Obama: so different from Democrats: so different from Republicans

With Barack Obama appointing William Perry and Madeleine Albright to his National Security Working Group, it seems like a good time to revisit this posting from two years ago:
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Not surprisingly, Clinton administration alumni Ashton Carter and William Perry have called on the Bush administration to strike at North Korea's missile if the North Koreans go ahead with their plans to launch.  Mixed in with the rest of the madness was this criticism:

The Bush administration has unwisely ballyhooed the doctrine of "preemption," which all previous presidents have sustained as an option rather than a dogma.

So Carter and Perry don't oppose the idea of preemptive strikes--they just don't like that the Bush administration has been so unsubtle about them.  And in this they precisely mirror statements by their Clinton co-conspirator Madeleine Albright in a 2003 article in Foreign Affairs:

When the administration published its 2002 National Security Strategy last September, it took this process even further, transforming anticipatory self-defense -- a tool every president has quietly held in reserve -- into the centerpiece of its national security policy. This step, however, was dangerously easy to misconstrue. (Do we really want a world in which every country feels entitled to attack any other that might someday threaten it?)

No, of course not--clearly this right must be reserved for the US.  We can't have just anyone thinking they can do it.  And Albright goes on to echo (or presage) Ashton and Perry's feelings about the Bush administration's distressingly vulgar tendency to just state outright their contempt for all norms of international law:

It would be helpful now if the doctrine of preemption were to disappear quietly from the U.S. national security lexicon and be returned to reserve status.

Note carefully: it's not that the doctrine should disappear; it's that the doctrine should disappear from the lexicon, and go back to its status as the unspoken, exclusive right of the most powerful nation on the planet.

This is precisely why I believed in 2004--and still believe now, more than ever--that a Democratic loss was the best hope for the long-term health of the world.  As Ashton, Perry, and Albright so clearly demonstrate in this instance, it is not the actual policies that are different under Democratic administrations but merely their presentation to the world. By asserting (and acting upon) these uniquely American "rights" with such unvarnished arrogance and disdain, the Bush administration is revealing the true face of American foreign policy--a face that never changes, but which is rarely displayed with such clarity.

Comments

[cemmcs]

The democrats lost in 2004. Are we better off than we would have been if Kerry had won? This is not a rhetorical question. I really don't know.

[Duncan]

Whether "we" (I presume you mean the US) are better off isn't what John said. He said "the long-term health of the world." That is, if I understand him correctly, what is good for the US may not be good for people elsewhere.

Gabriel Kolko wrote something to that effect at Counterpunch before the 2004 elections, declaring that Bush's alienation of former US allies / toadies meant that it was harder for the US to make mischief in the world. With a Democrat who was better at hiding his or her unilateralism, the US might already have attacked Iran, for example, or Pakistan.

As it is, many people around the world are already being snowed by Obama, thinking that as a man of color he'll steer a kinder, gentler course -- despite his stated intention to maintain the Cuba embargo or his lies about Hugo Chavez, or his wish to force a Free Trade Agreement on US terms on South Korea, etc. It might be better for the world if McCain won, since outside the US, few would have any illusions about him.

Duncan

I don't know what I meant by "we". My comment was just an expression of frustration. Sometimes I think our elections and who wins doesn't make any difference and that people who think it does, no matter how they rationalize it, are just kidding themselves and then again, sometimes I don't think that. Either way, it's frustrating. Add to this the several or more beers which I had consumed at the time I wrote the comment and it is what it is.

As for, "the long-term health of the world", I don't know what that means either. The world has been around forever and presumably it will still be here long after we are gone and I find it hard to believe that whatever "the long-term health of the world" may be, that it was seriously affected by who won the 2004 Presidential election. So, why would it be any different this time?

As for people outside The U.S., I think it's true that many are hoping Obama will win the election because they see him as the lesser of two evils. That perceptiom might be incorrect (and it might not) but I don't think they have any illusions about him in the way that many in The U.S. do.

Anyway, I fear I've been a little grouchy lately. If so, I am sorry. I appreciate it that you responded to my comments. Thanks.

cemmcs

[John Caruso]

Duncan's right—I wasn't talking about the US. And I also wasn't speaking in the short term. The short version of what I was thinking goes like this: because of the dual (and related) threats of global warming and US militarism, the outlook for humanity is bleak, to say the least. And with global warming in particular there's just no more time; there must be radical changes, and they must happen immediately. If we stick to the status quo at this point we're all but doomed ("we" meaning human beings generally, and that's what I meant by the "long-term health of the world").

This was already crystal clear in 2004, and so my feeling then was that whatever was most likely to radically break the status quo had to happen, no matter what the short term cost. In terms of electoral politics, the only chance of pushing one of the major parties toward sanity as quickly as was necessary was if Kerry lost, and lost decisively—if people completely repudiated his (and the Democrats') "Kyoto Protocol is not the answer", pro-war policies. The chance that the Democrats would have taken the right lesson from that kind of loss was extremely slim, of course (and that was by no means the only wildly unlikely element of what I was calling for), but slim is better than none.

So yes, I do think the 2004 election seriously affected the long-term health of the world, for the worst. Kerry lost, but not for the right reasons and not by nearly enough. So in terms of what I was thinking about in that essay, no, we're not better off. Humanity is in a car hurtling toward the edge of a cliff, and the car can stop in 250 feet. In 2004 we were 270 feet from the edge; now it's 260 feet; and in precious little time, hitting the brakes won't matter anymore.

Does the 2008 election matter more than the 2004 election? Yes and no: yes, because we're just that much closer to catastrophe, but no, because 2004 made it clear that there's no public will to force these changes with the required urgency, even among those who should know better (to say that public alarm about global warming lags the scope of the danger would be the understatement of a lifetime; it's as though we're standing in the last corner of a room that's otherwise entirely ablaze, and we're just now noticing there's a little smoke in the air). The good news is that both Obama and McCain take global warming seriously, but the bad news is that their proposals are light years short of what needs to be done. Or in other words, barring some miraculous popular uprising on a scale never before seen in this country, we're screwed.

On the bright side, at least we'll all live in interesting times.