Obama Pursues the Bush Foreign Policy, or We Are All Neo-Cons Now

[Valin]

Pajamas Media:

Ron Radosh
September 2, 2011

Recently, some of our most able pundits have been arguing that neoconservatism is dead. As usual, The Daily Beast’s Peter Beinart leads the pack. He could not have stated his case more clearly than here: “the ideology that 9/11 made famous — neoconservatism — has died.” Beinart is certain of this. His evidence? Al-Qaeda is finished; not only Osama bin Laden is dead, but now his second in command, Abd al-Rahman, has been killed by the U.S. No longer is jihadism a major threat, “a threat on par with Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union,” he argues. It is “sliding into irrelevance,” leaving the U.S. with quite a different challenge — that of China’s authoritarian capitalism. What killed al-Qaeda, he says, is “exactly the narrow targeted policies that neoconservatives derided.”

Obama has gained his ends through intelligence and drone strikes, Beinart argues, and any resulting democracy in the Middle East comes not from the United States, but from the local rebellion of young Muslims. He also argues that Republican candidates are not attacking the president along neoconservative lines; instead, they largely avoid the issue, since they “have little appetite for the neconservative agenda of continued war in the Middle East.”

He implies that we should get out of Afghanistan, because it is not worth the cost of American lives, and because we can’t afford it. Right or wrong, the money is not there, something he says neoconservatives never paid attention to. America, he says — sounding like a conservative — must pay attention to limits, and we must hold in our grandiose ambitions.

Is Beinart right? First, let us point to a factor he pays little attention to: that despite a confused and ambivalent doctrine in foreign policy, President Obama is pursuing much of the same “neo-con” policies advocated by George W. Bush and Dick Cheney in their administration. No one has made a stronger case for this than Walter Russell Mead. Obama’s defenders, he writes,......
(Snip)

[Argyle58]

I've been visiting some of the liberal chat rooms lately. It is amazing that many of the uber left are saying that the "o" is merely "Bush Lite". A surprising number are expressing their plans to vote 3rd party, so as to not lend any support the "o".

[Valin]

I've been visiting some of the liberal chat rooms lately. It is amazing that many of the uber left are saying that the "o" is merely "Bush Lite". A surprising number are expressing their plans to vote 3rd party, so as to not lend any support the "o".

 

 

Allow me to encourage them to vote 3rd party.

[Evad]

I've been visiting some of the liberal chat rooms lately. It is amazing that many of the uber left are saying that the "o" is merely "Bush Lite". A surprising number are expressing their plans to vote 3rd party, so as to not lend any support the "o".

 

 

Allow me to encourage them to vote 3rd party.

Oh..maaaaaavellous idea!