The "Obama Doctrine": Eternal War For Imperfect Mankind "For make
no mistake: Evil does exist in the world."
By Rick Rozoff
URL of this article:www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=16503
Global Research, December 11, 2009 Stop NATO - 2009-12-10
President and commander-in-chief of the armed forces of the United
States Barack Obama delivered his Nobel Peace Prize acceptance
address in Oslo on December 10, which has immediately led to media
discussion of an Obama Doctrine.
With obligatory references to Martin Luther King, Jr. and Mohandas
Gandhi (the second referred to only by his surname) but to no other
American presidents than Ronald Reagan, Richard Nixon and John F.
Kennedy - fellow peace prize recipients Theodore Roosevelt, Woodrow
Wilson and Jimmy Carter weren't mentioned - the U.S. head of state
spoke with the self-assurance of the leader of the world's first
uncontested superpower and at times with the self-righteousness of
a would-be prophet and clairvoyant. And, in the words of German
philosopher Friedrich von Schlegel, a prophet looking backward.
Accompanied by visionary gaze and cadenced, oratorical solemnity,
his comments included the assertion that "War, in one form or
another, appeared with the first man." Unless this unsubstantiated
claim was an allusion to the account in the Book of Genesis in the
Hebrew Bible of Cain murdering his brother Abel, which would hardly
constitute war in any intelligible meaning of the word (nor was
Cain the first man according to that source), it is unclear where
Obama acquired the conviction that war is coeval with and presumably
an integral part of humanity.
Paleontologists generally trace the arrival of modern man, homo
sapiens, back 200,000 years, yet the first authenticated written
histories are barely 2,400 years old. How Obama and his speechwriters
filled in the 197,600-year gap to prove that the practice of war
is as old as mankind and implicitly inseparable from the human
condition is a question an enterprising reporter might venture to
ask at the next presidential press conference.
Perhaps delusions of omniscience is the answer. The Oslo speech is
replete with references to and appropriations of the attributes of
divinity. And to historical and anthropological fatalism; a deeply
pessimistic concept of Providence.
Obama affirmed that "no Holy War can ever be a just war. For if you
truly believe that you are carrying out divine will, then there is
no need for restraint." Then shortly afterward stated "Let us reach
for the world that ought to be - that spark of the divine that still
stirs within each of our souls." An adversary's invocation of the
divine is false, heretical, sacrilegious; Washington's is true,
unerring, sufficient to justify any action, however violent and
deadly. As unadulterated an illustration of secular Manicheaism as
can be found in the modern world.
Toward the beginning of his speech the first standing American
president in ninety years to receive the Peace Prize acknowledged
that "perhaps the most profound issue surrounding my receipt of
this prize is the fact that I am the Commander-in-Chief of the
military of a nation in the midst of two wars."
Understandably he exerted no effort to justify one of the two wars
in question, that in Iraq, but endorsed and pledged the continuation
of the other, that in Afghanistan and increasingly Pakistan - while
elsewhere speaking disparagingly of the European Crusades of the
later Middle Ages.
Neither the Nobel Committee nor its honoree seemed inordinately if
at all concerned by the unprecedented awarding of the prestigious
and generous ($1.4 million) Peace Prize to a commander-in-chief in
charge of two simultaneous wars far from his nation's shores and
in countries whose governments and peoples never threatened it in
any manner.
In language that never before was heard during a peace prize
acceptance speech, Obama added "we are at war, and I'm responsible
for the deployment of thousands of young Americans to battle in a
distant land. Some will kill, and some will be killed."
With not a scintilla of national self-awareness, balance or irony,
he also derided the fact that "modern technology allows a few small
men with outsized rage to murder innocents on a horrific scale,"
as he orders unmanned aerial vehicles (drones) linked by space
satellites to launch deadly missile attacks in Afghanistan and
Pakistan.
The central themes of Obama's speech are reiterations of standing
U.S. policy going back over a decade with the waging of war against
Yugoslavia in early 1999 without United Nations authorization or
even a nominal attempt to obtain one; that the U.S. and its Western
military allies can decide individually and collectively when, to
what degree, where and for what purpose to use military force
anywhere in the world. And the prerogative to employ military force
outside national borders is reserved exclusively for the United
States, its fellow NATO members and select military clients outside
the Euro-Atlantic zone such as Colombia, Ethiopia, Georgia, Israel
and Saudi Arabia of late.
What is arguably unique in Obama's address is the bluntness with
which it reaffirmed this doctrine of international lawlessness.
Excerpts along this line, shorn of ingenuous qualifications and
decorative camouflage, include:
"We must begin by acknowledging the hard truth: We will not eradicate
violent conflict in our lifetimes. There will be times when nations
- acting individually or in concert - will find the use of force
not only necessary but morally justified."
He offered a summary of the just war argument that a White House
researcher could have cribbed from Wikipedia.
"[A]s a head of state sworn to protect and defend my nation, I
cannot be guided by their [Gandhi's and King's] examples alone. I
face the world as it is, and cannot stand idle in the face of threats
to the American people. For make no mistake: Evil does exist in the
world."
"I - like any head of state - reserve the right to act unilaterally
if necessary to defend my nation."
Evil, as a noun rather than an adjective, is used twice in the
speech, emblematic of a quasi-theological tone alternating with
coldly and even callously pragmatic pronouncements.
Indicative of the second category are comments like these:
"[T]he instruments of war do have a role to play in preserving the
peace."
"A non-violent movement could not have halted Hitler's armies.
Negotiations cannot convince al Qaeda's leaders to lay down their
arms. To say that force may sometimes be necessary is not a call
to cynicism....
"I raise this point, I begin with this point because in many countries
there is a deep ambivalence about military action today, no matter
what the cause.
And at times, this is joined by a reflexive suspicion of America,
the world's sole military superpower."
Comparing a small handful of al-Qaeda personnel to Hitler's Wehrmacht
is unconscionable. Whatever else the former are, they barely have
arms to lay down. But Obama does, the world's largest and most
deadly conventional and nuclear arsenal.
His playing the trump card of Nazi Germany is not only an act of
rhetorical recklessness, it is historically unjustified. There would
have been no need to confront the Third Reich's legions if timely
diplomatic actions had been taken when Hitler sent troops into the
Rhineland in 1936; if Britain and France had not collaborated with
Hitler's Germany and Mussolini's Italy to enforce the naval blockade
of Republican Spain while German aircraft devastated Guernica and
other towns and German and Italian troops poured into the country
by the tens of thousands in support of Generalissimo Franco's
uprising. If, finally, Britain, France, Germany and Italy had not
met in Munich in 1938 to sacrifice Czechoslovakia's Sudetenland to
Hitler to encourage his murderous drive to the east. The same four
nations met 70 years later, last year, to reprise the Munich betrayal
by engineering the secession of Kosovo from Serbia, to demonstrate
how much had been learned in the interim.
As to the accusation that many nations bear an alleged "deep
ambivalence about military action" and even more so "a reflexive
suspicion of America, the world's sole military superpower," it
bespeaks alike arrogance, sanctimony, and an absolute imperviousness
to the reality of American foreign policy now and in the recent and
not so recent past. According to this imperial "sole military
superpower" perspective, the White House and the Pentagon can never
be wrong. Not even partially, unavoidably or unintentionally.
If others find fault with anything the world's only military
juggernaut does, it is a reflection of their own misguided pacifism
and ingrained, pathological "anti-Americanism." Perhaps this
constitutes the aforementioned "threats to the American people,"
as there aren't any others in Afghanistan or in the world as a whole
that were convincingly identified in the speech.
What may be the most noteworthy - and disturbing - line in the
address is what Obama characterised as the "recognition of history;
the imperfections of man and the limits of reason." Lest this
observation be construed as an example of personal or national
humility, other - grandiose Americocentric - comments surrounding
it leave no doubt that the inadequacies in question are only applied
to others.
One would search in vain for a comparable utterance by another
American head of state. For a nation that prides itself on being
the first one founded on the principles of the 18th century
Enlightenment and the previous century's Age of Reason, that its
leader would lay stress on inherent and ineradicable human frailty
and at least by implication on some truth that is apart from and
superior to reason is nothing less than alarming. The door is left
open to irrationalism and its correlates, that the ultimate right
can be might and that there are national imperatives beyond good
and evil.
And if people are by nature flawed and their reasoning correspondingly
impaired, then for humanity, "Born but to die and reasoning but to
err"
(Alexander Pope), war may indeed be its birthright and violent
conflicts will not be eradicated in its lifetime. War, which came
into existence with mankind, will last as long as it does. They may
both end, as Obama believes they originated, simultaneously.
How the leader of the West, both the nation and the individual, has
arrived at this bleak and deterministic impasse was also mentioned
in Obama's speech in reference to pivotal post-Cold War events that
have defined this new century.
It is only a single step from:
"I believe that force can be justified on humanitarian grounds, as
it was in the Balkans, or in other places that have been scarred
by war. Inaction tears at our conscience and can lead to more costly
intervention later. That's why all responsible nations must embrace
the role that militaries with a clear mandate can play to keep the
peace."
To:
"The belief that peace is desirable is rarely enough to achieve it.
Peace requires responsibility. Peace entails sacrifice. That's why
NATO continues to be indispensable."
In proclaiming these and similar sentiments, Obama made reference
to his host country in alluding to the war in Afghanistan: "[W]e
are joined by 42 other countries - including Norway - in an effort
to defend ourselves and all nations from further attacks."
Again, threats are magnified to inflated and even universal dimensions.
All nations on the planet are threatened and some of them - 43 NATO
states and partners - are fending off the barbarians at the gates.
It is difficult to distinguish the new Obama Doctrine from the
preceding Blair and Bush ones except in regard to its intended
scope.
It is a mission outside of time, space and constraints. "The United
States of America has helped underwrite global security for more
than six decades with the blood of our citizens and the strength
of our arms....America's commitment to global security will never
waver. But in a world in which threats are more diffuse, and missions
more complex, America cannot act alone. America alone cannot secure
the peace. This is true in Afghanistan. This is true in failed
states like Somalia....And sadly, it will continue to be true in
unstable regions for years to come.
"The leaders and soldiers of NATO countries, and other friends and
allies, demonstrate this truth through the capacity and courage
they've shown in Afghanistan."
The U.S. president adduced other nations - by name - that present
threats to America and its values, its allies and the world as a
whole in addition to Afghanistan and Somalia, which are Iran,
Myanmar, North Korea, Sudan and Zimbabwe. All five were either on
George W. Bush's post-September 11 list of state sponsors of terrorism
or on Condoleezza Rice's later roster of "outposts of tyranny" or
both.
Hopes that the policies of Obama's predecessor were somehow outside
of the historical continuum, solely related to the aftermath of
September 11, 2001, have been dashed. The rapidly escalating war
in South Asia is proof enough of that lamentable fact. War is not
a Biblical suspension of ethics but the foundation of national
policy.
In his novel La Bjte Humaine (The Human Beast) Emile Zola interwove
images of a French crowd clamoring for a disastrous war with Prussia
("A Berlin!") and a locomotive heading at full steam down the track
without an engineer. Obama's speech in Oslo indicates that America
remains bent on rushing headlong to war even after a change of
engineers. Veteran warhawks Robert Gates, James Jones, Richard
Holbrooke, David Petraeus and Stanley McChrystal have stoked the
furnace for a long run.
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Copyright Rick Rozoff, Stop NATO, 2009
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