Obama’s Angelic Doctrine Disarms Evil Enemies

By Con George-Kotzabasis

Reply to: The Mellow Doctrine by Roger Cohen

global.nytimes.com May 03, 2009

Roger Cohen riding his high horse as a columnist of The New York Times trots a ‘neighing’ argument that throws the rider on the paddock. He claims and infers that the new policies of President Obama in foreign affairs, which he frames in his term of The Mellow Doctrine, are holistic remedies for the wanton malicious inflicted maladies that the Bush-Cheney administration had placed upon the body politic of America that had alienated it in the minds and hearts of so many people in the world.

These policies now are spreading and reverberating across Latin America, Europe, and Asia Minor and are creating an echoing melodious sound of Europeans, Turks and Latinos–with only a slight discordant hoarse bass note coming through the nostrils of an old dog, Fidel Castro, who can smell in Obama another imperialist rat. In Strasbourg the French and Germans loved to hear the President expostulating on the new fully cooperative conduct of the U.S. with its major allies, the French seeing him as an exemplar of their own past mission civilisatrice in the sphere of diplomacy, and the Germans as a second Ich bin ein Berliner, after John F. Kennedy. In Prague, the multi-cultured Czechs were delighted to hear him say that he was “committing the United States to a world without nuclear weapons,” and his outpouring of a profusion of mea culpa of America’s past misdeeds and the arrogance of imperial powers and its leaders, who like Roosevelt and Churchill would determine the fate of peoples “sitting in the room with a brandy.” In Turkey, the most modern of Muslim nations thanks to its insightful great Soldier-Statesman Kemal Ataturk, the Turks were regaled to see Obama parading before them his own partial Muslim origins and hear him say that Muslims had been treated with “insufficient respect” in the past. And in Trinidad and Tobago, where the Fifth Summit of the Americas was held, Obama enraptured the Latinos to such a degree that even the spirited anti-American warriors Raul Castro and Hugo Chavez were won over, the latter being moved so much so that he gave as a gift to Obama a book on American imperialism and the latter reciprocating to Hugo’s generous gesture by giving him a warm handshake and a friendly touch on the shoulder.

To Cohen, all the above related events are a clear sign that “Foes…have been disarmed by Barack Obama’s no-drama diplomacy.” Obama’s “mellow doctrine…finding strength through unconventional means: acknowledgement of the limits of American power; frankness about U.S. failings; careful listening; fear reduction; adroit deployment of the wide appeal of brand Barack Hussein Obama; and jujitsu engagement.” If the above quotes are not a perfect illustration that Obama made a confession of American weakness before the ‘priesthood’ of his ‘Catholic’ enemies, then one will ever search in vain for  a definition of weakness in any dictionary. And to bring jujitsu in this bout of weakness as a saving line is like offering someone who already lies unconscious on the floor from the blows of his opponent the Japanese art of training the mind and body in unarmed combat. In this context for Cohen to mock Dick Cheney for saying that America’s enemies perceive “a weak president,” is to brand himself with his own mockery.

This confession of weakness is the ‘Eighteenth of Brumaire of Barack Hussein Obama,’ to paraphrase Karl Marx on Louis Bonaparte, an intellectual coup d’état by   the constitutional lawyer against the constitution of the political wisdom of the ages in whose preamble imprescriptibly is written that to show and admit weakness before one’s enemies is the cardinal unforgiveable political sin. As in any human contest only when a party is weakened is prepared to make concessions whereas the strong seek and drive home their victory. This applies more so to fanatically religious enemies who have an ineradicable tendency to see, due to their irrational cogitations, any conciliatory initiative of their opponents as an admission of weakness.

But the intellectual fragility of Cohen’s argument is exposed by his use of the weakest enemies of America, that is, the Castro brothers and Hugo Chavez, and surprisingly Turkey, which has not been an enemy of the U.S., to drive home the success of the conciliatory attitude of President Obama. In the case of Turkey, he claims that at the NATO meeting the Turks dropped their opposition to the nomination of Denmark’s Anders Rasmussen as the alliance’s secretary general because of “Obama’s conciliatory message to Muslims.” In contrast, the previous administration by “humiliating Muslims” filled the schools of Waziristan and Ramadi with recruits for future terror. When one asks whence this humiliation of Muslims started the unutterable answer of Cohen must be since 9/11. The undeniably harsh but necessary measures that the Bush administration took against Muslim terrorists to protect its citizens from, at the time, imponderable future attacks, were in the eyes of Cohen measures that “humiliated Muslims.” Just as well columnists of this sort are ‘unsheathing’ their pens to write their columns instead of unsheathing their paper swords to protect Americans.  

Most of all Cohen is apparently very fond of the following by President Obama. “Resistance” to a set of U.S. policies “may turn out to be based on old preconceptions or ideological dogmas” of the previous administration, and “when they are cleared away …we can actually solve a problem.” So President Obama with a broom in his hand once he sweeps this ideological debris of the Bush administration he will be able to start solving the innumerable problems that America is facing. But the fact is that the United States is not countenancing these problems because of “old preconceptions or ideological dogmas,” but because of its status as the sole superpower is inevitably burdened to carry like Atlas all the world’s crises and hot spots on its back and to set up actions that are not always agreeable by the rest of the world that would have a chance to resolve these crises. And inevitably because of the multiple actions it has to take in so many complex parts of the world it cannot jump over the shadow of fallibility. The alternative, to restrict its engagement with the rest of the world because of its immense risks and possible errors of judgment, is not the raison d’être of great power. Moreover, a disengagement from the hot spots of the world would allow sinister and brutal fanatical leaders to take over countries and oppress their peoples as well as endanger the stability of the world.

The political naivety and immaturity of President Obama is encapsulated in his own terms in regard to Iran: Normal relations can be restored on the “mutual respect” of opponents. This would be forsooth the reality if your opponent considered you to be negotiating from a strong position. It would not be true if his estimate was that his opponent was negotiating from a weak position contra his own strong position. The strong can be at times kind, gracious, and helpful toward the weak but never have any respect for the weak. This is more so in the hard realm of geopolitics. The Iranian theocracy will see any diplomatic initiatives by the United States as an admittance of political feebleness by the latter and will exploit this to their advantage. And by the time when President Obama will become aware of this the Iranians will be already close to the entrance of the nuclear club. No angelic or mellow doctrine of Obama will disarm America’s implacable irreconcilable foes. Only the thunder, and as last resort the bolt of Jupiter, can defeat these deadly enemies.  

Hic Rhodus hic Salta

      

Iraq:Legacy of Victory or Legacy of Defeat?

Forget Legacy-Building:Iraq is NO Japan Mr. President

By David Sanger, Washington Note, January 1, 2006

The following reply is republished here as it clearly shows how wrong all the critics of the war in Iraq and its ‘unraveling’ have been. It’s obvious now, except for those who continue to be in a state of denial, that the new strategy of the Surge implemented by the capable and superb commander General Petraeus is defeating the insurgents and is laying down the rudiments of democracy in Iraq. If these offshoots of freedom grow eventually into the tree of democracy in Iraq, then president Bush’s objective to start democracy rolling in the Middle East will be glowingly achieved. And the pessimists and the naysayers of the neocon strategy to spread and establish democracy in countries that breed terrorism, will have so much egg on their face that will be a full time job for nannies to wipe it off their face.

A brief reply by Con George-Kotzabasis

Legacies do not fall like manna from the sky. Nor are they tailor-made of an original design. They are made by “wearing” for long the hard course of action that will ultimately shape and give birth to the legacy. Moreover, its creator is not one person, but a set of intelligent human beings, who however, are always “escorted” by the jump less shadow of fallibility and serendipity, which inevitably take their toll, but without which no great achievement can be accomplished in human affairs.

The Bush administration, despite some serious mistakes in its strategy (which must creatively and imaginatively be criticized, but not by doomsayer scenarios–which regrettably some readers of The Washington Note are incapable of making a distinction between imaginative critics and doomsayers) is still on the right strategy, both in realizing the prowess and the malice of the enemy and how to confront him. To compare, as Sanger does, this prowess of the religiously fanatic terrorists, whose lethal actions have the great potential of becoming a ceaseless series of successes, with the one off bombings of anarchists, is historically ludicrous. Secondly, to compare the fate of democracy in the Philippines in 1898, with the fate of democracy in Iraq in the age of TV and of the Internet, when most people in oppressed countries can see how other people live in democratic countries and can virtually breath the air of freedom that emanates from these countries, is to compound this incomparable inanity of Sanger.

Also, John Dower’s proposition, “that people know what victory looks like”, as he deems Bush’s victory to be a fabrication, is overtly contradicted by the polls which showed Bush’s ratings for the war jumping from 36% to 46%, after the President’s intense campaign to explain the war to the American people. Lastly, David Donald’s seemingly poignant statement, about Bush’s comparison of the spying intrusions to the “sleeping partners” of the terrorists, with Lincoln’s suspension of habeas corpus, that there was an uproar against Lincoln and a “lot of people believed it wasn’t necessary”, why is this so surprising, did he expect a unanimous agreement by the American people about such a fundamental, but necessary, reversal of rights even in times of war?

The Administration’s strategy in Iraq was to establish an Archimedean point from which it could turn the terrorist’s world and its sponsors upon their own heads. By defeating Saddam and the current insurgency, it can defeat by proxy, as Libya has shown, all other rogue states, and hence expedite the defeat of global terror. History has not as yet passed its verdict. But the chances are that the Bush administration will accomplish this historic task, and prove wrong all its doomsayers and shallow, unimaginative critics.

 Your turn now…

Posted by: Con George-Kotzabasis on January 2, 2006 03:23 AM

How to Overcome the Difficulties of a No-Fly Zone and how to Defeat Gadhafi

The ineffectiveness of a no-fly zone in Bosnia cannot be used as an argument in the totally different circumstances in Libya. Milocevic was fighting a nationalist war for a greater Serbia and his relatively powerful military forces were involved ardently in this ‘great’ goal of Serbia. By contrast, Gaddafi is fighting for his own survival with a weakened army, due to defections from its ranks, and compelled to import mercenaries to kill his own people, which in turn increases and exacerbates the divide between the regime and the Libyan people. This is the fundamental difference between Milocevic and Gaddafi. Therefore, I would propose the following strategy.

By Con George-Kotzabasis

The design of a strategy of the unexpected by U.S. military strategists might overcome the difficulties of a no-fly zone, as expounded by Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, and might defeat Muammar Gadhafi.

Given the destabilization of his regime, not only because of the revolt of the Libyan people but also because of the widespread defection of politicians, diplomats, and military personnel to the side of the rebels, this chain of events has increased the magnitude of the vulnerability of his own supporters to the call of major nations and of the UN for the ousting of Gadhafi, and hence could ease, and lead to, the abandonment of the autocrat. To ratchet up the momentum of this vulnerability, military strategists should draw up a plan of vaguely defined unexpected threats that would be inflicted on Gadhafi’s supporters if they continued to defend him. The linchpin of this plan would have two strategic components. The immediate declaration by the U.S. and NATO of both the imposition of a no-fly zone and of no-use of air defences by Libyan forces. In the event that the latter do not abide to these two demands they would draw like fly-stick upon themselves the awesome devastation that will emerge from the military power of the U.S. and NATO. The latter will not have to send one aircraft over, or ground one soldier in, Libya, they will only have to ‘send’ this uncertainty as to the unexpected destruction that would befall on the supporters of Gadhafi.

Airpower therefore can also be used as a psychological weapon, especially in circumstances when the enemy’s military forces are losing trust toward their political leadership and are concerned about their own safety, as presently happens to be the situation in Libya.

Veni vidi vici.