Charlie Rose

REMant  01/12/2010 05:29 PM Report

obama- Hillary Mann Leverett argued on Al Jazeera that the speech could just as well have been made by George Bush, albeit in less pretentious language, and she is right. But, unlike Bush, he argues that there are just wars like Francisco de Vitoria did, following Acquinas, 500 years ago. This view posited that a society derives its just power from the consent of the governed, and like Lincoln's view of the union, it is not a matter of individual approval. One cannot alienate one's freedom, but on the other hand one does not really have any to alienate. In other words it bases freedom on a sort of totalitarianism dressed up as natural law, as if the Greeks were all as Popper imagined. From this Vitoria argued that the Spain had a right to impose its will on the Indians of the New World even tho they had a right to their land and liberties, because they did not allow free trade or intercourse, while Jefferson used it to argue that the American colonists had a right to separate from the United Kingdom. Yet it was this same argument that allowed Lincoln to make war on the South. This idea is clearly not universally accepted to be the American or even the "Western" view of it, but the president went on to argue that it should be.

In addition, Obama was condescending like Bush, from the opening bell addressing himself to "citizens of the world," despite his protestation of deep humility. And in the next sentence he redefines the meaning of the prize to be one OF our aspirations rather than FOR our achievements. But he alleges he is only "remiss" in not being able to stake a claim to the latter. He elucidates saying that it is not his fault that he is involved in two wars, because he did not start them, and, indeed, he alleges that America did not seek one of them, implying as well that he could not, by simply picking up a telephone, end them both. Then, ignoring ethologists, anthropologists, historians, and the like, he offers up his own assessment of the origin of conflict, and thence, in a giant leap, to the School of Salamanca, proceeding to define just war as one waged as a last resort OR in self-defense, where the force is proportional and it is directed at belligerents. The Catholic Church today defines retaliation as justified if damage is, or is certain to be, grave, no other means are possible to stem it, there are serious prospects of success, and the remedy is not worse. No mention is made of STARTING a war because there is no other recourse.

His view of Germany as the villain in two world wars, is simply no longer acceptable to serious historians, and smacks of Anglo-Zionist bias, tho he does seem to recognize that the British (and the Americans) did far more than their fair share of the bombing and shelling of civilians. He lauds Wilson for his League of Nations, but clearly Wilson's duplicity in entering WWI and in failing to broker a promised peace laid the groundwork for WWII. Likewise his understanding of the Cold War neglects any sense that the Soviets and Chinese may have been justified in their suspicions of the West, which if it were not so, might well have brought peace and prosperity much earlier. He argues that nonviolence cannot meet aggression, while King (whom he even blithely quotes at the end of the speech), said it could, and while it is certain that you must shoot a tiger about to jump on you, you need not corner one or going looking for him. Most animals run from danger and only attack the weak for food. To argue otherwise is to justify America's enormous prison population.

Afghanistan and Somalia are in his view failed states, territories without needed government to enforce the natural law, certainly an oxymoron. He equates peacekeeping with the responsibility to defend others, not to defend oneself, not only removing thereby the responsibility for it from their shoulders, but also taking away their freedom. In line with his just war policy, the UN has a duty to intervene in places like Iran and North Korea, Darfur, Congo and Bosnia. And the ambiguity remains also when he considers the Universal Declaration of Human Rights to mean such Jeffersonian values as freedom of speech, assembly, worship and even of democratic government, which he alleges brought peace to Europe, as if the 18th and 19th centuries were less peaceful than the 20th, or Churchill was wrong when he said the wars of democracy would be worse than the wars of kings.

And like LBJ as he invaded Vietnam, the present American president justifies such involvement in virtually the same words used 45 years ago, as countering "freedom from want." Other views are merely antiquated and reactionary. This is the same Obama, who can defend the vast increase of indebtedness for good of the world, yet who finds Martin Luther King to be just a dreamer.

In an aside, I find it difficult to understand how Zbigniew Brzezinski could possibly defend this exercise in un-Realpolitik.