How Green Is Obama? Well, He Recycles Clinton Crap
Source: Rumors in early November that Hillary Clinton would be Barack Obama's Secretary of State have by now been substantiated; the official announcement is thought to be only days away.Other Clinton-era officials, such as Bill Richardson, have been tapped for cabinet positions as well.
As one Washington journalist observed, "There is hardly a soul on [Obama's] transition team or among his prospective administration who hasn't been inside the Beltway all along."
Stipulating, for the sake of argument, at the moment that Obama's desire to re-create the economic climate of the Clinton era amounts to substantial change from the post-Bushian depression, the fact that Washington is not getting a fresh start but rather a recycled government may not seem so terrible.
However, Obama isn't returning to the nineties just in terms of domestic policy.
Between Clinton at Foggy Bottom, the belligerent Joe Biden as Vice President, he looks set to revive the Clinton-era doctrine of "humanitarian imperialism," which differs from the Bush doctrine only in flavor, not in effect.
And given that he's keeping Robert Gates on as Secretary of Defense, the argument that Barack Hussein Obama is not interested in getting rid of the American Empire appears to be rock-solid.
As Justin Raimondo pointed out earlier this week, what seems in store is a "protracted period of confusion and internal struggle, punctuated by periodic foreign crises in which Team Obama will be all too eager to prove their 'toughness'."
This isn't exactly change from the Bush era, much less something anyone other than the power-crazed neocons in Washington can believe in.
Continuity of Empire
Here is an important fact about the American Empire: it is bipartisan. It honestly doesn't matter whether a Democrat or a Republican sits in the White House – not to the people halfway across the world paying for it with their lives, and not to Americans who are paying with their liberty and property.
During the Clinton years, many Republicans and especially the conservative commentariat opposed the military adventures in Somalia and the Balkans.
It was instructive to see some of those people change their tune completely once George W. Bush took office and launched expeditions into Afghanistan and Iraq.
Meanwhile, those who cheered the "humanitarian bombing" of Serbs would protest the "shock and awe" aimed at Iraqis.
Yet as British historian Kate Hudson noted in 2003, there is hardly a difference between Bush's invasion of Iraq in 2003 and Clinton's expedition against Serbia in 1999.
For all his criticism of "nation-building" and promises of a "more humble foreign policy," Bush was all too willing to use the precedent offered by Clinton's naked aggression to justify an aggressive war of his own.
Assuming for a moment that a punishment expedition into Afghanistan was warranted by the events of 9/11 – which is by no means indisputable – certainly a protracted occupation and a "nation-building" experiment were not.
Iraq was a naked power grab, justified by lies and fabrications, simply criminal in nature and execution – just like Kosovo.
What, then, is Obama's "change," precisely? America will still bomb people and invade countries, but it will be more polite about it? More...