Meet The New Boss. Same As The Old Boss.
It is with great sadness that I say this. But I don't see any serious difference between Obama's Foreign Policy now (just a continuation of the boggling financial waste, and mass violence that we've seen over the past eight years), and that of Presidential candidate John McCain.
While some may say, "but he's only been in office for one month", the truth is - that is plenty of time to begin to outline and articulate a brand new sane strategy for addressing terrorism, using new ideas and new policy advisors, and to publically reject the failed, bankrupt policies of the last eight years, that were plainly fraudulent, corrupt, self-destructive, and that has disgraced the United States, and been a boon for Al Qaeda recruitment. Instead, Obama has embraced them, and wants them to continue.
A quick look at the Obama track record:
- Obama could have chosen anybody of his liking to be his Defense Secretary. He won the Election. It was completely his choice. So what did he do? He chose to define his new adminstration, by reaching backwards to resuscitate George W. Bush henchman Robert Gates (a longtime confidant of the corrupt Bush family, and a former CIA Iran-Contra supervisor/participant) to continue the failed War & Occupation policies.
- He has not withdrawn any damn troops whatsoever from Iraq, as he promised that he would do immediately in his first few days in office. Instead of several brigades immediately coming home...we get nothing (and a continuation of business-as-usual).
- He is not going to close the invasive U.S. Military Bases in Iraq at all (the thing that would actually signal a true end to the U.S. Occuaption), but instead will keep the U.S. Bases and the Occupation clearly going on indefinitely, including combat troops.
- He has not voided, or even spoken out against, the corrupt Oil Contracts, and allowed Iraq to control their own Economic future, as they should. Another signal that there is no true change on the whole corrupt Iraq policy.
- He has now escalated the failed Afghanistan Occupation by sending 17,000 troops into the region, without any new exit strategy just like George W. Bush, and will have blood on his hands now. He wanted to send in 30,000, but since he never took any damn troops out of Iraq, he could not get that number just yet. Afghanistan is destined to be Obama's "Vietnam".
- He has been Bombing Pakistan and murdering civilians there, and has already now directly engaged himself in International War Crimes, no different than Bush.
- He is busy defending and protecting Karl Rove from a Congressional subpeona, using "not wanting to weaken the executive branch" as an excuse to ensure the immunity and non-prosecution of Karl Rove and any other Bush officials, before John Conyers is allowed to proceed.
- He is protecting the Bush administration torture secrets in the Courts, and his Justice Dept. is thumbing his nose at the FOIA requests to disclose the public's right to information.
- He is protecting the Bush adminstration from War Crimes.
- He is leaving in place the Governments unlimited wiretapping laws and FISA abuses.
- He is leaving in place the Unconstitutional U.S. Patriot Act.
- He has not ended the photography blackout, on coffins shipped back to this Country, of dead serviceman (the true results of all these policies), but instead has just left it to the pentagon "review" (letting the Foxes decide the Hen House policies).
- The one area where he actually made a break from Bush-Cheney policy, an announcement to "shutdown" Gitmo, has now been deferred and delayed for one year.
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So my question remains, if John McCain were the U.S. President right now, how would our Foreign Policy be any damn different than it is right now??
Obama is just continuing virtually everything that has been going on for the last eight years, and even adding onto it, the Bombing of Pakistan on top of everything else.
We have no new U.S. Foreign Policy.