Posted on 01/29/2009 7:30:27 PM PST by Ultra Sonic 007
Looks like it was written by a high school sophomore.
bump
Obama went to Columbia? Naw, never! I mean we would have seen his complete school record by now...
ping for later
Obama went to Columbia? Naw, never! I mean we would have seen his complete school record by now...
2) Barry has apparently always confused verbosity for wisdom.
3) The Freeze movement is well-documented to have been a Soviet backed and funded sabotage effort against the west.
4) We have a Soviet stooge in the WH with his finger on our nukes.
Good job! Now if you can find his thesis, I’ll really be impressed!
ping fer later
Thank you for posting this
With all due respect, I can't fathom what he is writing of other than regurgitating no-nuke cliche's with stilted grammar. Guess he never read Orwell's thoughts on writing essays.
War, huh, yeah
What is it good for
Absolutely nothing
Uh-huh
War, huh, yeah
What is it good for
Absolutely nothing
Say it again, y’all
War, huh, good God
What is it good for
Absolutely nothing
Listen to me
Ohhh, war, I despise
Because it means destruction
Of innocent lives
War means tears
To thousands of mothers eyes
When their sons go to fight
And lose their lives
I said, war, huh
Good God, y’all
What is it good for
Absolutely nothing
Say it again
War, whoa, Lord
What is it good for
Absolutely nothing
Listen to me
War, it ain’t nothing
But a heartbreaker
War, friend only to the undertaker
Ooooh, war
It’s an enemy to all mankind
The point of war blows my mind
War has caused unrest
Within the younger generation
Induction then destruction
Who wants to die
Aaaaah, war-huh
Good God y’all
What is it good for
Absolutely nothing
Say it, say it, say it
War, huh
What is it good for
Absolutely nothing
Listen to me
War, huh, yeah
What is it good for
Absolutely nothing
Uh-huh
War, huh, yeah
What is it good for
Absolutely nothing
Say it again y’all
War, huh, good God
What is it good for
Absolutely nothing
Listen to me
War, it ain’t nothing but a heartbreaker
War, it’s got one friend
That’s the undertaker
Ooooh, war, has shattered
Many a young mans dreams
Made him disabled, bitter and mean
Life is much to short and precious
To spend fighting wars these days
War can’t give life
It can only take it away
Ooooh, war, huh
Good God y’all
What is it good for
Absolutely nothing
Say it again
War, whoa, Lord
What is it good for
Absolutely nothing
Listen to me
War, it ain’t nothing but a heartbreaker
War, friend only to the undertaker
Peace, love and understanding
Tell me, is there no place for them today
They say we must fight to keep our freedom
But Lord knows there’s got to be a better way
Ooooooh, war, huh
Good God y’all
What is it good for
You tell me
Say it, say it, say it, say it
War, huh
Good God y’all
What is it good for
Stand up and shout it
Nothing
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
except it seems to work well against tyrany
race card
patriot08 tipped me off to it. Great find!
blah, blah, blah, he is the wordiest person. He uses run on sentences and is difficult to follow. He hasn’t changed.
Still, it is interesting that this was found.
I’m going to re-read it in the morning, maybe it will make more sense then.
excerpt:
The hunt for Obama’s senior “thesis” began with a throwaway line in a newspaper article last October. The New York Times story, on Obama’s early New York years, mentioned in passing that the presidential contender had majored in political science at Columbia and had spent his time “writing his thesis on Soviet nuclear disarmament.”
Journalists began hounding Columbia University for copies of the musty document. Conservative bloggers began wondering if the young Obama had written a no-nukes screed that he might come to regret. And David Bossie, the former congressional investigator and “right-wing hit man,” as one newspaper described him, took out classified newspaper ads in Columbia University’s newspaper and the Chicago Tribune in March searching for the term paper.
Bossie came up dry, but said the effort was well worth it:
“A thesis entitled Soviet Nuclear Disarmament, written at the height of The Cold War in 1983, might shed some light upon what Barack Obama thought about our most pressing foreign policy issue for 40-plus years (U.S.-Soviet Relations),” he wrote in an e-mail to NBC News.
http://deepbackground.msnbc.msn.com/archive/2008/07/24/1219454.aspx
__________________________________________________________________________
Here is the passage from the New York Times that the above article refers to:
"He barely mentions Columbia, training ground for the elite, where he transferred in his junior year, majoring in political science and international relations and writing his thesis on Soviet nuclear disarmament. He dismisses in one sentence his first community organizing job — work he went on to do in Chicago — though a former supervisor remembers him as 'a star performer.'"
Obama’s Account of New York Years Often Differs From What Others Say
By JANNY SCOTT, October 30, 2007:
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/30/us/politics/30obama.html?ex=1351396800&en=631bf83f428647f9&ei=5089&partner=rssyahoo&emc=rss
__________________________________________________________________________
"Obama graduated from Columbia University in 1983, and moved to Chicago in 1985 to work for a church-based group seeking to improve living conditions in poor neighborhoods plagued with crime and high unemployment. In 1991, Obama graduated from Harvard Law School where he was the first African American president of the Harvard Law Review."
http://obama.senate.gov/about/
__________________________________________________________________________
Bill Ayers' education:
1987 - Ed.D, Columbia University, Curriculum & Instruction
1987 - M.Ed, Teachers College, Columbia University, Early Childhood Education
1984 - M.Ed, Bank Street College, Early Childhood Education
1968 - B.A., University of Michigan, American Studies
http://education.uic.edu/directory/faculty_info.cfm?netid=bayers
__________________________________________________________________________
Bank Street College
Where We Are and How to Get Here:
Bank Street College is located on the Upper West Side of Manhattan at 610 West 112th Street, between Broadway and Riverside Drive.
Bank Street College is located in a bustling family and university neighborhood four blocks from Columbia University
http://www.bankstreet.edu/aboutbsc/visiting.html
Just read your post after posting mine (#35). I’m relieved to know that I’m not the only one confused by his writing style.
The guy couldn’t even write a concise editorial. What a boring piece of crap from a boring egomaniac.
for later
Jan 9, 2009
Young Obama Wrote Article Blaming America For ‘Growing Threat of War’
By Evan Gahr
You won’t find it in his memoir or any of the oodles of words written about him during the campaign, but this reporter has discovered a strikingly naive article Barack Obama wrote about the anti-war movement as a Columbia University senior in 1983.
If Obama still has this sensibility, he could be poised to take American foreign policy sharply to the left, notwithstanding the centrist foreign policy team he has assembled. Moreover, since Obama didn’t recognize the Soviet menace during the Cold War and blamed the possibility of war entirely on the United States, there’s good reason to think that today he could lack the moral clarity needed to fight radical Islam.
The article, “Breaking the War Mentality,” published by the Columbia magazine Sundial, is a wholesale endorsement of all sorts of leftist claptrap fashionable at the time.
Obama deems the Reagan era defense buildup a “distorted priority” and “dead end track.”
Writing in the midst of the Cold War, Obama was nevertheless oblivious to the threat the Soviet Union then posed to the United States. Indeed, he does not even mention the Soviet Union in his article. Instead, Obama blames — you guessed it — America and its “twisted” world view for the “growing threat of war.”
If only Americans would change their thinking, he argues, the threat would subside. Give re-education a chance.
“Most students at Columbia do not have first hand knowledge of war,” he begins. “Military violence has been a vicarious experience, channeled into our minds through television film, and print . . . We know that wars have occurred, will occur, are occurring, but bringing such experiences down into our hearts and taking continual, tangible steps to prevent war, becomes a difficult task.”
That’s why campus peaceniks are so important. “Two groups on campus, Arms Race Alternatives (ARA) and Students Against Militarism (SAM) work within these mental limits to foster awareness and practical action necessary to counter the growing threat of war. Though the emphasis of the two groups differ, they share an aversion to current government policy.
“These groups, visualizing the possibilities of destruction and grasping the tendencies of distorted national priorities, are throwing their weight into shifting America off the dead end track.”
“The thrust of ARA is towards generating dialogue which will give people a rational handle [on the threat of war]. . . this includes bringing speakers like Daniel Ellsberg to campus.’’
Note here for Obama that rational means liberal. It’s a safe bet the ARA’s endeavors to foster dialogue in 1983 didn’t involve bringing Secretary of Defense Casper Weinberger to campus.
The group, much to Obama’s delight, also agitated in favor of the Nuclear Freeze movement and opposed the deployment of Pershing II and Cruise Missiles. These positions, of course, put them against the Reagan Administration and in favor of policies congruent with Soviet interests.
Sounds very leftist, but Obama says the group is actually non-political. Like other party line liberals Obama thinks have ideology, everyone else is just working for the common good. “By taking an almost apolitical approach to the problem ARA hopes to get the university to take nuclear arms issues seriously.”
For Obama, the only thing wrong with the nuclear freeze movement is that it’s not ambitious enough. One “is forced to wonder whether disarmament or arms control issues, severed from economic and political issues, might be another instance of focusing on the symptoms of a problem instead of the disease itself.
Turning to the other group, Obama casts his lot with draft dodgers. “Students Against Militarism was formed in response to the passage of registration laws in 1980 [that required 18-year-olds to register for the draft].”
“At this time the current major issue [for SAM] is the Solomon Bill, the latest legislation from Congress to obtain compliance to registration. The law requires all male students applying for federal financial aid to submit proof of registration” or be denied financial aid.
So Obama sided with a group that wanted students to not register for the draft with impunity. That would strike a blow against warmongers. “By organizing and educating the Columbia community, such activities lay the foundation for future mobilization against the relentless, often silent spread of militarism…by observing the SAM meeting last Thursday night, with its solid turnout and enthusiasm, one might be persuaded that manifestations of our better instincts at least match the bad ones.”
Obama concludes by placing the two anti-war groups in the tradition of America’s greatest thinkers. “Indeed the most pervasive malady of the collegiate system specifically and the American experience generally, is that elaborate patterns of knowledge and theory have been disembodied from individual choices and government policy. What the members of ARA and SAM try to do is infuse that they have learned about the current situation, bring the words of that formidable roster on the face of Butler Library, names like Thoreau, Jeffferson and Whitman to bear on the twisted logic of which we are today a part.”
The twisted logic of these right-wing meanies who pushed for the deployment of missiles and implemented an arms buildup is widely credited with playing a role in bringing about the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Obama was on the wrong side of history. Does Obama still hold to the views he expressed in his essay? If not, when did he change his opinion?
During his presidential bid, Obama seemed to echo some of the themes of the article. College student Obama believed war could be avoided through better understanding. Candidate Obama promised to restore America’s image in the world that supposedly suffered because of the Iraq War.
Both formulations disregard the threat posed by our country’s enemies — the Soviet Union when Obama was a Columbia undergraduate and radical Islam today. Anti-American sentiment does not turn on the nuances of foreign policy; it’s a function of fundamental moral differences between America and its detractors or enemies. Lots of nations and people hated us long before the Iraq War.
In any event, it remains to be seen if the “change” Obama has promised includes a sharp departure from the morally obtuse and simplistic left-wing views he espoused at Columbia 25 years ago.
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