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July 31, 2008
Exclusive: George W. Obama in Berlin
The common refrain from the Barack Obama camp is that a President John McCain will usher in a third Bush term. Judging from last week’s Berlin fest, this may be a little of the pot calling the kettle black.
Obama has much in common with Bush. Obama is guilty of many of the charges that Democrats endlessly leveled at Bush. Obama is incapable of admitting mistakes, such as his opposition to the surge. He is inflexible and stubborn. He has no experience (executive or otherwise) that prepares him for the Presidency. Community organizing, the “experience” he often cites, focuses others on their grievances while putting in place large vote-collecting machinery, but requires none of the executive skills necessary to run the world’s largest entity. (Bush was constantly teased for being a dimwit with no substantive background and even his Governorship was demeaned as being a Texas sham). While Obama plays the part of “man of the world,” his European/Middle East trip exposed that he has no travel experience, something for which Bush was ruthlessly mocked.
Obama has also emphasized a deep difference with Bush in being willing to “talk” to our enemies while Bush seemingly is not. First, Bush has talked in various ways to our enemies. More importantly, on his Middle East excursion, Obama now says (deceitfully claiming he has “always” said this) his willingness to talk is based upon his judgment that such talks would be productive. Yet, that is precisely the same condition Bush has used in his calculus as to whether, how, and when to engage with Iran, North Korea, the Palestinians, etc. Bush never withheld publicly disclosed talks because he per se objected to communication. Rather, he assessed such “talks” as counterproductive absent some prior demonstration by the other party that it was invested in a successful resolution
And oddly, Obama has chastised Bush for years for having “taken his eye off the ball” by leaving Afghanistan before the task there was successfully concluded in order to fight a “war of choice.” Nonetheless, with his insistence upon, first, an immediate withdrawal from Iraq and, later, a 16-month timetable for such withdrawal, Obama clearly subordinates the necessity of first insuring the successful completion of the job at hand in Iraq to his desire to see an American departure to now fight elsewhere in Afghanistan.
Similarly, when one sifts through the Berlin “Sermon on the Mount” with its many tautologically empty statements, simple abuses of history, and sheer fantasy, one sees very little that is not reflective of exactly what Bush has been saying for years.
Obama began by identifying his father’s dream with those of his audience and, ultimately, with mankind - a yearning for freedom. He knew his German audience recently experienced release from tyranny’s shackles, and he tried to establish rapport by expanding upon that theme. He talks of how America and Germany worked together and through that partnership were able to achieve the liberty for which so many yearned.
Making the universality of the yearning for freedom a cornerstone for policy and narrative is precisely what President Bush has been doing in his speeches on Iraq and the region for years. While freedom may not have been clearly stated on Bush’s initial list of reasons to go to war with Iraq, it soon became the foundation of the democracy goals stated subsequent to Iraq’s successful liberation. In Obama’s speech, the common desire for freedom is used as the principal demonstration of what unifies us all - exactly as Bush has drawn it for years.
Obama pointed out that less than three years after facing each other on the battlefield, “Germans and Americans learned to work together and trust each other.” He mentioned that a “victory over tyranny gave rise to NATO, the greatest alliance ever formed to defend our common security.” While Iraq has taken more than three years - understandable given the vast cultural, religious, political, and economic differences between its history and that of the West- this description is precisely what Bush has been urging Obama and all the Congressional Democrats to understand and foster with Bush’s Iraq policy. Iraqis are now learning how to work together and trust each other as well as America. We did not hear Obama say anything that sounded like, “Due to the threat of withdrawal of all support to Germany after a three year period, you good people of Germany came together and figured out how to defend yourselves.”
Obama further added that the new dangers we face “cannot be contained within the borders of a country or by the distance of an ocean.” While Obama used this notion to describe our dependence upon one another for our security, he has implicitly affirmed the Bush notion that we must also fight our wars on the offense where they occur, rather than simply wait at home to be attacked and subsequently prosecute the offender. This interconnectedness, when coupled with the very dangers of modern weaponry (which Obama later referenced), invites the very premise Vice President Dick Cheney often cited that “imminent harm” means something different today than it did in years past.
Of course Obama must restate for this audience his usual litany of “guilt” themes which provide the foundation for what others have called the “Get Them to Like Us” foreign policy. It starts with the assumption that America has been a Bad Boy, that the rest of the world has been both good as well as victimized by bad American behavior, that (through the magnificence of the Messianic Obama) America is both able to recognize its guilt and be man enough to stand up, change its course, and right its wrongs. Consequently, America is making a plea that the rest of this world, in all its grandeur, forgives us. This is the age-old pitch that is a set up for some form of reparations. How can America expect the rest of the world to not only forgive us but to also forgo the righting of all wrongs?
Accordingly, and to establish additional rapport with this German audience, Obama suggested how America’s cars are harming the environment, how we wrongly torture and violate the rule of law, how we have not joined Kyoto nor helped to save the planet (despite India and China’s refusal to do the same). He references Africa’s impoverished and the scourge of AIDS as if Bush has not extended America’s great generosity to Africa and elsewhere. Despite these despicable acts of America, Obama then proclaimed, “But I also know how much I love America.” What exactly is the “But” doing there? And what other president has ever had to state what should be the most paramount and presumed requirement of all presidents?
Then came Obama’s illusory attempts at appearing to have concrete answers to the harsh realities of the world as it as, not as he and his worshippers so blindly fantasize it to be. Obama states that America “must stand with … Europe in sending a direct message to Iran that it must abandon its nuclear ambitions.” The Bush Administration has repeatedly sent such direct messages to Iran only to receive back the equally direct message that Iran’s nuclear enrichment program will not be negotiated away. It feels so much better to believe that Obama will be able to mesmerize the mullahs as he does his flock, but this is one area where the only “change” will be in Iran’s becoming a nuclear power. It is forgotten that it was the Carter-Obama approach to Iran that brought about the hostage crisis which could only be resolved by the threat of Reagan.
Obama also stated that we must “support the Israelis and Palestinians who seek a secure and lasting peace.” Whatever “support” means here, Bush has complied with this injunction, early on by requiring that the Palestinians actually demonstrate, contrary to their prior 30-year history, that they truly do seek a secure peace, and, later, by allowing Condi Rice to once again pursue the same foolish attempts at a negotiated settlement that have repeatedly failed in the past. Obama represents no “change” here. Rather, he demonstrates the same wishful thinking and unwillingness to see that the Palestinians “are just not into” our Western concept of “peace.”
Finally, he stated “And despite past differences, this is the moment when the world should support the millions of Iraqis who seek to rebuild their lives, even as we pass responsibility to the Iraqi government and finally bring this war to a close.” Actually the moment to support those Iraqis was many years ago when Saddam ruled so sadistically. It came again when Bush assumed a leadership role to satisfy the “yearning” of those Iraqis to be free, consistent with the Clinton Administration’s policy of Iraqi regime change upon which Clinton failed to act. But Berliners and Europeans again refused to step up, preferring to interfere with Bush’s efforts at a diplomatic solution in order to protect their lucrative oil contracts and other oil for food deals.
So the moment comes again. And it is time not to place withdrawal as a higher priority than securing the freedom for Iraqis to rebuild their lives. That is pure Bush, and even Obama is starting to drift this way. Germans were never told “you have three years to get your act together and then we are leaving!”
These are just some of the ways in which Bush is front and center in the Obama scheme. The campaign world is sitting on its own head. Bush’s problem of late has been that he simply stopped being Bush. McCain is the one with the record of crossing the aisle and working with the other side (much to the dismay of his own party faithful). McCain’s attempts at “unity” have demonstrated that the Left has no interest in it. Obama is the far-Left radical who says he wishes to unite us and to change America from its Bush ways. His history in the Senate, however, is to allow all sides to talk and then exercise judgment solely reflecting the far left. This is the pure “divisiveness” he claims he seeks to end.
Obama’s rhetoric and explanations, as made clear in Berlin, are very much Bush. Either they are a sham or we have already just gone through eight years of “Change.” Perhaps the answer is “Yes We Have!”
FamilySecurityMatters.org Contributing Editor Bill Siegel lives in New York.
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