 |
| Dees Illustration |
Lew Rockwell
In every election cycle, the politicians love to pretend there is a difference among them on the foreign policy questions. Yet on these issues of unsurpassed importance, we see the Democrats and Republicans are all part of the same bloodthirsty gang.
On the superficial level of presidential politics, Obama and Bush appeared light-years apart. They play opposites in the DC-approved official culture war between those who pretend to be genuine red-blooded Americans of the heartland and those who feign an understanding of the beleaguered urban minorities and oppressed underclass, when in truth both perfectly embody the same Wall Street-Pentagon-friendly power elite. This is most clearly seen in their virtually identical approach toward empire.
After 9/11, Bush could have used his Republican bonafides to stress not pacifism but at least the humble foreign policy he had promised. We shouldn’t be "an arrogant nation," he famously said in his October 11, 2000, debate with Al Gore. "[O]ne way for us to end up being viewed as the ugly American is for us to go around the world saying, we do it this way, so should you."
But instead, Bush used 9/11 as an excuse to expand the federal government more than had happened in decades, gut the Bill of Rights, and start two major wars to "democractize" Afghanistan and Iraq. Hundreds of thousands, maybe more than a million innocents, were slaughtered in his wars. He left America in low morale, bankrupted from his recklessness, bloodied from battle, with thousands of Americans having returned in flag-draped caskets.
Obama in 2008 gave even more lip service to foreign policy humility than did Bush in 2000, or at least was perceived this way, and somehow everyone believed it. He said Bush made a terrible mistake in invading Iraq. He said we could save a fortune and restore American honor by withdrawing.
Yet here we are, over two years into his presidency, and the mountain of corpses continues to rise. In Afghanistan, there were more civilian deaths last year than any time since the war began. In Pakistan, Obama has unleashed unspeakable terror with his drone attacks, deploying more than three times as many last year as Bush did in 2008. This killing spree has greatly exacerbated a refugee disaster, wherein a million or two have been displaced from their homes.
Read Full Article
