Now (Robert) Kagan Pivots, Too

As predicted, Bob Kagan follows in Kristol’s wake. Afghanistan is so passé; it’s clearly time to focus on Iran. Check out the last paragraph in his column in Sunday’s Washington Post — specifically, the order in which the problems facing Obama are presented, and then the singling out of Iran:

“It is only natural that President Obama should respond to unexpected or shifting circumstances by reevaluating his approach. Events in Iran, Afghanistan or China do not occur in isolation. You cannot expect a president to escalate a war without it affecting his broader attitude toward the questions of war and peace. You cannot expect Iran’s spurning of his good-faith offer to have no effect on his broader perception of the strategy of engagement. For Obama, as for all of us, these events, these decisions and these lessons affect our broader perceptions and understandings, about the way the world works and about America’s proper role in the world. Obama’s current understanding was on display at Oslo last week. People at home and abroad should take notice.”

The neo-cons clearly see a great opportunity in Obama’s escalation in Afghanistan and the follow-up of the Nobel speech in Oslo. They’re trying hard to re-establish alliances they made with liberal interventionists in and around Bill Clinton and the Balkans in the 1990s by appealing to that “great tradition of hawkish Democrats fighting wars both hot and cold: Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman and John Kennedy, as well as that one-time Democrat, Ronald Reagan.” (Make sure you read Kristol’s and Fred Kagan’s editorial in the December 14 Weekly Standard, “Support the President.”)

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Author: Jim Lobe

Visit Lobelog.com for the latest news analysis and commentary from Inter Press News Service's Washington bureau chief Jim Lobe.

11 thoughts on “Now (Robert) Kagan Pivots, Too”

  1. Power and Theft
    The Israeli Stranglehold
    “The US, “the world’s only superpower,” has no independent voice in Middle Eastern affairs. The real power rests in the hands of the settler thug, Avigdor Lieberman, Deputy Prime Minister of Israel and Minister of Foreign Affairs. This is the man who controls the Obama government’s Middle East policy. Lieberman forced the “all-powerful President of the US, Barack Omama,” to rescind his order to Israel to halt the illegal settler settlements on occupied Palestinian land. Obama was given the bird and submitted to his master.

    Macho Americans who prance around as if they owned the world are nothing but the puppets of Israel. The US is not a country. It is a colony. ”

    http://www.counterpunch.org/roberts12142009.html

    1. Good man, Roberts. He's a freedom-loving patriot who calls 'em as he sees 'em. In "The Israeli Stranglehold," Roberts describes how that criminal Zionist state controls "American policy" in the Middle East.

  2. Kagan speaks of "America’s proper role in the world." And just what should America's proper role in the world be? Simply this: to have commerce with the world; to have mutual exchanges of friendship and culture with the world; to have and promote genuine peace with the world; and, to be a shining example to the world of what can be accomplished when individual, god-given human rights and liberties are revered and respected. That is America's proper role in the world. It was true at America's founding in 1776, and is just as true today.

    1. Yes. I return time and again to a quote from John Quincy Adams on the correct course of American foreign policy:

      “America goes not abroad in search of monsters to destroy. She is the well-wisher to the freedom and independence of all. She is the champion and vindicator only of her own…. She well knows that by once enlisting under other banners than her own, were they even the banners of foreign independence, she would involve herself beyond the power of extrication in all the wars of interest and intrigue, of individual avarice, envy and ambition, which assume the colors and usurp the standards of freedom.”

      1. Yes, John Q. Adams was an honest and wise man. Compared to our present day political "leaders"; who are nothing more than an evil, criminal gang of liars, thieves and murderers; John Q. Adams was a virtual saint.

  3. Don't worry. America won't be a superpower for too much longer. The American economy is in serious trouble, the dollar is coming under great pressure and America's debt load is becoming crushing. America is over-stretched militarily with two failed occupation / wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Nor will China indefinitely tolerate American hegemony in the far east either. Demographic, political and economic factors will eventually force Europe out of America's orbit too. Nor is there any guarantee the Arab and muslim world will always be weak and politically chaotic either. In 20-30 years you are going to see a multi-polar world with the USA much dimished in power and influence. Israel is going to have to find a new sugar-daddy.

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