StephenKMackSD's Blog

http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2011-02-13/obamas-egypt-muddle-niall-ferguson-blasts-the-presidents-foreign-policy?om_rid=De4wA2&om_mid=_BNWTD4B8Yq5mQq

The Egyptian Revolution provides Pretty Boy Reactionary (PBR) a golden opportunity to engage in  a  partisan, critical evaluation of the timid and blundering Foreign Policy of the Obama Administration, and more importantly on the leadership of Barack Obama, all is fair in politics: and if nothing else PBR is the consummate intellectual politico. The opening is a rhetorical gem, a quote from Otto von Bismarck: "The statesman can only wait and listen until he hears the footsteps of God resounding through events; then he must jump up and grasp the hem of His coat,  that is all."  Utterly delicious and full of  the right amount of self-aggrandizing political posturing,  perfectly reflecting the authors own self-concept as ‘Thinker’ and ‘Historian’ with an enhanced ability to analyze and interpret contemporary events. He never fails to remind us of his status as ‘Expert’. The cast of characters in this sweeping document are of breathtaking scope, yet all confined to the telling cameo:

Herzliya security conference, Gen. James L. Jones, The Central Intelligence Agency, Henry Kissinger, Richard Nixon, Soviet Union, Viet Nam, Jimmy Carter, The New York Times

All of this to reach the not unexpected conclusion, that Mr. Obama is a failure at leadership when he is most needed, or, at the least, his rhetorical skill and noble phrase-making could be of assistance to democratic movements all over the world. PBR while making the argument tries to adroitly shift the blame from Mr. Obama to his advisers: making it appear less of an attack on the President and more of the product of the analysis of an ‘Expert’ taking an objective appraisal of the failure of advisers. Is his conclusion, in its purely partisan presentation, although properly garnished with historically legitimizing references, simply the next marker- a necessary strategic imperative – on the long road to a Republican victory in the next Presidential Election? The Nixon/Kissinger alliance comes in for what might be thought of as fulsome praise from PBR, but no such demonstration of faith for the wars in Iraq or Afghanistan?: the record of these dismal, destructive policy failures has become the politically un-debatable failures of the last decade; despite all the  endless propagandizing. If nothing else, PBR understands the political necessity of a carefully constructed and rationalized propaganda campaign to properly frame events, to make optimal use of them as malleable constructs, in the endless political campaign that now marks ‘Politics’ in America.    

Should we even feign surprise that the perpetrators of the murderous, political obscenity of the ‘War On Terror’, now in the shadow of the Egyptian Revolution, claim that as the precursor of the momentous events that have riveted the attention of the world since January 25^th ?  The latter is an organic political manifestation of local origin, the former an attack without provocation of one sovereign nation against a decidedly weaker sovereign nation (Iraq); the notion of equivalency is here sundered under the rubric of political opportunism. Is  it possible that that the two failed revolutionaries Norman Podheretz and  Irving Kristol could have foreseen the destructive potential of their political theology, their dogma, even as it is  the most unsophisticated and blatant theft from the Republic of Plato? At that Plato argued without apology- it was a statement of the felt need to codify the patriarchal power of an Athenian upper class; and its natural, inherent right to rule over the lower orders. Neo-Conservatism asserts its right to a superior position both morally and politically because of it exalted position as ‘Philosopher Kings’, without a demonstration of the actuality of that rhetorical assertion: in addition the dominance of male power is the unquestioned and the unquestionable and that infallibility makes the employment of violence as first or last resort viable: its employment can be argued as always necessary to constituted authority .