First of all, Sarkozy is not France. Just like GW Bush was not America, although French people criticized all Americans for the policies of GWB.
Secondly, how is Obama's refusal to let big-talking France and UK manipulate America into doing all the heavy lifting in a war against Iran not putting America first? It is the exact definition of putting America first. Gordon Brown and N. Sarkozy want to be big boys at the big boys table, but all they do is talk and then let America spend all the money and spill all the blood. That's like me going to a bar and being a big loudmouth and then saying "my friend here [America] is gonna kick your ass" if you don't do what I want.
Let's just be clear, because Krauthammer and the other neocons like to dance around it: they want a war with Iran. Sanctions are a prelude, a mere technical hurdle to war because sanctions never work against stalwart regimes; and indeed they turn the population against the sanctioner who makes them suffer while their leaders live in palaces. The neocons like CK want to bomb Iran, which would require attacking all major Iranian cities, and perhaps require troops (since it's debatable whether bombing alone can truly destroy all of Iran's nuke facilities). That means more U.S. boots on the ground in the Middle East, hooray. And even then, how can we be sure? You can't bomb or shoot knowledge; and the key to building a nuclear program is the knowledge how to do it. So the only sure way to kill Iran's nuclear program is to destroy its government and install a new one, and ... to support that government would require U.S. aid and administration and security and training, and.... Are you having deja vu, too, or is it just me?
These chickenhawk, chicken-necked pundits and think-tank nerds are leading you and me by the nose into another disastrous war with unpredictable consequences, and unknown duration for the third time in less than 10 years (!) and making it seem as if America has no other choice. These war-mongering jerks who sit comfortably in DC telling us we need to go to war once again have no shame after starting two disasters that are still exploding in our faces. Somebody trying to be clever once said that, "Neocons are liberals who have been mugged by reality." Well, with great sadness but in all truth I would revise that remark: "Americans are mugged by neocons who live in their own reality."
Just be clear: Even bombing Iran would mean war. And it would be a real war, in the sense that American civilians will be put at risk, not just our military. We wouldn't be at war with a nation that is a basket case hobbled by a war and a decade of sanctions like Saddam's Iraq, or a primitive tribal culture with no government or army like Afghanistan. Iran can and will use its resources to foment anti-US terrorism all over the globe, their gloves will come completely off, and they will make bin Laden look like a Girl Scout. (And you'd better believe that Iran has been preparing for this contingency for years.)
Also understand this: you can kiss any hope for democracy or liberal reforms in Iran goodbye the moment the first U.S. bomb drops. Yeah, yeah, you say their elections are all fixed but this is not actually true, and there are opposition politicians and liberal/reform movements that are strong and have some protection in Iran. (Remember when McCain and the neocons said the U.S. gov't needed to do more to support them?) But when the bombing starts, Iranians will rally around Ahmadinejad and the ayatollahs, and any stragglers will be rounded up and quietly disposed of by the secret police without a word of criticism while the world community is dazzled by the shock & awe on CNN.
Taking potshots at Obama is all fine and good, but please be conscious of what policy you conservatives are tacitly supporting: starting a third war with a stronger enemy than Iraq or Afghanistan, while those two wars are still unfinished, and killing any hope for democracy in Iran. Once the first bomb drops, there will be only one exit: through the barrel of a gun.
On Sat, Oct 3, 2009 at 7:16 AM, <> wrote:
wanted you to see this: Obama's French Lesson
-------------------------------------------------------------
Message from :
This is why I don't think Obama cares about America first. Even France sees he lacks intention.
Obama's French Lesson
By Charles Krauthammer
URL: http://townhall.com/content/13cdf7e0-7129-4a9a-95ed-e1456160fc00
Showing posts with label Sarkozy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Sarkozy. Show all posts
Saturday, October 3, 2009
Friday, November 2, 2007
Socialism is Dead; Long Live Hillary!
I'll say it again: I'm no fan of Hillary and I won't vote for her because: (1) she's too conservative for my taste; and (2) she doesn't show the courage of her convictions on Iraq, Iran, and health care reform.
But many of the attacks on her are absurd and unfair. And she is just the latest of many conservative -- yes, conservative -- Democrats who are labeled, ridiculously, as "socialists" for supporting some measure like health care or education reform.
Once this rhetorical grenade is lobbed out in conservative circles it blows their minds. They immediately stop thinking and can only see Red.
Hillary is a socialist like I'm a member of the Christian Coalition. In fact, there are probably only a handful of politicians in America you could call socialist, maybe, like Bernie Sanders.
Comparing Hillary to Europe's premier conservative leader is especially edifying. France's president Nicolas Sarkozy, leader of the UMP, the French conservative party, is a recent darling of the American right for his buddying-up to Bush, eating beans & franks at Kennebunkport, tough statements on Iran, and walking out of a CBS (read: "liberal media") interview.
But in fact, Hillary Clinton's politics make Sarkozy's look positively socialist by comparison: although relatively conservative for a French politician on issues like immigration, crime, and America's superpower role in the world, Sarkozy is not an economic liberal, he "remains a Gaullist at heart." So what gives? How can one country's socialism be another country's conservatism?
America will never be socialist. It will never be as far to the left as France, no matter who is elected in either country. Barring some economic catastrophe, our two-party system will ensure that moderation prevails. That means no socialism. For basically the same reason, America will never be a Nazi regime. (I'm throwing out a bone here: Republicans are not Nazis.)
So let's lose the "socialist," "Marxist" and "Nazi" labels, OK? If you want to debate Hillary or any Democrats' ideas, have at them. But dismissing something or somebody as "socialist" and walking away is intellectually lazy and dishonest.
After 7 years of Dubya, it's time America had more debate and less fear-mongering and emotion.
Haunted by the Hippie
Despite the fact that Hillary Clinton is the most conservative Democrat running for president, the right makes her out to be a radical. Perhaps this is because the right still fears the social change hippies represented.
By Paul Waldman
October 24, 2007 | Prospect.org
A specter is haunting the 2008 presidential campaign. It is a terrifying beast that walks through mud, dances to eerie music, wears strange garments, and copulates wantonly. It smells vaguely of patchouli.
I speak, of course, of the hippie.
Or rather, the conservative image of the hippie, grafted onto a woman who could barely have been less countercultural back in the times when the actual species roamed the Earth: Hillary Clinton. If you thought we'd get through this campaign without the people who were too square to be down with the scene in the 1960s once again venting their resentment at their cooler peers, think again. But this time around, it's even less likely to work than it has in the past.
Not that they won't be trying. Imagine the quivers of delight over at RNC headquarters when they learned last week that back in June, senators Chuck Schumer and Hillary Clinton inserted a $1 million earmark into the health and education appropriations bill for the Museum at Bethel Woods in upstate New York, commemorating the Woodstock concert that took place there in 1969.
Cue the wa-wa pedal, bust out the love beads, stay away from the brown acid, blah blah blah -- these moments call for a full-scale mobilization of clichés. The best may have come from the conservative magazine Human Events, which blared on its website, "Earmarxists Commemorate the Hippie Summer of Love." They must have been waiting a long time to use that one.
Like phototropic plants, the presidential candidates were irresistibly pulled toward the culture war light. "Senator Clinton tried to spend $1 million on the Woodstock concert museum," said John McCain during Sunday's GOP debate. "Now, my friends, I wasn't there. I'm sure it was a cultural and pharmaceutical event. I was tied up at the time."
"Wow," marveled the Washington Post's Chris Cillizza. "A subtle reference to his time as a POW in the 'Hanoi Hilton' that the crowd slowly but surely caught on to and eventually rewarded McCain with an extended standing ovation." If that's what Cilizza considers "subtle," one supposes McCain would have had to have come to the debate wearing his flight suit to qualify as blunt. (One of the great media myths about McCain is that he's too modest to bring up his Vietnam service without prompting. In truth, he brings it up all the time. As soon as the debate ended, his campaign sent out a fundraising email with the words "I was tied up at the time" in the subject line.)
It wasn't just the Republicans who were having fun with the earmark. In a bit of video Photoshopping, CNN actually took a shot of the crowd at Woodstock and placed Clinton and Schumer's faces inside it, as though they were there. It was crude enough not to be meant to fool anyone, but the point was as subtle as McCain's well-rehearsed line.
Of course, Hillary Clinton wasn't at Woodstock. Clinton arrived at Wellesley in 1965 as a "Goldwater girl," and though her politics grew more progressive during her time there, then as now she was a creature of the establishment, seeking change within the system and warning against advocating radical ideas. Not one for experimenting with drugs or sex, she charted a sensible and serious course through the Sixties.
This personal history could barely be less relevant, of course. As far as many on the right are concerned, Clinton might as well be campaigning in a tie-dye peasant blouse and leading the crowd in a rousing rendition of "The Internationale" before every speech. Clinton is without question the most conservative Democrat running for president, a foreign policy hawk, death penalty supporter, and abstinence advocate who attends Bible study with Sam Brownback . Yet she is nonetheless slammed again and again by the right as not just someone with character flaws, but as an ideological radical whose true danger lies in her policy agenda.
The argument they make is that every centrist position Clinton takes is part of an intricately constructed ruse, meant to lull the American voter into thinking her politics are less than insanely radical. Google "Hillary Clinton" and "socialist" and you get over a million hits explaining how just about everything she advocates is but a prelude to all of us being herded into backbreaking labor on collective farms. After being sworn in as president, she will presumably cast off all pretensions to moderation and unleash this terrifying program. Right-wing radio and television host Glenn Beck recently called Clinton "Stalin in a pantsuit."
To hear the GOP candidates and their supporters invoke "socialism" again and again, you'd think it was the most potent attack one could offer, despite the fact that it happens to be 2007, not 1967. But how many people are really afraid of socialism anymore? [Apparently, several million deluded Americans! - J ] Anyone under 35 -- over a quarter of the adult population -- hadn't reached voting age when the Berlin Wall fell in 1989. For them, socialism isn't a malevolent force slithering through the countryside, infecting disgruntled employees and worming its way into our government. It's something they learned about in history class, a foreign ideology that had something to do with people in grey, shapeless coats waiting in long lines. Today, it's about as threatening to America as the Hapsburgs.
That isn't to say there aren't significant portions of the Republican base who look at Hillary Clinton and see a combination of Rosa Luxembourg and Joan Baez. But today, who is it that embraces the idea of counterculture with the greatest fervency? It's conservative evangelical Christians, who can now be heard to say again and again that their lifestyle choice is a radical act that threatens society's dominant mores. This isn't just a clever rhetorical ploy to perk up an audience's ears, it has become a deeply felt piece of self-identification, nowhere more so than in the chastity movement. Forty years ago, hippies believed that having sex was an act of rebellion, a way of sticking it to the suffocating dominant culture by violating their sacred taboos. Today's chastity activists believe that not having sex is just as much a rebellion.
Except it isn't, not really. Their rebellion is against habits and mores, while the hippies were rebelling against not just those things but actual power. No one will arrest today's rebels for being chaste, and if, 20 years from now, some of them decide to run for office, their wanton youthful virginity will probably not be held against them. And nothing could be less rebellious than the pose of rebellion itself, something that has been co-opted and commodified within an inch of its life. Sure, you can rebel by staying a virgin -- but we're also told you can rebel by drinking Sprite or buying a Cadillac. Counterculture long ago became simply culture.
The evangelical embrace of the language of the counterculture points to one more reason the conservatives still hate hippies so much: The hippies won. Sure, they're easy to make fun of, and the era saw plenty of excesses now properly regarded as such. But most of the core cleavages of the 1960s culture war have been decided in the hippies' favor. Their ideas about race, about child-rearing, about much of politics, and even about sex have become mainstream. The number of people who would actually want to return to the conservative Eden of the 1950s dwindles with each passing year.
As for Hillary Clinton, whom some would nominate as Hippie-in-Chief, she may not have gone to Woodstock, but she does represent a threat. Not because of who she was 40 years ago, or because of the policies she actually advocates today, but because if she wins it will be one more sign that the cries that Democrats are a bunch of socialist hippies increasingly fall on deaf electoral ears. And for the conservative culture warriors, that's the most terrifying thing of all.
A specter is haunting the 2008 presidential campaign. It is a terrifying beast that walks through mud, dances to eerie music, wears strange garments, and copulates wantonly. It smells vaguely of patchouli.
I speak, of course, of the hippie.
Or rather, the conservative image of the hippie, grafted onto a woman who could barely have been less countercultural back in the times when the actual species roamed the Earth: Hillary Clinton. If you thought we'd get through this campaign without the people who were too square to be down with the scene in the 1960s once again venting their resentment at their cooler peers, think again. But this time around, it's even less likely to work than it has in the past.
Not that they won't be trying. Imagine the quivers of delight over at RNC headquarters when they learned last week that back in June, senators Chuck Schumer and Hillary Clinton inserted a $1 million earmark into the health and education appropriations bill for the Museum at Bethel Woods in upstate New York, commemorating the Woodstock concert that took place there in 1969.
Cue the wa-wa pedal, bust out the love beads, stay away from the brown acid, blah blah blah -- these moments call for a full-scale mobilization of clichés. The best may have come from the conservative magazine Human Events, which blared on its website, "Earmarxists Commemorate the Hippie Summer of Love." They must have been waiting a long time to use that one.
Like phototropic plants, the presidential candidates were irresistibly pulled toward the culture war light. "Senator Clinton tried to spend $1 million on the Woodstock concert museum," said John McCain during Sunday's GOP debate. "Now, my friends, I wasn't there. I'm sure it was a cultural and pharmaceutical event. I was tied up at the time."
"Wow," marveled the Washington Post's Chris Cillizza. "A subtle reference to his time as a POW in the 'Hanoi Hilton' that the crowd slowly but surely caught on to and eventually rewarded McCain with an extended standing ovation." If that's what Cilizza considers "subtle," one supposes McCain would have had to have come to the debate wearing his flight suit to qualify as blunt. (One of the great media myths about McCain is that he's too modest to bring up his Vietnam service without prompting. In truth, he brings it up all the time. As soon as the debate ended, his campaign sent out a fundraising email with the words "I was tied up at the time" in the subject line.)
It wasn't just the Republicans who were having fun with the earmark. In a bit of video Photoshopping, CNN actually took a shot of the crowd at Woodstock and placed Clinton and Schumer's faces inside it, as though they were there. It was crude enough not to be meant to fool anyone, but the point was as subtle as McCain's well-rehearsed line.
Of course, Hillary Clinton wasn't at Woodstock. Clinton arrived at Wellesley in 1965 as a "Goldwater girl," and though her politics grew more progressive during her time there, then as now she was a creature of the establishment, seeking change within the system and warning against advocating radical ideas. Not one for experimenting with drugs or sex, she charted a sensible and serious course through the Sixties.
This personal history could barely be less relevant, of course. As far as many on the right are concerned, Clinton might as well be campaigning in a tie-dye peasant blouse and leading the crowd in a rousing rendition of "The Internationale" before every speech. Clinton is without question the most conservative Democrat running for president, a foreign policy hawk, death penalty supporter, and abstinence advocate who attends Bible study with Sam Brownback . Yet she is nonetheless slammed again and again by the right as not just someone with character flaws, but as an ideological radical whose true danger lies in her policy agenda.
The argument they make is that every centrist position Clinton takes is part of an intricately constructed ruse, meant to lull the American voter into thinking her politics are less than insanely radical. Google "Hillary Clinton" and "socialist" and you get over a million hits explaining how just about everything she advocates is but a prelude to all of us being herded into backbreaking labor on collective farms. After being sworn in as president, she will presumably cast off all pretensions to moderation and unleash this terrifying program. Right-wing radio and television host Glenn Beck recently called Clinton "Stalin in a pantsuit."
To hear the GOP candidates and their supporters invoke "socialism" again and again, you'd think it was the most potent attack one could offer, despite the fact that it happens to be 2007, not 1967. But how many people are really afraid of socialism anymore? [Apparently, several million deluded Americans! - J ] Anyone under 35 -- over a quarter of the adult population -- hadn't reached voting age when the Berlin Wall fell in 1989. For them, socialism isn't a malevolent force slithering through the countryside, infecting disgruntled employees and worming its way into our government. It's something they learned about in history class, a foreign ideology that had something to do with people in grey, shapeless coats waiting in long lines. Today, it's about as threatening to America as the Hapsburgs.
That isn't to say there aren't significant portions of the Republican base who look at Hillary Clinton and see a combination of Rosa Luxembourg and Joan Baez. But today, who is it that embraces the idea of counterculture with the greatest fervency? It's conservative evangelical Christians, who can now be heard to say again and again that their lifestyle choice is a radical act that threatens society's dominant mores. This isn't just a clever rhetorical ploy to perk up an audience's ears, it has become a deeply felt piece of self-identification, nowhere more so than in the chastity movement. Forty years ago, hippies believed that having sex was an act of rebellion, a way of sticking it to the suffocating dominant culture by violating their sacred taboos. Today's chastity activists believe that not having sex is just as much a rebellion.
Except it isn't, not really. Their rebellion is against habits and mores, while the hippies were rebelling against not just those things but actual power. No one will arrest today's rebels for being chaste, and if, 20 years from now, some of them decide to run for office, their wanton youthful virginity will probably not be held against them. And nothing could be less rebellious than the pose of rebellion itself, something that has been co-opted and commodified within an inch of its life. Sure, you can rebel by staying a virgin -- but we're also told you can rebel by drinking Sprite or buying a Cadillac. Counterculture long ago became simply culture.
The evangelical embrace of the language of the counterculture points to one more reason the conservatives still hate hippies so much: The hippies won. Sure, they're easy to make fun of, and the era saw plenty of excesses now properly regarded as such. But most of the core cleavages of the 1960s culture war have been decided in the hippies' favor. Their ideas about race, about child-rearing, about much of politics, and even about sex have become mainstream. The number of people who would actually want to return to the conservative Eden of the 1950s dwindles with each passing year.
As for Hillary Clinton, whom some would nominate as Hippie-in-Chief, she may not have gone to Woodstock, but she does represent a threat. Not because of who she was 40 years ago, or because of the policies she actually advocates today, but because if she wins it will be one more sign that the cries that Democrats are a bunch of socialist hippies increasingly fall on deaf electoral ears. And for the conservative culture warriors, that's the most terrifying thing of all.
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