*** I originally brought up Samantha Power as an example of the normalcy of Obama's foreign policies views. Samantha Power is an imperialist because she believes in U.S. dominance, a U.S. led coalition of forces to enforce world order. She believes that this only can be done through a believable and ideological stand on human rights, which allows for U.S. and Co. intervention in selected areas of the world but ignores other places in the world where there is no overt controversy. She fits the pattern of the Jimmy Carter "human rights" liberal who seeks to reconstruct U.S. imperial ideology in a way that will be acceptable and supportable by U.S. economic and political allies. In short, Power is not a unilateralist and she is not an extreme nationalist. She supports a U.S. dominated economic and political order that builds on international cooperation to obtain it ends and not outright bullying of European allies. (It will be O.K. to bully most everyone else. Though it seems that she is for building alliances with India and Brazil in hopes to tear them away from China.
Other than that has she written on U.S. imperialism in Central and South America? Does anyone know?)
To say that Power is not an imperialist is a little like saying that the old liberal wing of the Democratic Party did not do everything in its power to increase U.S. business dominance in foreign economies. I am not sure if the question can even be addressed without recounting the long history of human rights imperialism. But one only has to look back to both the Carter and Clinton regimes to see how this human rights imperialism acts when in power. In contrast to the truly insane policies of the unilateralist wing of U.S. imperialism, the "Atlanticist" ("trilateralist," "human rights") imperialism of the "liberal" and neo-liberal wing of our ruling class is the only kind of imperialism that has a chance of maintaining U.S. long term dominance.
(I say this not because I believe that "liberal" imperialism is smarter than "neo-con" imperialism, but because I think that the unilateralists will, in short order, destroy much of the world.) Long term U.S. political and economic dominance is the goal of such people.
They say it's their goal. Even Obama says it is his goal. They all want to keep the U.S. on top, the leading light of the world, the "strongest" world economy, etc. These are all just euphemisms for U.S. imperialism. That I have to explain such euphemisms to a people who look at themsevles as leftists is sometimes a depressing phenomena, but everybody has to learn in thier own wya. U.S. world political and economic dominance is just a nicer way of saying U.S. imperialism. Saying things in a nicer way does not change the facts of the matter.
When Samantha Power or Obama say that they are against the dominant power of General Electric, Exxon and U.S. agribusiness, along with the overwhelming power of big financial institutions, in places such as Central America, Southeast Asia, West Africa, and the Middle East then I will listen to them with pricked up ears. I won't believe them, but at least I will begin to ask them questions about how they propose to counter the power of U.S. business dominance in these areas. I will begin to reconsider their relation to the U.S. imperial enterprise.
I neither sugar-coat nor demonize Samantha Power. She is not insane, and in the current political environment, where people like Bolton can be considered serious foreign policy analysts, sanity is certainly in her favor. But please, please don't delude yourself about her.
Jerry Monaco
On 2/23/08, abu hartal <abuhartal at hotmail.com> wrote:
>
> On Feb 23, 2008, at 9:25 PM, abu hartal wrote:
>
> > we are supposed to hate Samantha Power
>
> Yeah, why not?
>
> _______________
> Because the self proclaimed Marxists' heated rhetoric of calling her all but
> an imperial social fascist is politically stupid, and inaccurate. She is not
> a fascist because she accurately thought Milosevic a demagogic fascist and
> aggressive nationalist. I understand that the Marxists say that she is the
> leading voice of the new humanitarian imperialism but she has been a loud
> critic of the US occupation of Iraq (as well as it seems Israel's war
> against Lebanon). What kind of imperialist is this? I am sure McCain would
> be happy to have a restraining order against her. And the point is that
> Milosevic created for the world a dilemma of choosing between the
> sovereignty of nation state and respect for the human rights of
> minorities,between he United Nations Charter which prohibits the forceful
> violation of state sovereignty and the Universal Declaration of Human
> Rights. Power recognizes that there was no easy choice here. i wish the
> Marxists were a little more circumspect here.
>
> Abu Hartal
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-- Jerry Monaco's Philosophy, Politics, Culture Weblog is Shandean Postscripts to Politics, Philosophy, and Culture http://monacojerry.livejournal.com/
His fiction, poetry, weblog is Hopeful Monsters: Fiction, Poetry, Memories http://www.livejournal.com/users/jerrymonaco/
Notes, Quotes, Images - From some of my reading and browsing http://www.livejournal.com/community/jerry_quotes/