind” the September 11 attacks.

The attack and invasion of Afghanistan could not be justified as “self defence” because there was nothing and no one to defend against. Afghanistan did not attack the U.S.A. The Taliban did not attack the U.S.A. Whoever catapulted into the Trade Center and the Pentagon, the attack was over and there was no indication that another attack was coming. The event was a classic hit and run and just as classically there was nothing left to defend against.

The invasion of Afghanistan was pure and simple retaliation and nothing in Bush’s “smoke em out and run em’ down” blather indicated otherwise.

The “or” was not a slip of the presidential tongue.

3. Smarms of Irrelevance

Instead of applying the legal rule to the facts of the case, Obama’s synopsis of the doctrine was followed up with a smothering smarm and cagey irrelevancies,

“This concept of just war was rarely observed. The capacity of human beings to think up new ways to kill one another proved inexhaustible...”

after which Obama went on to yap about people praying to another God, Hitler and the horrors of the Second World War [for which we are to read “Holocaust”].

But it is not the means of killing that has avoided observation of just war rules, rather it has been the excuses for killing that have reduced the doctrine to a fulmen brutum. Whether a war is fought with swords and spears or drones and bombs, what makes it unjust is the inexhaustible capacity of man’s mind to come up with empty reasons for doing violence. Obama would rather distract us with thoughts of destructive pyrotechnics and the dread dirty suitcase, than have us look too closely at the sophistry he was serving up at the palace. But look we must.

4. The Empty Case

After invoking the doctrine of justified war - howsoever muddled, mutilated it may have been -- Obama’s logical mind offered little by way of justification for the war his country is waging.

• This war “is a conflict that America did not seek” It is a war “to defend ourselves and all nations from further attacks.”

• Negotiations cannot convince al Qaeda’s leaders to lay down their arms.

• As a head of state sworn to protect and defend my nation, I cannot stand idle in the face of threats to the American people.

• Pacifism is great but “A non-violent movement could not have halted Hitler’s armies in the midst of two wars.” [One wonders where exactly to put the “sic” to this remark.]

The cornerstone of this argument was yet another false dichotomy. As was seen in Part I, the doctrine of Just War constitutes a rejection of pacifism. Pacifist don’t engage in any war whether or not justified. The stated alternative between fighting this war or passively letting Hitler’s armies roll over us was a completely false choice spiced up with the usual spooky hobglobing of Evil Nazi Darkness.

It has been understood, at least since Ambrose, that the Emperor will not be a pacifist. That does not mean that any war he wages is necessary and just. The issue here is what justifies this war.

As to this question, Obama offered up an idle protest. I “cannot stand idle in the face of threats to the American people.” No indeed. Even under Augusto-Cyrilian formulations, he would be derelict in his princely duties to do so. But the issue is not whether he should stand “idle” but whether he should “wage war” and more specifically wage a war that after eight years has not achieved its avowed purpose and daily inflicts misery and devastation on non combatant civilians.

Nor can justification found in the allegation that the United States is faced with “threats” -- ie. things that might happen. The question under the Just War doctrine is whether the alleged victim is actually harmed by an attack. By casting the issue in terms of mere potential harms, Obama sought to create a non existent category of the preemptive just war.

Even assuming that a preemptive war against alleged prospective harm were to qualify as a just cause, Obama failed to enunciate compliance with the further condition that all other means of putting an end to it must have been shown to be impractical or ineffective.

In this regard Obama states “Negotiations cannot convince al Qaeda’s leaders to lay down their arms.” But other than this bald a priori assertion, Obama failed to disclose a single instance where negotiations were attempted and rejected.

This last non-justification in fact undermines the first. The war the US is currently engaged in is a war against the very rulers of Afghanistan (the Taliban) that our initial invasion deposed. But, as noted, neither Afghanistan nor the Taliban attacked the U.S. In addition to shuffling the elements of the rule, Obama engages in a shell game as to the identity of the guilty enemy party.

Obama’s argumentation is so pitiable, we feel obliged to help him out. So let us putty up the cracks and in doing so indulge all inferences in favor of his case;

1. Al Qaeda committed the September 11 attacks

2. Al Qaeda had training basis in Afghanistan and the Taliban refused to turn them over when they could have.

3. The Taliban’s refusal meant that Al Qaeda had a safe haven of operations from which it could continue to make attacks on the United States or its facilities abroad and the threat of these attacks was if not “imminent” reasonably foreseeable and likely in the short term.

4. Ergo, the Taliban and the country it ruled were aiders and abettors of a hostile enemy who had attacked and would continue to attack the United States, without provocation.

Granting all these predicates, the case for a just war in and against Afghanistan can still not be made because it falls short of establishing the requirement that “the damage inflicted by the aggressor on the nation or community of nations must be lasting, grave, and certain.”

It may be conceded that Americans are a very high strung and sensitive people who are struck dumb with distress at the thought that anyone might want to attack them. But in the historical scheme of things, pyrotechnic as it was, the aero-ramming of two buildings was a pin prick. Even if it is assumed, arguendo, that future attacks are indefinite but certain and that Al Qaeda thus represents a “continuing” threat which qualifies as “lasting" -- that harm is not “grave”.

The purpose of this precondition in the Church’s doctrine is to exclude precisely what is at issue here. The 9/11 attacks were not the first time rogue or criminal elements safe-harboring in one country crossed into another to wreak some damage. It may be conceded that such actions are wrong but they do not constitute the kind of harm that warrants the full bore response of retaliatory war.

Would any American agree that the United Kingdom would have been warranted to invade the United States and bomb Boston in order “smoke out” IRA operatives lurking in sympathetic Irish pubs under the noses of studiously inactive authorities?

The only way Obama can inflate the "gravity" of the case is by an allusion to the proverbial dirty suitcase or acid in the drinking supply.

"Terrorism has long been a tactic, but modern technology allows a few small men with outsized rage to murder innocents on a horrific scale."

This is nothing but a Hefalump to frighten the piglets in America, if not the poohbahs in Oslo. Modern technology is everywhere. Outraged small men are everywhere too. Are we are war "with all that is out there" or is the issue the necessity for this war in Afghanistan?

No nation can be expected to silently suffer criminal terrorist attacks; and any nation is within its right to take coordinated and effective countermeasures. But the doctrine of just war requires just and proportionate response. Applied in good faith it is something more than a free for all upon plausible pretext.

It also requires reasonable prospects of success, which after eight years of not catching Bin Laden can no longer be deemed likely -- which in turn shows, after eight years of no further attacks, that whatever is or is not in Afghanistan it no longer constitutes a continuing or lasting threat.

Last but not least, the just war doctrine requires proportionality of means which is utterly lacking in this war where the United States is routinely laying waste to vast areas, drone-killing innocent civilians, while abducting and torturing non combatants and even children. Far from being in accord with “right reasons” the U.S. conduct of the war in Afghanistan is a moral excrescence.

Stepping back from the particulars, it can be seen that much of Obama’s proffered justifications contained a unitary theme which is tipped off by the reference to “Hitler’s armies” amidst two wars. This was not some bolloxed up syntax. Obama was trucking out the same tired ol’ Appeasement Malarkey that Rusk and McNamara blathered to death to justify Vietnam.

This stock excuse in the State Department’s Prop Shop has been dragged out so often, Obama had to be a little gentle in his handling of it. But once it is grasped that the reference was to the alleged “Nazi Threat” between (“amidst”) the wars, it can be understood that Obama was saying that the Oxford Peace Movement of the Thirties was a waste of time and that “war” could have been avoided if we had gone to war and invaded Germany preemptively from the start. So much for Vitoria’s “striv[ing] above all to avoid all provocations and causes of war.”

Obama’s contemptuous dismissal of “non-violent movements” -- that is, of peace movements -- reveals the true meaning of each of the other rationales.

In stating that this is a war “to defend ourselves and all nations from further attacks” Obama meant that it is a war of preemptive defence against any possible further attack against anyone...uh... I donno... anywhere, anytime.. You know...

Notwithstanding the allusion to “Hitler’s armies” -- which certainly must strike everyone dumb and numb with horror -- Obama failed to point to a single, identifiable threat and certainly none that was imminent. Obama backed up this emptiness with yet another by stating that negotiations cannot -- and in the absence of articulable failures he meant a priori “could not” -- convince AlQaeda to “lay down their arms.” And in what cave does this new looming Wehrmacht repose?

Perhaps realizing that this Bugbear of terrorism was wearing thin Obama shored up his case with

"More and more, we all confront difficult questions about how to prevent the slaughter of civilians by their own government, or to stop a civil war whose violence and suffering can engulf an entire region."

Ah yes.. the Ol Suffering Innocents in Romania...

After which, the President concluded with a crescendo worthy of Don Quixote himself,

"So yes, the instruments of war do have a role to play in preserving the peace."

It was beyond belief. Obama sought to justify our obliteration of Afghanistan on the basis of his duty to preemptively protect us and anyone against inchoate, indefinite “threats” from an unlocateable enemy who is (it is alleged) beyond convincing. There was evil “out there” and innocents in distress and we needed to roam the world protect the innocent, root out the miscreants and wage war for the sake of peace.

At least Urban II offered remission of sins. Obama has simply taken Bush’s doctrine of preemptive war and dressed it up in a hand-me-down of Cicero's cloak. Far from establishing the legitimacy of a Just War, Obama’s putative justification of the violence his country has embarked on was a cynical piece of work worthy of Thrasymachus.

Armed for Reality with Christian Realism

No doubt it caused a certain amount of anguish in Progressive loins to hear Obama praised by such High Mavens of Zionist Neo Conservatism as Robert Kagan and David Brooks. As if Moses had tapped on a rock, the pillars of American journalism gushed with enthusiasm.

Brooks, of the New York Times, praised Obama’s “Christian Realism’ and lauded Obama’s Oslo address as “the most profound of his presidency, and maybe his life.” Brooks, who is not Christian and whose writings have not evidenced any greater than a distant and passing acquaintance with Sacred Doctrine, pronounced the speech to be “thoroughly theological” -- apparently because the president talked about “the core struggle” between “good and evil.”

Indeed he did... so too did Urban II and so too do most kings, counts and canonists who are urging just cause for slaughter. But Obama did not talk about good and evil in the way Polemarchus and Socrates did, or for that matter Augustine. In fact it was precisely this absence of theology that impressed Brooks as most praiseworthy of all.

According to Brooks, realist, cold war “liberals” (supposedly aka’ing as realist cold war Christians) understood that there was “evil” in this world. “[T]he presence of Hitler and Stalin would have confirmed it. You would have known it is necessary to fight that evil.”

Yup. That is why we invaded Russia.... Oh wait.. uh... Well, Hitler at least... although we only fought him because he declared war on us, although our friends the English had declared war on him in charitable defence of their friends in Poland...But I digress.

Anyways... Brooks' point was that realist liberals (aka Christians) understood that everyone knows we have to lift up sword against sword, as the First Christian said.

To be sure, cold war Christians did so moderately and with restraint as good Ciceronians do. Alas, quoth Brooks, after Vietnam, most liberals moved on. “It became unfashionable to talk about evil. Some liberals came to believe in the inherent goodness of man.”

Imagine that!! They even say such namby pampy pie in the sky stuff as

"If you enroll as one of God’s people, heaven is your country and God your lawgiver. And what are His laws? You shall not kill, You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” (Protrepticus 11, 116)

or

"Greater glory still is merited not by killing men with swords, but by war with words, and by acquiring or achieving peace not through war but through peace itself.” (Augustine, Political Writings (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press,2001), 226.)

Foolish “liberals”.

Obama “never bought into these shifts,” Brooks writes, with evident relief. No. He understood the “moral obligation to champion freedom while not getting swept up in self-destructive fervor.” Indeed,

“How can the ignorant teach others? How can the licentious make others modest? And how can the impure make others pure? So first correct yourselves, in order that, free from blame , you may be able to correct those who are subject to you.”

“We should be humble and modest” advises Brooks, theologically cribbing from Urban II.

Just as a Roman War had to be fought with charitable intent, and moderate means and respect for women and children and the aged, so too American Wars have “strategic interest in binding ourselves to certain rules of conduct.” It is this, according to Brooks, that somehow makes it better that war is “both folly and necessary.”

According to Brooks Obama’s “doctrine is becoming clear.” It sure is. But let us be clear as well, Church doctrine never condoned war as a necessary folly.

Somewhat more succinctly, in a piece entitled “Armed for Reality”, Robert Kagan, of the Washington Post, praised Obama’s shift in rhetoric at Oslo as “striking”. Gone was the “vaguely left-revisionist language that flavored earlier speeches.” Enter, “the great tradition of hawkish Democrats fighting wars...” Oh, Rejoice!

According to Kagan, Obama went further than he ever has in arguing that advancing democracy is not only a moral but also a strategic imperative because, as the president said, "peace is unstable where citizens are denied the right to speak freely or worship as they please; choose their own leaders or assemble without fear." Nor did Obama “shy away from the Manichaean distinctions that drive self-described realists (and Europeans) crazy”. Obama was to be praised for insisting that "Evil does exist in the world" and can neither be negotiated with nor appeased.

From a country that backed repressive dictators from Guatemala to Greece and from Chile to Iran, Kagan’s praise of Obama’s “strategic imperative” to promote freedom of assembly sounded like a “noisy gong or a clanging cymbal” if it wasn’t plainly a rank and stinking hypocrisy. If peace is made unstable, it is by poverty --- never once mentioned by Kagan or his presidential protege, neither of whom apparently could give a crap.

It would be pointless to point out to Kagan that Augustine declared manicheism to be a heresy and that negotiation is part of what we might consider “but war with words.” Kagan casts off Brook’s patina of “christian learning” and projects the real message:

Evil Exists!!! There can be no negotiation or compromise.

We are “Armed for Reality”.

As far as Kagan was concerned, the current “reality” was Iran, which he mentioned seven times to Afghanistan’s twice. The wonderful thing about the Oslo speech, he says, was that it could be “seen as a turning point in Iran policy.” After all, evil must be resisted everywhere and we, as well as our Key Ally, are certainly surrounded by evil. One could almost imagine Kagan painting some sign on a pilar.

The Neocon section of the peanut gallery was all a glee. PNAC maven, Bill Kristol praised Obama’s Oslo speech as “hardheaded and pro-American” adding on Fox News that Obama “made it clear that you need military force; [and] that he will act if threats are looming. He actually articulated his own version of the preemptive doctrine.”

Max Boot called the speech Obama’s finest hour, “a masterpiece that deserves inclusion in compendia of the finest presidential speeches.”

About the only dissenting voice was John Bolton who called the speech “analytically weak [and] sort of at a high school level.” Life is full of ironies; for once Bolton was right.

We could do worse than to bring a little theological salt to Brooks and Kagan’s so-called moral and strategic imperatives.

Manicheism is the belief that the cosmos stands in equipoise between equally matched forces of good and forces of evil, which are ever in conflict. The argument has all the self-evident force and symmetry of night and day.

St Augustine himself was a manichean until, after a long struggle, he renounced it. Since then and as a result of his struggle, the Church condemns manicheism as a fundamental heresy. Why? Because Manicheism denies the unifying goodness of all the world and traps us in endless war. At bottom, the theology is as simple as that.

Politically speaking, manicheism requires us to weigh in in the eternal and cosmic fight between good and evil, and this requires us to do good to our friends and harm to our enemies. And so we are ensnared, like Orestes, in a cosmic cycle and symmetry from which there is no escape, no resurrection.

But surely, it will be said, there is evil. What are we to say of the spider that kills her mate after conception, the lion that ensnares a frightened gazelle, the earthquake that flattens a city? Totally apart from human conduct, there is force and violence in the world that appears to us to be nasty, brutish and cruel. That is true; and yet God himself, pronounced it “good”.

Mystery and paradox confront us either way. We speak of good and evil because to our mind they do appear to exist, To say that we choose to suffer for the sake of good, implicitly accepts that there is an evil course to be rejected. We cannot escape this dualism.

But we can avoid being ensnared by it. For the Christian, faith is both cognitive and performative. We accept that the cosmos in its entirety is “good” even if this acceptance is beyond our comprehension. We escape determinism by behaving as if we were free, acting today in accordance with the tomorrow we await, as if the lion were laying down with lamb. Or, as Augustine put it: the way to bring about peace is with peace.

It is truly obnoxious for a species like Brooks to trespass where he has no business and to pontificate on the type of "realism" Christians ought to espouse. It is a simply a stunning cynicism to hear people denigrated for believing in the fundamental goodness of man. Let it be unequivocally said that neither Brooks nor Kagan accept the existential paradox of the Crucifixion and what they stand for and what they preach is not Christian.

But noxious as Brooks' flight into theology might be, and repugnant as Kagan’s Thrasymachean “realism” is, both men honed in on the true dynamic of Obama's speech. If, as Bolton said, Obama's speech was "analytically" weak, that was only because it was a sack of red herrings. Its purpose was not to be analytical but simply to dazzle and confuse.

Obama's real message had nothing to do with Just War and very little to do with justifying America's conduct in Afghanistan per se. Obama's real message was that he was resurrecting America's cold war crusade for hegemony.

"America led the world in constructing an architecture to keep the peace: .... Commerce has stitched much of the world together. ... The ideals of liberty, self determination, equality and the rule of law have haltingly advanced."

But how is it possible to return to a cold-war policy when the cold war is over? After several paragraphs of tear-jerking in the vein of "America the Brave and Righteous", Obama continued on to say that

"This old architecture is buckling under the weight of new threats."

In other words, Obama tipped us off that we are not defending against an attack on September 11. Nor are we defending against Reagan's "Evil Empire". We are defending the “crumbling” post-war architecture against an unspecified enemy somewhere or anywhere who could potentially harm us in some manner, even in some nightmarish manner, and who is therefore a “threat”. This is why it is necessary to believe in Manichean Evil. Without belief in evil-everywhere out there there is noting specific to fight against in order to "protect" this crumbling architecture.

As shall be shown, what Obama really trumpeted at Oslo, under the honeyed strains of “just war” was nothing less than the neocon extension of post-war American geo-political policy. This has nothing to do with just war and everything to do with the manifest self-righteousness of American hegemony, backed up by a pathological, indeed psychotic, belief in a world full of invisible evils.

In arguing that this represented a return to “traditional” cold war policy, Kagan engaged in a typical switch and bait. Obama is not returning to the traditional policy of "containment" because that historical era is over and there is nothing to "contain". Policies do not exist in a vacuum. Kristol had it right. Obama came home to Bush. To see where Obama really stands on the trajectory of imperial policy, and to understand the fundamental pathology of neoconservatism we must return to a reasonable point of departure.

Twinkling Zones in a World of Darkness

Facing the future in 1943, S.S. economist, Otto Ohlendorf pondered the post-war economic order. He was particularly concerned with the impact of economic modes of production on the nature and quality of social life. He was ill at ease with Reichminister Speer’s theories of “rationalized” production. Ohlendorf perhaps remembered Adam Smith’s dictum that the progressive division of labor would turn man into a being as stupid as it is possible for a human being to be.

Ohlendorf advocated a craft-based economy. Leave the mass production of consumer goods to Japan and the United States whose temperament, in the first case, and lack of culture, in the second, suited those countries for that type of economy. The role of Germany in the future world economy would be to provide high quality, specialised goods.

In some respects Ohlendorf was astonishingly prescient. But of course, the post war was somewhat other than he had anticipated; the battle for hegemony had ended with a total American victory.

There were those, most famously the two-eyed general Patton, who urged a truly total victory by forging on to take out Russia while we could. It was doubtful we could have gotten very far at all. Despite our boastfulness, we had not gotten very far very fast at all. It had taken us almost a full year to inch along from Normandy into just barely Berlin, while at the same time Germany held back a truly massive, panoramic assault from the East. The notion that we could press an assault against these same Russian millions and roll them back to Moscow, was the fantasy of lunatic, seized by a truly dark passion.

Much has been written as to when the Cold War began and what were its causes. The simple fact is that the Cold War began once the United States came to the charitable aid of the Russian effort at self defence. A school boy could foresee that once these two giants had defeated the third, they would fall to fighting one another. That denouement was made certain by Roosevelt’s suddenly inspired demand for unconditional surrender, which all but insured the absence of any buffering middle. Over the rubble of Germany, America and Russia hugged. And hugged, and hugged, and kept on hugging increasingly afraid to let go.

Stalin had foreseen the result from the start; but it took the Bright Boys at Foggy Bottom a little while to figure things out, and when they did they came up with the idea of Zones of Democratic Freedom.

Sometimes referred to as the Truman Doctrine of “containment” or the Marshall Plan for the rebuilding of Europe (and in particular, Germany), the idea was basically simple: from Norway through Greece to Korea the United, the New Enemy would be encircled by a cordon sanitaire of allied buffer states.

The two lynch pins of this cordon was much the tri-polar economic order Ohlendorf had envisioned: an American homeland, flanked by Germany in Europe and Japan in the East, powerful as before only brought to heel.

But what of the rest of the world which was up for grabs, now that European colonialism had gasped its last?

Here, the policy became one of competitive containment: to establish in as many places as possible societies and economies linked to us by shared capitalist commercial and political values. This is what is meant, when anyone in Washington talks about “extending freedom” or “promoting free trade and human rights” or similar blather.

This was a frankly Roman Policy and it was no coincidence that the organs of the capitalist press were soon to hoist the banner of Pax Americana.

Rome herself had done exactly this. What is called the Roman Empire was in fact an urbanized network or band of middle class, pro-Roman commercial enclaves and cities, whose new oligarchies plugged into the Roman myth and the Roman way of life. This is what Augustine referred to when he spoke of “the imperial city” which had imposed “not only her yoke, but her language, as a bond of peace.”

We would paint ourselves into the corner of ridicule if we sought to cheapen this achievement. From Colchester to Ctesiphon, a savage world was tamed and harmonized with Roman arches, temples and malls! This became the political vessel for the transmission of Christianity and the triumph of Catholicism. It has allowed even the most secular among us to enjoy the pleasures of Plato.

"But how many great wars, how much slaughter and bloodshed, ... provided this unity!” To which we might add “...and how many were excluded!”

Huge swathes of land and masses of people beneath counting were utterly marginalized from this Roman peace: slaves, subsistence farmers toiling to pay taxes, metics, cooks and whores, people who never heard of Cicero’s universal right reason in agreement with nature, who never spoke Latin or Greek, who were no more than illiterate Germans, dumb Egyptians and social scum, like Jesus.

Augustine had said he was unequal to the task of giving an “adequate description” of “these stern and lasting necessities,” but he most certainly knew what modern historical sociologists have brought to light: the universal imperial city lived off the despotic, despoliation of the county outside its walls

It was the same with the United States. Our policy of creating “zones of democratic freedom” was entirely for our own benefit. We frankly admitted that our goal was to “create a middle class” in the countries we deigned to rescue from primitiveness and protect from Communism. To these fortunate few we extended our cultural values and a modicum of our living standards.

What ensued was an age of miracles. There was the “German miracle,” followed by the Japanese miracle and then the “Mexican miracle,” after which quickly ensued the Korean, Iranian, and Chilean miracles. There was even, almost, a Vietnamese miracle. But these miracles excluded -- as capitalism necessarily must -- vast portions of the populace. This was less true in Europe which was Greece to our Rome, but it was true throughout out the Second and Third worlds.

The limited reach of our miracles created a problem, in that they rendered our “zones” unstable or, as the State Department was wont to put it, “susceptible to communist agitation.” Moreover, in the all-critical propaganda war, the Soviet Union was making great headway in poverty ridden, resource rich areas like Africa and Brazil. It wasn’t a forgone conclusion that Doris Day would win out over Yuri Gagarin. The world tour of the Soviet Folkloric Ballet (1957-58) sure as hell won out in popular enthusiasm over the world tour of the tuxedoed Yale Glee Club.

The loss of Cuba and the imminent loss of the Congo, led John F. Kennedy to torque up the equities a bit, with showtime charities such as the PeaceCorps as well as the invaluable uplift of his own charismatic personality. JFK himself was worth a hundred folkloric ballets.

As has been said often enough, at bottom, Kennedy was a cold warrior -- one who’s anywhere anytime price almost included blowing up the world. But JFK had a tad of the Divine Augustus in him. He understood that men are ruled and moved by impressions and that for our zonal policy to succeed, it had to at least appear to care about “democratic institutions”. Above the bribery, subversion of leftist governments and covert ops, some seeming effort had to be made at sharing American values with our zonal beneficiaries. This is the traditional hawkish liberalism Kagan and Brooks were talking about, whether they fully grasped the reality or not.

American policy, as the Roman policy, was not the worst that can be imagined. A “global city” of sorts was created; and although its culture was cheap, and its values materialistic, it produced stability and undeniable benefits for at least a segment of the world's increasingly teeming and desperate humans.

Then came Vietnam, a war fought simply to show the other side, that all namby-pamby aside, we meant business; that once we had laid claim to a zone, we would keep it no matter what, even if it did not want to be kept. We had “credibility”.

To the extent that there was a tragedy in this otherwise sordid tale, it was that of all American politicians, LBJ was the single one who most truly cared about the uplifting the welfare of the disadvantaged, and yet his misadvised and misconceived policy in Vietnam undid it all. Even our own miraculous middle class youth in universities around the world turned against us. The debacle in Vietnam became the trigger for neoconservative foreign policy.

The Dance of the Neocons

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The fallacy in “progressive” thinking has been the notion that Bush II represented a “departure” from traditional American foreign policy. Just as the Patriot Act would not have been possible without a quarter of a century of corrupt and degenerate jurisprudence preceding it, so too Bush’s doctrine of “preemptive defence” was merely an extension by degrees of America’s cold war crusade for hegemony, said to be “against communism”.

For the most part, as we have briefly summarized, that hegemony -- or architecture as Obama put it -- was built by more or less pacific means backed up by deterrent (but unexercised) force. Neoconservatism takes that policy and belligerates it. A neo-con is simply a neo-liberal gone punk.

What produced this change in degree? At a political level, Vietnam. Astonishingly, as Brooks’ article exemplifies, the failure of our policy of doing violence in Vietnam was blamed on bleeding heart liberal attempts at “do-goodism.” In other words, the very thing the policy avowed to be aimed at (freedom, commerce, improved living standards and all sorts of do goody things) was blamed for undermining the policy.

It was as if the U.S. fell victim to its own propaganda and recoiled with disbelief and resentment that it should be repaid so unfairly for all its good intentions and efforts. This is the disconnected realism that underlies the Kagan-Brooks disdain for “liberals” who are dumb enough to believe in the goodness of Man.

We sacrificed to do good and got kicked in the teeth. Life is nasty and brutish and therefore we are going to be nasty and brutish.

The paid for murder of Salvador Allende served notice that henceforth democratic freedom would have nothing, in actual fact, to do with securing democratic freedom -- not even an appearance. As Bill Kristol put it, “power is nothing to be ashamed of”.

And power included control of resources. At an economic level the shfit was caused by what is called the "crisis of capitalism." The architecture of "happy capitalist zones" was in fact crumbling . Slowly but surely industrial wealth became increasingly problematic and gave way to asset grabbing and the plunder of resources.

To understand exactly where Obama stands on the U.S. policy spectrum and what his stance entails, it is necessary to grasp clearly and starkly the neocon contribution to America's post war "architecture" The Gazette has written many times on the perfect injustice of neo-con military doctrine, (e.g., Thug Politic and Fear & Loathing) so a synopsis will suffice for the present.

The essential contours of U.S. geo-political policy under Bush are to be found in a document entitled Rebuilding Americas Defenses, published by Billy Kristol’s Project for the New American Century. The value of the PNAC document lies in the fact that it was not an official U.S. Government policy paper. But because it was written by the same cabal that came to power in 2001, it reflects the actual, unvarnished thinking of those who were running the government

The core of the neocon doctrine is based on power projection. This is seen as a necessary and inherent good in itself, although it is occasionally and indifferently tissued with some sort of coda on democratic values.

The PNAC report began by noting that the collapse of the Soviet Union left the United States as the sole superpower, at the head of a system of alliances, with no “global rival” in sight. Accordingly, the “premise” of the Report was that U.S. “military capabilities should be sufficient to support an American grand strategy committed to building upon this unprecedented opportunity.” This “grand strategy should aim to preserve and extend this advantageous position as far into the future as possible.”

This building, preserving and extending had nothing to do with hospitals, libraries, or economic aid which were never once mentioned in the Report. No,

“America should seek to preserve and extend its position of global leadership by maintaining the preeminence of U.S. military forces.” and by developing capacity for “the full range of missions needed to exercise U.S. global leadership. [i.e., power].”

In other words, the Report called for a grand strategy of military building and extending, formerly known as “conquest”. We can at this point lay to rest any self-mollifying notions of “just war”.

Of course, development and deployment of new missile systems was needed “to provide a secure basis for U.S. power projection around the world.” However, this projection was not just a matter of projectiles; the report also called for the “deployment o[f] forward operating bases” as a “force multiplier” in “power projection operations.”

Nor did the Project “accept pre-ordained constraints that followed from assumptions about what the country might or might not be willing to expend on its defenses.” Power projection operations entailed preventing anyone from possibly becoming a threat. Obviously any aggressor has to be prepared to “defend” itself, but the policy is not grounded in any traditional notions of defence. In neocon ideology the premise, means and goal of American policy is to stalk the world projecting its power.

There were two reasons for this weltanschauung. First, one of the chief backers of the neocons, was the industrial military complex. They funded the PNAC and the business of power projection punches their tickets and keeps them in business.

The second reason is that power projection is seen as a guarantee of security. However, it is important to grasp the pathology at work. The kind of security talked about is simply the kind of bully boy security acquired through ongoing intimidation.

Power projection, has to be projected onto someone or something. This goes beyond mere deterrence; i.e., the policy of being latently strong enough to weigh heavily in anyone’s calculus. The neocon policy, provides its own calculus and requires pro-active projection, wherefrom s0-called “preemptive defence.”

But “preemptive defence” is not truly a conclusion that follows from “power projection”. It is rather an oxymoron used to confuse and cover up what’s truly going on. With due respect for the true meaning of words, one does not "defend" against something that has not happened. A nation either defends against an actual attack or prepares and strengthens itself against a “threat” -- that is, against the possibility of a future harm. Projecting power has nothing to do with either but is an end in itself. Although a bully might claim that his bullying is done for the sake of security, precisely because he is not, in fact, under any threat or attack, the alleged purpose (security) is meaningless and doesn't exist apart from the bully's dementia. In objective fact the bully's power projection is simply what being a bully is about.

This is why the Bush and now the Obama administration have been so indifferent to specifying the existence, location and manner of even a “threat” (since there has been no attack). Their abuse of language serves only the purpose of so corrupting thought that people can be lulled and acculturated into thinking that it “makes sense” to roam the world kicking ass in “defence” of ourselves.... against an “Al Qaeda” that can’t be found, against “a few small men with outsized rage” armed with dirty suitcases.

But if it is dismal enough to think of the United States as the World Bully, it is even worse to learn how its bullying is to be projected.

In neo con jargon power projection is to be accomplished with “full spectrum” missions. The role of the military in this New American Century is to:

1. defend the American homeland;

2. fight and decisively win multiple, simultaneous major theater wars;

3. perform the “constabulary” duties associated with shaping the security environment in critical regions; and

4. gain control of space and ‘cyberspace’

The first two missions are traditional military functions. It is the second two that are the cancerous germ of neocon strategies.

In neo-con thought, the collapse of the Soviet Union allows the United States to “remove its security perimeter eastward” so that Eastern Europe becomes the “outer security perimeter of the homeland” Ergo, missiles in Poland, and Camp Bond in the Balkans. People inside the USA live inside the inner security zone, and Washington one supposes is in a deep core security zone.

“Zones of democratic peace” in Neospeak means national concentration camps in which civil society has been brutalized, terrorized and degraded to a sub-social level. America’s mission of power projection aims only at creating zones of anti-civilization.

Seize and Extend

Establishing a zone of democratic freedom, in any given “critical region” begins with its seizure, as in Iraq or Afghanistan. But this seizure is not conquest in the traditional sense. It is a policy whereby the same “full spectrum” military forces are equipped to invade, secure, and while securing inside the zone, extending the zone’s perimeter so that each seized and secured zone becomes the “base of operations” for further extending operations. In case anyone missed it, that is what the “and” entails.

Secure

What does securing a zone entail? In the height of sophistry, PNAC called this “constabulary” duties. This has nothing to do with avuncular constable of yore. In the neo-con lexicon “constabulary” duties entail proactive policing, “organic” intelligence ops, social infiltration and intimidation, all while carrying low level military and dirty ops outside the zone in order to extend it.

Rubbleizing

Securing begins with consist in degrading infrastructure and institutions. This is the material pre-requisite for ultimately degrading social life itself.

Much of the degradation can be accomplished during the initial seizure. The important thing after this initial phase is over is not to rebuild what has been destroyed, but rather to look for further “opportunities” to create “disconnects” in the physical fabric of the city or country. This is why, eight years after liberation Baghdad is more of a rubble than ever and why the only thing built was a huge praetorian fortress amid the rubble equipped with all the self-contained amenities of modern civilized life that are denied to the denizens outside. This is what the Bush rejection of "nation building" signified.

Of course just enough erratic electricity, interrupted water supply, semi-competent bureaucracy and stretched medical services are provided so as to keep the people hopeful and dependent, because a complete loss of hope would have a revolutionizing effect.

Chaos and control

The degradation of the material basis of social life is only the first step in the greater goal of degrading civic and social life itself.

This degradation begins with promoting chaos in order to retain control; by engineering and maintaining a low level state of ongoing urban, ethnic social warfare. This is what the PNAC mavens mean when they say that the function of constabulary forces is to "shape the security environment in critical regions.” Just as prisoners or recruits are kept harried and unbalanced in order to "shape" them, so too the newly secured zone of democratic freedom.

Shaping the security environment means everything it has always meant for jailers, wardens and camp-commandants. It includes the use militarized police forces and “organic intelligence” units, by which is meant use of native spies, infiltrators, and agents provocateurs.

Stir up, Slap down.

Provoking unrest is as important as controlling it. Ongoing insecurity allows the military to take ongoing security (i.e. intimidation) measures such kicking in doors, randomly arresting, and generally brutalizing the civilian population by subjecting it to constant albeit random constabulary abuse.

The PNAC has been extraordinarily frank. According to its Report, these "constabulary missions" are "likely" to "generate" violence. How so? How does “maintaining security” manage to “generate violence”?

It does so because, even apart from the use of provocateurs, it is expected that some people in the occupied zone of democratic peace will resent being abused in this fashion and will fight back with whatever inadequate means they have at their disposal, at which point they will simply be blasted away by some computer guided drone, sidewinder, or gross-calibre weapon.

This “generation” is what explains the bizarre logic by which the United States invades a country and then arrest those who oppose our invasion of their country for committing crimes punishable under laws just made up in the US.

At the same time, the full spectrum of force will include just enough Santa Clause missions to give the impression that the U.S. really does care for the welfare of the people it is “shaping” This is a policy of spousal abuse on an immense collective scale.

Ultimately, and beyond just creating states of insecurity, the strategy seeks to destabilizes social consciousness itself in just the way that disinformation undermines our sense that we can know things, for which reason the PNAC report also called for cyber-ops to disrupt the "enemy's" computer networks and to use the internet for counter-propaganda. One should not expect this "propaganda" to be limited to government making its case in the OpEd pages of the Times. (De)shaping the internet environment will simply be the cyber correlative of (de)shaping the physical social fabric.

Disinformation and social disorientation are two sides of the same coin. When insecurity is total and pervasive, people don’t know what to expect next, what kind of reaction will ensue, whether vegetables, electricity, social services or your next door neighbor can be relied on. If the unbalancing is truly successful people will not even know if they can count on their enemy to be their enemy or whether whatever it is one hears is genuine or fake.

Over time, people eventually loose their social sense and become flotsam disconnected from one another materially, effectively, socially. The aim of both is to reduce the zonal population to being rats in a cage.

To people still imbued with traditional ways of thinking, Iraq and Afghanistan are failures. But to the neocons they are success stories. The more destruction, destabilisaztion and disaster the better.

The execution of the policy in Iraq and Afghanistan has been near flawless. Given that Iraq and Afghanistan are each zones of democratic peace, the goal was not simply to “secure” them (i.e., destroy civil society and reduce the country to exploitable rubble) but also to “extend” them. The only way to extend a zone is to incur and invade into the neighboring zone, which is precisely what the U.S. is currently doing in Pakistan and what was unsuccessfully tried last year in Syria and Georgia. Thus, after Israel conducted a bombing raid on Syria, a U.S. military spokesman said that the bombing was “just part of a wider campaign to take the fight to Al-Qaida not just inside Iraq but to other areas." Archive

Understanding the true nature of neocon policy allows us to understand why, after eight years “shaping the security” in Iraq, the New York Times called for us to focus on the “real” problem in Afghanistan, and why so focusing on Afghanistan, the war somehow ended up in Pakistan as well, and why shills like Kagan want us to focus on the zones in Iran.

As stated, the first purpose of the policy is based on the perverted theory that “the Homeland’s” security (and that of our “key” regional allies) is promoted only by degrading and rubbleizing our regional neighbours. “Nation destroying” is conceived as serving American security interests because a person or society that is kept, weak, degraded, dysfunctional, scrambling for sustenance, dedicating immense effort to maintain minimal order and equilibrium can ipso facto never become a threat.

This is the nature of Israel’s policy in the West Bank, Gaza, and (they had hoped) Lebanon. They have advised us on how to do accomplish this in Iraq, because the reduction of Iraq to one vast rock desert is seen in Jerusalem to “enhance” Jewish security.

The second purpose of the strategy is economic. While the policy of security through destruction arguably extends our “security perimeter” further east or south or west what the policy really means that no national entity will be strong enough to control its own resources.

Destabilizing zones of democratic freedom makes it impossible for an effective national government to coalesce and assert national interests the way Hussein did and the way Chavez is doing . What is left is merely some pathetic show case rump of a government which little more than a puppet stuck on a dildo. American troops support this government, and engage in control chaos, while private security forces seize and "protect" natural resources, at the request of whatever corporation the whole thing has been deeded over to.

The last and third purpose is domestic. The merits of Zonal Wars of Democratic Freedom are precisely that they enable -- indeed necessitate -- the powers that be to maintain police states in the Homeland.

People are typically dense enough not to understand that every wall has two sides. The whole concept of security perimeters which pervades neocon thinking necessarily implies that the “homeland” itself subsists within a security perimeter. It is the innermost “zone of democratic freedom”. Everything else follows.

Worse than just living within a “security controlled” perimeter, we ourselves become inured to seeing violence perpetrated on people abroad just as our forces become inured to perpetrating it. They likewise become indifferent as to whom violence is perpetrated on and we become dumb and inured when violence is used on us. Make no mistake. Everything visited on Iraq and Afghanistan will be visited upon us, and it is we who will do it.

Once the true meaning of "constabulary" operations is grasped, it can be seen that neocon "zones of democratic freedom" are actually the negative-inverse of the liberal concept of those zones. This is why Kagan-Brooks explicitly reject such stupid liberal notions as the "inherent goodness of man." Once that is rejected, there is no point in doing good things like building libraries and hospitals. Pleasantries like Peace Corps are viewed as almost offensive, as if it were some sort of obscenity to acknowledge that gentiles were entitled to human respect and dignity. Hey, "power is nothing to be ashamed of."

Since power is nothing to be ashamed of, neocons also give up any concept of restraint, or of what was called ius in bello. This is what the disgraceful spectacle of Guantanamo was all about. This is why Harvard professors like Dershowitz could issue a clarion call for "torture warrants" and why toney-talking D.O.J. pundits like John Hoo could defend his "torture memos" on the broadband of the Public Bullshit System. We may laugh at Pax Dei's limiting of war to Tuesdays and Thursdays and use the word "medieval" as an epithet for dumb and barbaric -- we would do better to behold a nearer mirror and contemplate our own moral wretchedness.

It is just as important to see how the inversion of liberal policy took place. It was not a flip flop but a change of degree that resulted in a change of kind. The neo-liberal policy of creating zones of democratic freedom most certainly employed counter- and dirty- ops. That's what the USIA (U.S. Information Agency) and the Green Berets (established under Kennedy) were all about. But these black arts were themselves balanced by at least some, even if only show-case, effort at providing actual material and political beneftis to the zonal-countries involved.

Moreover, the very fact that dirty ops were kept both secret and limited reflected a sense of shame. The operative premise of cold war zonal policy was that our hegemonistic objectives could be obtained by means short of war, and if war then by low key proxy wars. Like the artful policies of the Caesars the post-war policy sought to maintain a decent and pacific appearance; and since form always affects substance this at least kept violence at a lower level. In addition to cunning, the policy also required patience and a certain sportsmanship that accepted losses, at least on this or that round.

Alas, as Vietnam proved, the Devil chafes under restraint and has a way of gaining the upper hand. All the techniques the US had so successfully used in Latin America, backfired. The dirty op assassination of Diem, led to one increasing low level response after another until by a strategy domino sequence we were one step short of nuking “the enemy”. And the reason for this is that we were adamant and unwilling to abide our own appearances and accept a loss.

Evil becomes its own pride. As the with the Capulets and Montagues, doing good to friends and harm to enemies, soon becomes simply doing harm to enemies and to a culture of taking pride in doing so. Every young Polemarchus eventually becomes a mature Thrasymachus.

And every mature Thrasymachus eventually blows his brains out, although in the Republic, we are told he merely "blushed" when the self-destructiveness of his realism became clear. Just as fire burns, no matter what, so too violence deadens, no matter what. The first thing to die on the battlefield are the excuses for being there. But then it is too late; the bargain has been struck. Today, America's Thrasymachian hubris daily brings home its own sons, in the thousands, with their brains blown out by the violence they have seen and done. [ Synderesis & Wrecked Brains ]

As we contemplate such results we should not forget the neocon denigration of the belief in the "inherent goodness" of man. Rather than accept such disdain with jejeune sophistication, we ought to ponder what voice, exactly, it is that speaks to us.

It is certainly the case that evil exists in the world, for some reason, in some manner and so appearing to us. It is also the case, that without necessarily being evil, enemies or opponents exist. But that is not what Brooks and Kagan mean by "manichean". When they -- and their like -- say that there is evil in the world, what they mean is that "we" are surrounded by enemies seen and unseen who want to do "us" in. The whole world is out to get us, and we must get and destroy them first. This sense of being stalked by everpresent, unseen evils, devils, nazis and terrorists is a peculiaryly Puritan and Jewish dementia. It is a phobic, exclusive, self-righteousness that becoming murderous ultimately self-destructs.

Among the chipsters at the Gazette, at least, there was never any expectation that Obama would alter the US policy of extending it’s capitalist hegemony. Zones of democratic freedom are the spots on the US leopard and Obama would not and cannot change it. Our expectation was rather that he “may go back to an Eisenhower-esque diplomacy of working "through" allies and international institutions.” [ Delirium Tremens ]

To an extent our prognosis has been borne out. Obama has sought to “multilateralize” our policy and has claimed (albeit falsely) to have ended the most flagrant violations of humanitarian law. He, as well as Brooks, noted the importance and called for the adherence to certain norms and standards. But these protestations of ius in bello and institutional cooperation are but stretched tissues. In actual fact, the Obama Administration has done nothing to rectify neocon barbarism. Obama has simply toned down the bluster, but he has not removed the abuses. Just as bad, he has done nothing to bring the Bush Administration's crimes to the bar of justice or even to the light of day.

The just accuses himself in the beginning of his words

This, on behalf of the country and for the sake of the country, Obama refused to do.

Not only has Obama refused to repudiate neocon doctrine, he perpetuates it, and not only in Af-Pakistan. Kagan is not quivering with hopes over Iran without a reason. Despite the usual blather about drug interdiction, it was disclosed late last year that the new U.S. base in Columbia was, in fact, a base for full spectrum forces. In other words Columbia is marked to be our “zone of democratic freedom” in South America... waiting to be secured and extended into oil and gas rich Venezuela and Bolivia. It was no coincidence that the U.S. reactivated the Fourth Fleet.

Augustine seems to have grasped that, at bottom, what is at work is the inherent nature of violence, power and empire themselves:

"[T]hough there have never been wanting, nor are yet wanting, hostile nations beyond the empire, against whom wars have been and are waged, yet, supposing there were no such nations, the very extent of the empire itself has produced wars of a more obnoxious description --social and civil wars -- and with these the whole race has been agitated."

Yes, it was not to be expected that any president of the United States would have changed what that country was about; only the inescapable course of history will do that. But it was not unreasonable to hope that Obama, like one of the "better Caesars" would de-punk American foreign policy, renounce the bugaboo of invisible, ubiquitous terrorism, cease creating zones of democratic destruction and pursue hegemonistic policies by more pacific means.

Instead, the vaunted "change" was simply that we no longer have to listen to the gutter punking of an alcoholic thrusting his codpiece forward on a flight deck. No...instead we got to listen to high intonations invoking the shades of Cicero and Augustine and Vitoria to cover his naked power projection. It was a revolting sham.

As for Brooks and Kagan, they might recall that it was Anne Franke who wrote:

Despite everything,
I believe that people are really good at heart.

©WCG, 2009
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