Neocons Plot to Co-Opt Obama

[laststeamtrain]

Neocons Plot to Co-Opt Obama
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20081106_neocons_plot_to_co_opt_obama/
Posted on Nov 6, 2008

By William Pfaff

Since the triumph of Barack Obama, nearly every medium of news and political comment in the United States and abroad has carried a compendium of “challenges” and dangers facing the next president. Yet when these challenges are examined, they nearly all turn out to be potential opportunities.

So far as they are obstacles, they usually involve efforts by other governments to block the United States from continuing policies of the Bush government meant to manipulate or intimidate them.

The basic Bush policies—defense spending at levels higher than all the rest of the world combined, unilateralism, hostility to the United Nations and international law, advocacy of “preventive” wars, efforts to dominate the Middle East, constant pressure on Russia and what might be called contingent hostility toward China, opposition to European Union efforts at military cooperation—all have been promoted since the 1990s by nationalist and neoconservative Republicans acting through the conservative Washington think tanks.

These reflect the long-term ambitions for economic and military hegemony that animated Bush administration foreign policy. Many of the same people and their followers will try to introduce the same ideas into the foreign policy of the new Obama government. The president-elect is a foreign policy novice and will find himself under great pressure to follow Middle Eastern and China and Russia policies inherited from George Bush, even though these are what Barack Obama was elected to change or terminate.

<snip>

The Bush administration and its backers wanted to keep a privileged position in Iraq’s economy and oil industry. The Pentagon has from the start of the Iraq war wanted permanent bases there. But if Iraqi authorities and the public refuse, the only intelligent response is to agree to leave. To refuse or delay would implicitly acknowledge that the new administration wants to go on controlling Iraq as a means to controlling, or trying to control, the Middle East and to exploit its resources—which is just what America’s enemies say.

<snip>

A big struggle over control of Obama’s foreign policy has already begun with his first White House staff nominees. Many of the people currently advising him, and all of those behind past Bush policies, are going to tell him his administration must choose between “weakness,” on the one hand, and “strength” plus “global leadership,” on the other hand. The latter means a quest for American hegemony that wouldn’t be any more successful under Obama than it was under Bush, and along the way would destroy his presidency just as it destroyed George Bush’s.

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http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20081106_neocons_plot_to_co_opt_obama/

[Demeter]

1. Given the History of Neocon Plots, I'm Not Going To Waste Much On Them

They don't have Cheney and Shrub to push around any more. They are a blot on history, and burnt toast.

[bemildred]

2. Demeter speaks for me.

That was exactly my reaction too.