An analysis of Obama’s foreign policy that a liberal or a neocon could not make

Kevin writes:

I heard some segments from Barack Obama’s speeches on the radio this weekend, and I suddenly had a realization. There were three statements he made that stood out to me.

1. He said our policy of talking tough to Iran hasn’t worked, his implication being that we have to be nicer to them if we want to get results.

2. When talking about our leaving Iraq he said that Syria and Iran will have to do their part to promote stability, as if they shared our goals and were on our side.

3. He said that he doesn’t think we should “punish” regimes by not talking to them.

There’s something here that goes beyond appeasement and is even worse than appeasement. Do these three statements convey any idea whatsoever that he is talking about enemies? The strange idea that regimes like Iran are being punished by us has the connotation that they are the victims and we are the oppressive bad guys. With Barack Obama it isn’t a matter of appeasing our enemies, but rather that he doesn’t see our enemies as enemies. When we look at his far leftist ideology and the ideology of the church he attended for 20 years, this makes sense. Evil does not exist outside of the West except as a justifiable reaction to oppression by the West. Along with this ideology is the real possibility that, being black, he may identify with and “understand” these enemies in some way that a white American cannot. The real enemy is traditional America and America as a supposedly imperialist power. Our enemies are simply reacting to that, a position clearly stated again and again by his pastor. And once Barrack Obama became president it would mean the end of that America, so that he can engage and be nice to our enemies who will no longer have any reason to be our enemies.

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Mark Jaws writes:

Kevin is wrong when he claims once BO became president it would mean the end of traditionalist America. That is loser talk. If we believe in a traditionalist America and fight the Obamaistas at every turn, we can surely prevail.

Kevin writes:

Thank you for putting my letter on your website. I didn’t literally mean that if Barack Obama became president it would mean the end of traditional America. I meant that from his ideological view his becoming president would end what he sees as the traditional and imperialist America which he thinks is the real reason why we have enemies. According to his view of the world, America is part of the West which has oppressed the Third World, and America is a predominantly white country which has oppressed nonwhite peoples both at home and in the world. There is no such thing as a good America that is being unjustly attacked by enemies who are motivated by their own evil. Therefore we would have a president who is absolutely incapable of seeing America’s real enemies.

Just look at that post today on your website about him saying we can’t eat what we want and have our homes at 72 degrees and expect other countries to say it’s OK. You see it’s our fault that they don’t like us just like it’s our fault that we have enemies. That’s his world view and he’s so open about it because I think he sees it as self-evident.

LA replies:

Very well stated. For the left and Obama, there is no America, or, more precisely, there is no America that is a legitimate entity and has legitimate interests as an entity. Under pressure Obama will act as if, “Of course, we have legitimate national interests.” But he doesn’t really believe it, and his leftist principles deny it.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at May 19, 2008 11:47 AM | Send