Victor Davis Hanson: Europeanizing Europe. They may have got more than they bargained for [Obama]
Friday, March 13, 2009 3:51:46 PM · 7 of 7
We conservatives are in danger of misunderstanding Barak Obama's foreign policy. The general assumption here is that he is likely to conduct foreign policy like Jimmy Carter. I think he is far more likely to wage war like Trotsky and conduct foreign policy like Stalin.
Barak Obama is not a Dean Acheson liberal. He is a dedicated Marxist power monger. Normal leftists of the kind described by Victor David Hanson at his cocktail party in France are simply soft on the international forces of the left for the very simple reason that they are sympathetic with those leftist goals. There are many leftists in Europe as well as in America who are, if not sympathetic, at least tolerant of aggressive Islamic fascism because it produces chaos which they instinctively know opens opportunities to exploit for the introduction of socialist one world government. They are smugly confident that they can deal with the Mohammedens after the chaos caused by their jihad opens the way for leftist world government.
But note, Barak Obama already has power and he is on the very brink of obtaining power of the kind enjoyed by the likes of Hugo Chavez. If one accepts that Barak Obama is a Manchurian Marxist, then it is inescapable that he seeks personal power unrestrained by democracy or human rights to do all the good that he alone sees must be done. Such a man calculates how to get the power he covets. American history has never offered a megalomaniac such a perfect storm to exploit to gain that power. Washington might have had it, but he was not a megalomaniac. Abraham Lincoln, with all his faults and with all his trampling on the Constitution, never lost his patriotism and never abandoned his fidelity to the principles of democracy. So in the midst of our tragic civil war, Lincoln preserved his essential humility. Franklin Roosevelt was never burdened by too much humility but he lacked the worldview, possessed for example by Adolf Hitler and, one speculates, Barak Obama, which drives a president to exploit a financial crisis and a world war to attain ultimate power. Roosevelt was a fixer first, an egomaniac, an elitist liberal, and a man who enjoyed manipulating the levers of power, almost as a hobby. He was certainly high-handed but he was not prone to be an autocrat.
Barak Obama certainly is obsessed with an ideology which propels him toward autocracy, a degree from Seoul Alinsky's School for Scoundrels provides him with the modus operandi , the financial crisis provides him with the opportunity, and the absence of political opposition makes it all possible.
Now if this is Obama's state of mind why would a man grasping for ultimate power tolerate a repugnant ideology, such as aggressive fundamentalist Islam, competing for that power?
Virtually all leftists in all of history have not been supine in the face of challenges to Leftism. Leftists care only about casualties in war when those wars are waged in defense of democracy or in opposition to Leftism. One need no better proof of this principle than the flip-flops of the American Communist party pivoting around the Hitler- Stalin pact. The left has been willing to extravagantly sacrifice the blood of its sons and daughters in defense of its own power or in the acquisition of that power. The historical examples are are numerous: the Russian Revolution after 1918 and the bloodbaths in its civil war against the White Russians; Stalin's murder of upwards of 10 million Kulaks in Ukraine to extend his authority there; the unbelievable casualties sustained by the Russian army in ultimately beating the Germans; the suicide attacks by the Communist Chinese in the Korean War mirroring the same suicide tactics Stalin resorted to against the Nazis; Mao's deliberately sacrificing his own troops against both Chiang Kai-shek and the Japanese to further his own power; the indifference of the authorities around Ho Chi Minh to the casualties sustained by the civilian population of North Vietnam, or to the astronomical casualties sustained at the front in pursuit of the conquest of the South; the bloodthirstiness of the Khmer Rouge in murdering 25 to 33% of their own people in Cambodia.
If Obama is in fact a committed Marxist but one who shrinks from violence in obtaining or preserving power, he will be exceptional among the breed. There are a few such as Gorbachev but his forbearance occurred in the context of a dead ideology. I believe that it is more likely than not that Obama would wage war against any threats to his power whether domestic or foreign. Obama has it within him to stun the left by his aggressiveness. In fact, I think we're seeing this already in his tardiness in withdrawing from Iraq and his doubling down on the war in Afghanistan. His objection to Iraq occurred before he had power. His diplomatic overtures in the Middle East primarily endanger Israel, not his own power.
Of course, this projection of bellicosity by Obama makes for the ultimate irony especially for the European left described so vividly by Victor David Hanson because an ideologue like Barak Obama is far, far more likely to pitch the world into war than a civilized Christian like George Bush ever was. George Bush, contrary to all fulminations of leftist crazies like Naomi Wolf alleging fascism in his soul, has proved as willing as Cincinnatus or George Washington to walk away from power.
I cannot imagine Barak Obama doing the same.
