Obama's Neocon The Curious Case of Richard Holbrooke (infeeding)

znet ^ | January 24, 2009 | Joshua Frank

[winoneforthegipper]

In wee morning hours on Friday, January 23, a U.S. spy plane killed at least 15 in Pakistan near the Afghanistan border. It was Barack Obama's first blood and the U.S.'s first violation of Pakistan's sovereignty under the new dministration. The attack was an early sign that the newly minted president may not be overhauling the War on Terror this week, or even next.

[winoneforthegipper]

Actually a pretty good piece, from that side of the twisted mind, anyways.

Obama, might not want to tee off the conservatives....lol!

[Darkwolf377]

Actually I liked the piece, which discusses the shameful East Timor genocide.

Obama has no friends. He is populating his administration with whoever someone recommends, and thinking that since "I won" it doesn't matter.

This guy's gonna start counting strawberries around the White House soon.

[Darkwolf377]

Oh, and btw, Holbrooke is an ubertool, an elitist ass. You aint seen condescension until you've seen him giving an interview.

[winoneforthegipper]

I have seen said interviews....lol!

As for the article we are in agreement as far as the historical accounts are concerned.

[spyone]

So right. It must be eating him up he is not SOS.
Oh well, that’s what you get for backing Al Gore.

[ARepublicanForAllReasons]

Obama, might not want to tee off the conservatives....lol!

More and more, it seems like (in foreign policy, not domestic) that Obama is intent on an aggressive foreign policy. But I doubt it is to please conservatives. I can only muse about his reasons, but it certainly has something to do with not appearing weak, like Jimma cahtah. I am thinking about JFK and his first months in office. He didn't know much, and relied on the advice of the foreign policy experts. Thus we got the Bay of Pigs and the build-up in Vietnam. On the plus side, he played brinksmanship with the blockade of Cuba and won.

One thing I am absolutely sure of, and that is -- Obama knows that, as the first Black President, he cannot afford to be a failed one-term POTUS. So I view all of his actions with that in mind. Whatever the degree of his commitment to Marxism, he is only human and thinks forward to his legacy. After all, it's HIS ballgame and HIS ballpark now, and wielding global power is FUN, isn't it Obie?

[ARepublicanForAllReasons]

Obama, might not want to tee off the conservatives....lol!

More and more, it seems like (in foreign policy, not domestic) that Obama is intent on an aggressive foreign policy. But I doubt it is to please conservatives. I can only muse about his reasons, but it certainly has something to do with not appearing weak, like Jimma cahtah. I am thinking about JFK and his first months in office. He didn't know much, and relied on the advice of the foreign policy experts. Thus we got the Bay of Pigs and the build-up in Vietnam. On the plus side, he played brinksmanship with the blockade of Cuba and won.

One thing I am absolutely sure of, and that is -- Obama knows that, as the first Black President, he cannot afford to be a failed one-term POTUS. So I view all of his actions with that in mind. Whatever the degree of his commitment to Marxism, he is only human and thinks forward to his legacy. After all, it's HIS ballgame and HIS ballpark now, and wielding global power is FUN, isn't it Obie?

[ARepublicanForAllReasons]

Arghhh. My first double post. Apologies.

[SoCalPol]

ZNet is a Marxist rag.
The also promote Noam Chomsky.

NeoCon is used as a pejorative by Marxist, followers of L Ron Paul, Chuck Baldwin, and all the others against the War against IslamOfascists

[Islander7]

“...On the plus side, he played brinksmanship with the blockade of Cuba and won....”

On the negative side, it was JFK’s inexperience and perceived weakness that lead the to Cuban Missile Crisis.

I think you have nailed it on 0bama not wanting to appear weak. The bigger concern that I see is his narcissism. FOUR days in office and he has flashed his angry arrogance at the press, his most loyal sycophants, then snobbishly reminded the Republicans, ‘I won’.

We need to keep a very close eye on this poser. He has all the personality characteristics of an embryonic Hitler. Should he dig his heels in during an international crisis, the stupid libs will follow him into a hell of his own making.

[pepsionice]

Based on talking to people who have walked around Holbrook...when he travels...its a 3-ring circus of “helpers” that go with him. He makes no wrong moves because everything is choreographed in nature. He has almost no values of common sense. I’m guessing after six months...the Pakistanis will not take this guy seriously and probably laugh at his suggestions.

[winoneforthegipper]

That is known to this poster.

I related this story only to give credence to the time tested theory that libs usually eat their own...lol!

[Darkwolf377]

Thank you for the inside look. I don’t think someone as full of himself as Holbrooke can mask his true self, and apparently from your description he hasn’t bothered trying. I can’t recall the meat of the numerous interviews with him I saw many years ago, but I do recall thinking he was a believer in wishful thinking ala Jimmy Carter.

[piasa]

Isn’t the author Joshua Frank on Noam Chomsky’s team? Chomsky, the guy who thought Pol Pot was a great leader?

[dianed]

Wow, it took 5 years to double post? I hope I’m that lucky!

[dianed]

I agree with your assessment of Obama. The following is my favorite link on his Narcissism....

http://www.globalpolitician.com/25109-barack-obama-elections

[MadMax, the Grinning Reaper]

If Holbrooke is a neocon, than I’m Obama’s other Africa half-brother and am living in a paper box in Chicago.

I don’t know what Holbrooke is, but he was a Carterite and then a Clintonoid. That isn’t being a “neocon.”

[Liz]

I don’t know what Holbrooke is, but he was a Carterite and then a Clintonoid. That isn’t being a “neocon.”

Oh, please---the whole neocon shtick is quick-change artistry-----that is to say, using the power-grab MO of keeping a foot in both political camps.

Must be hard on the punkneo psyche to flit back and forth between dems and repubs, and trying to decide whether to eat sugar-free granola with skim milk, or instant oatmeal with heavy cream and brown sugar.

Bush packed the WH Office of Special Ops with punkneos. Punkneo Douglas Feith spent his free time on the Bush payroll manufacturing documents to dupe the president into invading Iraq.

That sub rosa scheme enabled the punkneos to transfer trillions of US tax dollars into Mideast hellholes, and into the pockets of war profiteers. You'll be pleased to know US tax dollars kept Iraq safe for punkneo poobah, Richard Perle, and his long-held plans for an oil business there (with his share of the profiteering).

Read on, honey. But don't expect fair-weather conservative Mona Charen to spill the salient details---she's all atwitter over Obama.

================================================

Tuesday, December 02, 2008
Pinch Me, Am I Dreaming?
by Mona Charen (revolving door conservative)
http://townhall.com/columnists/MonaCharen/2008/12/02/pinch_me,_am_i_dreaming

Superstition almost forbids me to comment on President-elect Obama's appointments thus far. The news has been so shockingly welcome that I'm almost afraid to remark on it for fear of breaking the spell. Such reticence has not afflicted everyone on the right, though.

Here's Max Boot, conservative editorialist, author, and military historian: "I am gobsmacked by these appointments, most of which could just as easily have come from a President McCain..." Sen. Mitch McConnell, the Senate minority leader, declared that the Obama administration was "off to a good start." And New York Times columnist David Brooks has acknowledged that he is "tremendously impressed." If I were a left-winger, I'd be tearing out my hair about now.

The economic team of Lawrence Summers, Timothy Geithner, and Christina Romer does not exactly send a "to the ramparts" message. Summers, treasury secretary under Bill Clinton, is known for his belief in free financial markets, free trade, and fiscal discipline. He got into terrific trouble as president of Harvard for implying that, on average, men are more mathematically talented than women (which is true but that is irrelevant in the Ivy League). They made him grovel for that one, and to his shame, he did. The whole scene at Harvard, I gather from Stephan Thernstrom, who was there, was like something out of China's Cultural Revolution where the mob makes the professor confess error and beg for punishment. Still, if you want a centrist, Summers is your man.

Geithner is a Summers protege. As president of the New York Federal Reserve Bank he has been knee-deep in bailouts over the past three months. But that datum doesn't distinguish him from the Bush administration or anyone else in the mainstream of America's economic elite.

Romer recently penned an article making the case that tax cuts can increase economic activity. Hmmm. If the economic team is centrist, the foreign policy team (and I pinch myself as I say this) leans a little to the right. Did you notice that in introducing his choices, the President-elect used the term "defeat our enemies"?

Gen. James Jones, Obama's choice for national security adviser, is a four-star Marine general who was commandant of the Marine Corps and Supreme Allied Commander for Europe (SACEUR), among other posts. Response to his nomination among conservatives ranged from cautious optimism to outright enthusiasm. "He is a thoroughly decent man" one conservative foreign policy analyst told me.

Though his political views are not known, he has received the "Keeper of the Flame" award from the hard-line Center for Security Policy. The Foundation for the Defense of Democracy's (and National Review's) Michael Ledeen, no coddler of wimps, calls him "almost unbearably delightful" in the two or three conversations they've had. Everyone seems to agree that he has high intelligence and deep patriotism. If there is a hesitation, it arises from the fact that he is, like Colin Powell and Brent Scowcroft, a political general, and those have not always worked out so well.

As for Hillary Clinton, well, she is no Jeane Kirkpatrick. While it's true that she declined to apologize for her vote in favor of the Iraq war, she did everything but. It was only last year that she told Gen. Petraeus that his report on progress in Iraq "require(ed) a willing suspension of disbelief." She opposed the surge of troops in Iraq but then -- this is chutzpah! -- attempted to take credit for its success.

On Meet the Press in January 2008 she said "...The point of the surge was to quickly move the Iraqi government and Iraqi people. That is only now beginning to happen, and I believe in large measure because the Iraqi government, they watch us, they listen to us. I know very well that they follow everything that I say. And my commitment to begin withdrawing our troops in January of 2009 is a big factor, as it is with Sen. Obama, Sen. Edwards, those of us on the Democratic side. It is a big factor in pushing the Iraqi government to finally do what they should have been doing all along."

She has criticized what she calls the Bush administration's "obsessive" focus on "expensive and unproven missile defense technology." On trade, she has made protectionist noises.

On the other hand, she is not Carl Levin or Dennis Kucinich or Anthony Lake or Samantha Power. And that, along with the other appointments, is enough to keep some of us smiling at a time when we were expecting to be in deep anguish.

=============================================

The punkneos' obsessive micromanaging of the US government is a trifle nauseating......as if they, and only they, have something to "gain" by it (sarcasm and snicker ad infinitum). Why, oh why, are the punkneos loathe to admit the stranglehold they have over the US government? And the awesome power they exert behind the scenes to make obeisant politicians (of every stripe) do their bidding? Come on fellas, come clean......for once in your lives.

[Liz]

Winner of the Best Election Night Performance Award in the category of:
"I Know Nothing About this Republican Disaster."

Billy Kristol (mastermind of McC's failed campaign)

"Thank you very much."

" But I could not have done it without the help of all the punkeos--David Frum,
Michael Gerson, David Brooks, Richard Perle, and my Dearest Daddy."

" Sniffle---my Dearest Daddy, who was loser Giuliani's foreign policy advisor said, " "The historical task and political purpose of neoconservatism would seem to be.....to convert the Republican Party and American conservatism in general, against their respective wills, into a new kind of conservative politics suitable to governing a modern democracy."

"Sob."

"I especially want to thank punkneo Douglas Feith for faking documents on his
home computer so we punkneos could dupe the president."

"Without Doug we would not have been able to transfer trillions of US dollars
into the Mideast, into the pockets of war profiteers, which enabled Richard Perle
to startup an oil business in Iraq with his cut."

Kristol smirked: "Making Iraq safe for Perle's oil business with US tax dollars was truly a noble punkneo effort."

"And thank you, candidate McCain, for reading from the neocon script
at every campaign stop. Too bad you lost (smirk)."

[Liz]

Notice (up above) that Mona Charen gushes over Timothy Geithner........ who she says is "a Summers protege."

(Grin) Now we know why a tax-evader got the job of Treasury Secretary.

Taa-daa-----the punkneos wanted him.