The Obama Doctrine - Kills Bugs Dead

Lately, my mind has been preoccupied by the Af-Pak War. The stakes are getting worse. While progress seems to be made in Pakistan, the war gets worse in Afghanistan. Even with the insertion of thousands of US Marines battling along side British troops the Taliban just fled into the mountains to fight another way. I would expect the Pakistani Taliban to do the same and return to Swat valley secretly after the refugees have returned to wage terror again. The whole war is just depressing.

As Obama pours in more troops, more civilians are bound to die. Why can't they realize that Pashtun zeal is ignited against the foreign invader. They revel in fighting the conqueror. Especially if that conqueror is non-Muslim. This is the Pashtun as it has been for hundreds if not thousands of years. The other ethnic groups (like the Tajiks/Uzbeks) wait anxiously to see how long the US will stay in Afghanistan. Not long in my opinion.

President Obama is not a president who even likes dealing with foreign leaders. To him, change must happen at home. Woe betide the outside world who took his message to heart for it was not meant for you, it was meant for the American people. The American people are of course his prime focus. So much so, it reeks of isolationism but not the type we remember from history. The type in which engagement is largely rhetorical to keep up prestige instead of actual and meaningful. For instance, the Palestinian Problem. Mr Obama says he wishes to achieve the final solution for it yet all he's been doing is shuttling his envoy Mr. Mitchell back and forth. Netanyahu may now believe it is more popular for him in Israel to defy Obama than to listen to his statements on stopping the construction of new settlements. To Netanyahu, building those settlements is the manifest destiny of the Jewish state. To the Palestinians, it's ethnic cleansing. Slow, methodical and deliberate. And it's working.

Like the fly that Obama swatted, he views the Middle East in this way. Merely a distraction from getting Universal Healthcare and other socialist ideals that the US cannot maintain for long anyway. Another aspect of Obama which struck me was his relationship with Africa. He went to Ghana, a decent West African nation which is trying to reshape its image and economy to preach to Africans. Africans do not wish to be preached to anymore. It was this same preaching which caused the economic conundrums which doomed African economies in the 70s and 80s and which are just started to recover now while dealing with healthcare problems of their own (maybe Obama might look into that). You see, in Post-Independance Africa when it came to the economy the Big Men of Africa were lost. Which way should they follow; the Free Market Path or the State Property Path. Either way, they both were fucked.

Those who become capitalists watched corporations take billions through useless economic schemes like a certain dam project in Ghana or watched minerals get hauled away with little economic benefit to the people of the nation. Dictators teamed up with corporations to protect their mutual interest: Money. Those who followed the State Property path watched millions go into programs which made little sense and were sucked into the ideological struggle between the two economic systems caused millions to die across the continent. Huge projects with nothing to maintain them but Soviet aid were erected to the dismay of the people who were clearly not going to benefit from them. How could the Workers of the World unite when most of them are peasants farmers? Skip ahead 20-30 years to Obama's speech and you could hear uncomfortable groans when Obama spoke about graft. Isn't there corruption in the US too?

Besides the needless rhetoric we all agree that building stable societies and political systems are a must to have a successful nation, something which still doesn't exist in Iraq. Militarily, the Surge worked. This is a fact but politically it failed to reconcile the nation as analysts like Thomas Ricks are saying. Shi'ia vs Sunni vs Kurd vs Turkey could soon erupt when the US retreats from Mesopotamia. Life is like that a couple hundred miles up the World's Asshole. The US could NOT build a stable society in a few years what it did to Japan in decades. Same with Germany and South Korea. Then again, Germany was Western and Japan was Westernized. Iraq is the Yugoslavia of West Asia. We could see the whole thing unravel post 2011. Great.

The other flies Obama has to swat or at least ignore is Iran, North Korea and Russia. With Russia he's tried rapproachment. He realized Russia is not his enemy. Just a bit annoying when it feels threatned by missile shields and the Blob which constitutes NATO swallowing each ex-Soviet Republic in its path. I'd be scared if I was a Kremlin bureaucratnik too. Obama reassuring Russia isn't reassuring enough hence exercises with the crumbling Russian army in the Caucasus just after NATO and Georgia finish theirs. North Korea is just totally lost right now. Politically they know they're dead so sabre-rattling every month is the only option left. It sure is scaring South Korea and Japan though. Their missile couldn't even get halfway to Hawaii so the US, not so much. Iran now fears the power of Obama. Global populism shaked the foundation of the Islamic Republic but instead of pressing forward, Pres. Obama has just left the Iranians to pick up the pieces. Letting them recover from this onslaught of unrest and the elephant in the room is China. The People's Republic is bankrolling you. How things have changed!

The Chinese realize they're not getting any of their loans back (they're clearly retarded) as the US budget expands and expands gobbling up any money it can possibly consume. They want a new currency, threatning the dollar isn't wise. If they did that, China and Wal-Mart might not be peas in a pod anymore.

Obama's doctrine isn't formalized but after a few months in office we're starting to see the non-interventionist rhetorical style in which it functions. However, his populist message is effect enough to galvanize people across the world. If only it could galvanize policies that could CHANGE the world. That would be change we could all believe in.