Also available in orange where it has really upset the locals. Perhaps that is no bad thing if it shocks them out of their complacent belief that Obama can do no wrong because he is the smartest guy on the planet.
I never thought I would hear myself say this, because I hate unnuanced bland generalised assertions. There are so many ways in which the Obama administration is a quantum improvement on Bush – think stimulus, healthcare, financial regulation, don’t ask don’t tell, and two reasonable Supreme Court nominations. But on foreign policy in general, and Israel/Palestine in particular, Obama is proving to be as stupid as Bush:
- He has failed to close Guantanamo detention centre or correct the gross violation of human rights it represents.
- He has escalated an unwinnable war in Afghanistan
- He has legitimised a military coup in Honduras
- He has caved in to Netanyahu on illegal settlement expansion several times and has allowed his Vice President to be humiliated on a visit to Israel
- He has capitulated to Chinese manipulation of the Dollar Yuan exchange rates despite numerous threats to confront the issue
- He has caved in to his Afghan counterpart, Hamid Karzai, having accused him of corruption and falsifying elections – and to to Karzai’s brother, Ahmed Wali, having accused him of being a drug lord
- He has been repeatedly snubbed by the President of Brazil, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, who has chaired meetings of 31 Latin American and Caribbean countries which excluded the United States, and actually got something constructive done by negotiating a deal with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad for Iran to ship 1,200 kilograms of its low-enriched uranium to Turkey. Obama then ignored the deal and proposed tougher sanctions on Iran.
- He has done nothing on climate change and was all for expanding deep sea off shore drilling until BP pissed in his back garden.
- And now, to cap it all, he has blamed peace activists for getting themselves killed by an illegal act of war and opposed a UN investigation of the war crime.
Is there no end to his grovelling incompetence? Increasingly world leaders, large and small, are learning that Obama is a paper tiger who makes bullying noises, some fine speeches, and then capitulates at the first sign of opposition.
It must be the first time in history that the Nobel Peace prize has been awarded to coward who mistakes collaboration with racists, genocidal maniacs, drug lords, rapacious corporations, fascists and juntas for bipartisan compromise.
Hell, even Bush had more balls – even if he was stupider still. Bush may have been ignorant and wrong, but he had the courage of his convictions. Obama apparently has no courage and no convictions. It is hard to tell which is the more dangerous combination. </end rant>
It is not a question of stupidity, Frank, it is a question of the same forces being in control during the Bush and the Obama presidencies. The perceptive and award winning essayist and novelist Gore Vidal long ago noted that we have one party in America, the corporate party, and it has two wings, one Republican, one Democratic.
This is exactly what we are seeing today. Over at the Defense Department, President Obama has not even bothered to replace W’s man in charge of defense, Robert Gates. Obama has even promoted most of the shrub’s generals, like McCrystal. DOD budget spending is up 8% under Obama, over that spent by Bush. So, nothing really has changed.
As you point out, it was also the Obama administration which on April 2, 2010, reversed a 27 year ban on offshore drilling. When Obama did that, he also told the world that oil rigs are safe nowadays and that “oil spills happen from refineries, not oil rigs.” He got that all wrong as he got his pick to administer Interior, Ken Salazar all wrong. When Obama selected Salazar, his pick was widely criticized by environmental groups because Salazar has a record of being in bed with special interests and being an offshore drilling exponent.
Contrary to what Obama claimed recently, moreover, Salazar did not begin to immediately change the corrupt culture over at Interior and especially in MMS. BP, which give boatloads of money to Obama, in return received waivers for filing environmental impact statements so they could drill offshore. In short, the Obama administration share responsibility with BP for this disaster. Poor policy choices, poor leadership, and poor regulatory oversight all contributed to this disaster.
I could go on and talk about health care reform where Obama essentially refused to even consider the public option or single payer. The bastard bill that emerged with his blessing will be a costly disaster. Most of its provisions do not begin until 2014, conveniently after Obama will be well along being out of office.
Many progressive and liberal Democrats, like myself, are keenly disappointed in how Obama has governed the past 16 months. Nothing much has changed from the Bush days. The wars continue, the economic crisis continues, the bank bailouts continue, and the attack on our environment continues…
Thanks for this eloquent response. I must admit the title was deliberately provocative to raise the question: How come if Obama is so much smarter than Bush is he following more or less the same foreign policies?
The Kossacks have taken it personally, because their whole raison d’etre is based on the fiction that the Dems are so fundamentally smarter and more moral than the Republicans they couldn’t possibly be pursuing more or less of the same policies.