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Great (long) article on Obama... (pg. 2)
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| tathi |
| very very good article, thanks. Obama as president is the best thing the US and the world needs. |
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| HardTranceProd |
| quote: | Originally posted by Q5echo
somebody sticky this! HardTranceProd just quoted Krauthammer. (being half German i love that name) |
While I (obviously) disagree with Krauthammer's political leanings... I do read his columns with interest. He's one of the very few conservatives who is not a hot-head and makes reasonable, interesting observations. |
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| Q5echo |
| quote: | Originally posted by HardTranceProd
While I (obviously) disagree with Krauthammer's political leanings... I do read his columns with interest. He's one of the very few conservatives who is not a hot-head and makes reasonable, interesting observations. |
cool |
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| guerra-monstru |
| quote: | Originally posted by shaolin_Z
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He's also a 32nd Degree Prince Hall Freemason, confirmed by a Mason I know personally, so I can't give you a source for that.
Have fun voting. |
God American politics is so scary. Every president has been a member of a secret society. |
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| Lebezniatnikov |
I really think the CFR bit is more annoying than the Federal Reserve boogeyman, WTC alternate theories, and second gunman unsubstantiated postulations put together.
That said, Andrew Sullivan is probably the single conservative I have the greatest amount of respect for. Class guy, and always thinks through his argumentations... and today the NYTimes offered a pretty solid support of his argument in an op-ed by Roger Cohen (another fairly centrist Obama fan) -
| quote: | Op-Ed Columnist
A Realist Called Obama
By ROGER COHEN
Published: February 18, 2008
NEW YORK —_ Leon Wieseltier of The New Republic wrote a simple sentence recently that cut to the quick of this U.S. election: “What you think of a presidential candidate is in large measure determined by what you think of the world."
In an eloquent column, he argued that “We are heading into an era of conflict.” From Waziristan to Gaza City the world of the next U.S. president will be one of foreboding. The threats, he suggested, were of a nature a neophyte senator called Barack Obama, who’s long on hope and short on hardness, is ill-prepared to confront.
I share the concern that the feel-good conciliation propelling the Obama bandwagon is light on fierceness. Change is great but constancy can be greater, especially when the threat is mortal. Readiness to talk to everyone, enemy dictators included, does not a foreign policy make.
When Obama says that in a globalized world the security of Americans is tied to the security of all people, he sounds pleasing. But this won’t help when U.S. security imperatives prove distinct, even inimical, to those of others, as one day they will.
I also find Obama’s commitment to a 16-month timetable for withdrawal of all combat troops from Iraq rash: a free and stable Iraq is now inextricable from long-term U.S. security interests. How that can be squared with flicking the switch at Camp Victory in 2010 is a mystery to me and to most U.S. generals.
And yet, I disagree with Wieseltier. I disagree about the nature of the world the next president will face. Because of this, I believe Obama is the candidate best placed to grasp and exploit a transformative moment in global affairs.
Far from Wieseltier’s era of conflict, I see an era of tremendous global potential for advancement in which the jihadists — _force-multiplying internet invective notwithstanding —_ are marginalized.
George W. Bush has shown a talent for burying progress and squandering opportunity (not least with Iran) in a torrent of vituperation. But even the Great Alienator can’t hide the fact we’re hardly in the Dark Ages.
As Bush’s war on terror has unfolded, one third of humanity in Asia has been busy joining and bolstering the world economy. Hundreds of millions of people, from the Mekong Delta to central China, have emerged from poverty. Huge problems remain, but the emergence of India and China does put the caves of Waziristan in perspective.
China holds a lot of U.S. debt, counters U.S. talk of freedom with talk of no-strings-attached “harmony,” and cares nothing for a nation’s politics if it can grab that nation’s riches (Burma, Sudan, Zimbabwe).
But China is also tied at the hip to the United States, whose market it needs, and hell-bent on stability for the next half-century. Its cooperation with Washington on North Korea is more significant than its ideological confrontation.
In Africa, strong growth, spreading democracy, and growing regional cooperation have naturally ceded the headlines to doom in Darfur and Harare. But the progress is no less real for that.
Throughout the world, the access technology provides is connecting people in ways that make governments less relevant. Terrorists benefit from such networks. But the linking of a humanity in flux is of deeper historical significance. An era of conciliation is more persuasive to me than an era of conflict.
The fight between Obama and Hillary Clinton for the Democratic nomination is increasingly portrayed as one between romantics and realists.
But a realistic view of Obama would be that he is best placed to seize and shape a new world of such possibilities. He has the youth, the global background, the ability to move people, and the demonstrated talent for reaching across lines of division, even those etched in black and white.
He would, as Andrew Sullivan has written, “rebrand” America. Wieseltier dismisses such rebranding. But even the Papacy was rebranded in our times, by a Pole, and Poles then precipitated the fall of the Soviet empire.
A romantic view of Clinton might be that she has the guts and savvy to free herself of her husband’s coterie of the world’s rich and famous, with its dubious deal-making from Kazakhstan to Colombia, and ensure that a White House with a president and ex-president in it projects U.S. renewal rather than the tawdrier sides of Clintonism.
I’m just not enough of a romantic to believe it.
Obama is the expression of a hybrid world whose promise outweighs its menace. He needs to recall what he once said: “No president should ever hesitate to use force _ unilaterally if necessary _ to protect ourselves and our vital interests when we are attacked or imminently threatened.”
If he does, and a tough foreign policy team would help, hope and hardness will in time find a fecund balance confounding even to Iran’s mullahs. |
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/18/o...ion&oref=slogin
Foreign policy is the one most distinguishing feature (other than rhetoric) between Obama and Clinton, and it's what made my decision for me. |
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| shaolin_Z |
| quote: | Originally posted by Lebezniatnikov
I really think the CFR bit is more annoying than the Federal Reserve boogeyman, WTC alternate theories, and second gunman unsubstantiated postulations put together. |
A predictable response, that only validates quite a bit. What's your point? |
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| Lebezniatnikov |
| quote: | Originally posted by shaolin_Z
A predictable response, that only validates quite a bit. What's your point? |
The point is that conspiracy theories regarding the Council on Foreign Relations are probably the silliest, most unsubstantiated tripe I've ever read. |
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| shaolin_Z |
| quote: | Originally posted by Lebezniatnikov
The point is that conspiracy theories regarding the Council on Foreign Relations are probably the silliest, most unsubstantiated tripe I've ever read. |
No, point is that that bit of information got to you, which reflects nothing more than your own insecurities and lack of confidence in your world veiw. There's nothing to get "irritated" about if it's a bunch of unsubstantiated tripe, you could easily ignore it in that case as opposed to having a reactive response. All I did was mention the fact that he is a CFR member, wheather that means anything to you or not is your own decision. Clearly it does, as it illicited the kind of response it did. Thanks for reflecting the conflict between your conscious and subconscious mind.
EDIT: One of them is full of , pick one. |
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| shaolin_Z |
| quote: | Originally posted by tathi
very very good article, thanks. Obama as president is the best thing the US and the world needs. |
Obama is nothing more than another bitch (i.e. congressman subserviant to AIPAC):
| quote: | Israeli-Palestinian Conflict
Sen. Obama (S-IL) has taken a strongly pro-Israel tone in addressing the conflict. In a speech before AIPAC in March 2007, Obama said the United States must “strengthen the hands of Palestinian moderates” and isolate Hamas. Haaretz U.S. correspondent Shmuel Rosner said that before AIPAC, Obama “sounded as strong as Clinton, as supportive as Bush, as friendly as Giuliani.”
Obama cosponsored the Palestinian Anti-Terrorism Act of 2006 and, like most of his fellow candidates, has called on the Palestinian leadership to “recognize Israel, to renounce violence, and to get serious about negotiating peace and security for the region.”
If elected, Obama says he would “insist on fully funding military assistance to Israel” (JPost) and continue to cooperate with Israel on the development of the Arrow missile defense system. |
http://www.cfr.org/bios/11603/#7 |
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| Lebezniatnikov |
And yet...
| quote: | One seemingly consistent theme running throughout Barack Obama's career is his comfort with aligning himself with people who are anti-Israel advocates. This ease around Israel animus has taken various forms. As Obama has continued his political ascent, he has moved up the prestige scale in terms of his associates. Early on in his career he chose a church headed by a former Black Muslim who is a harsh anti-Israel advocate and who may be seen as tinged with anti-Semitism. This church is a member of a denomination whose governing body has taken a series of anti-Israel actions.
As his political fortunes and ambition climbed, he found support from George Soros, multibillionaire promoter of groups that have been consistently harsh and biased critics of the American-Israel relationship.
Obama's soothing and inspiring oratory sometimes vanishes when he talks of the Middle East. Indeed, his off-the-cuff remarks have been uniformly taken by supporters of Israel as signs that the inner Obama does not truly support Israel despite what his canned speeches and essays may contain.
Now that Obama has become a leading Presidential candidate, he has assembled a body of foreign policy advisers who signal that a President Obama would likely have an approach towards Israel radically at odds with those of previous Presidents (both Republican and Democrat). A group of experts collected by the Israeli liberal newspaper Haaretz deemed him to be the candidate likely to be least supportive of Israel. He is the candidate most favored by the Arab-American community. |
http://www.americanthinker.com/2008/01/barack_obama_and_israel.html |
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| Lebezniatnikov |
| quote: | Originally posted by shaolin_Z
No, point is that that bit of information got to you, which reflects nothing more than your own insecurities and lack of confidence in your world veiw. There's nothing to get "irritated" about if it's a bunch of unsubstantiated tripe, you could easily ignore it in that case as opposed to having a reactive response. All I did was mention the fact that he is a CFR member, wheather that means anything to you or not is your own decision. Clearly it does, as it illicited the kind of response it did. Thanks for reflecting the conflict between your conscious and subconscious mind.
EDIT: One of them is full of , pick one. |
Ok, what the hell are you talking about? You "got" to me? I knew exactly what inference you were making because I'm not naive and I've seen you rail against the CFR before. And I said it annoys me to read that kind of drivel because it's a blatant untruth.
So you can keep playing mind games and twisting words, etc., but the fact of the matter is that the CFR is a legitimate forum for the discussion of foreign policy issues (read: discussion = debate = more than one side presented) between members of all schools of thought (read: no uniform position on Israel, democracy promotion, or even *gasp* one world government).
So if you're afraid to back up your insinuation, I'm fine with that. I'm just going to call you out on it. |
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| shaolin_Z |
I didn't realize evaluating your reaction and articulating the implications of your words qualifies as twisting them lol. Yeah, I've been waiting all this time for Lebezniatnikov to respond in this thread and with his head   . Apparently deconstructing it illicits yet another reactive post. But somehow, I'm responsible for that  . |
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