Obama's New 'Improved' War Party
Source: The End of the Affair - Obama & the Nntiwar MovementAs the euphoria of the Obama cult builds toward a climax and the pundits declaim the advent of Something Big, it's the small changes that concern me, particularly those that touch directly on my job, which is to sniff out the War Party wherever it is presently burrowed.
The election of Barack Obama has been the signal for many of them to migrate like fleas from the carcasses of the campaigns they attached themselves to and hop on the warm body of the new administration, which presents a rather large target.
It's a new day, and in the age of Obama, the War Party's battalions are massed on the ostensible Left. Now that's the kind of change I can believe in.
Ah, yes, the small changes, particularly the ones that concern me personally: those are what I'm really interested in, quite naturally, and the biggest change – and I have to say it comes as a welcome relief – will be in my targets.
Instead of having to deal with all those tiresome neoconservatives with Republican leanings, I'll be dealing with a whole new crowd.
Of course, a lot of veteran neocons will turn up, particularly at the fringes of the incoming administration, but the real core of the War Party's strength will be in the State Department.
Hillary Clinton will be lording over a new nest of neocon hatchlings, albeit of the social-democratic variety.
In alliance with the "humanitarian" interventionists, whose shtick is sending troops to places like Kosovo, Darfur, Congo, and Burma, this new, reinvented War Party is ready and willing to open up several new fronts in our endless "war on terrorism," with potentially cataclysmic consequences for America and the world.
The War Party's decisive influence in the Obama administration was rolled out on Monday. Even the most craven Obama-bots on the Left will be left wondering who and what they voted for.
Hillary the hawk at State, Bush's warlord Robert Gates at Defense, and Gen. Jim Jones – who wants to station U.S. troops in the occupied territories under the rubric of NATO! – as national security adviser to the president.
Yes, antiwar voters took a chance on Obama, reasoning that anything would be better than four more years of Bushian belligerence, yet now they discover to their chagrin that the dice are loaded.
The same old crowd that brought us the invasion of Iraq is back, if not in full force or purest form, then at least in worrying numbers and high positions.
The cries of "betrayal" are already being heard. The response from the Obama cult among the liberal landed gentry, in particular the ones who own choice pieces of editorial real estate in the nation's top newspapers, was delivered by E. J. Dionne from his perch at the Washington Post:
"In electing Barack Obama, the country traded the foreign policy of the second President Bush for the foreign policy of the first President Bush.
"That is the meaning of Obama's apparent decision to keep Robert Gates on as defense secretary and also to select Hillary Clinton as secretary of state."
This delights Dionne, even as it depresses those anti-interventionist voters who thought they had an ally in the White House. More...