De Change van Obama is toch gewoon ordinair wisselgeld. Er is geen sprake van verandering, tenminste niet de verandering die de spindokters de bevolking beloofden. En nu opletten hoe al die praatjesmakers van de commerciele massamedia deze zwendel gaan verkopen. Let op de opiniemakers en vergeet niet dat u geen weermannetje nodig heeft om te weten uit welke hoek de wind waait.Many believe that Obama's foreign policy team is right of center. (Photo: Getty Images)
The Obama national security "team" - part of that much-hailed "team of rivals" - does not yet exist, but it does seem to be heaving into view. And so far, its views seem anything but rivalrous. Mainstream reporters and pundits lovingly refer to them as "centrist," but, in a Democratic context, they are distinctly right of center. The next secretary of state looks to be Hillary Clinton, a hawk on the Middle East. During the campaign, she spoke of our ability to "totally obliterate" Iran, should that country carry out a nuclear strike against Israel. She will evidently be allowed to bring her own (hawkish) subordinates into the State Department with her. Her prospective appointment is now being praised by the likes of Newt Gingrich and Henry Kissinger.
The leading candidate for National Security Advisor is General James L. Jones, former Marine Corps commandant and NATO commander, who remained "publicly neutral" during the presidential campaign and is known to be personally close to John McCain and, evidently, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates as well. Not surprisingly, he favors yet more spending for the Pentagon. The reputed leading candidate for Director of the CIA, John Brennan, now head of the National Counterterrorism Center, was George Tenet's chief of staff and deputy executive director during the worst years of the CIA's intelligence, imprisonment, and torturing excesses.
The new Secretary of Defense is odds on to be... the old secretary of defense, Robert Gates, a confidant of the first President Bush. Still surrounded at the Pentagon by former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld's holdovers, he has had a long career in Washington as a clever apparatchik. He was the adult brought in - the story of how and by whom has yet to be told - to clean up the Bush foreign policy mess (and probably prevent an attack on Iran). He did this. He now favors no fixed timelines for an Iraq withdrawal, but a significant American troop "surge" in Afghanistan, "well north of 20,000," in the next 12-18 months. He has overseen the further growth of the bloated Pentagon budget and has recently come out for the building of a new generation of nuclear weapons. (Other candidates for Defense include former Clinton Navy Secretary and key Obama advisor Richard Danzig, who may end up - for the time being - as an undersecretary of defense, Clinton former Deputy Secretary of Defense John Hamre, and Republican Senator Chuck Hagel, who might instead land the job as the Director of National Intelligence.)
Drop down a tier, as Yochi Dreazen of the Wall Street Journal wrote last week, and you find the Obama transition people using a little known think-tank, the Center for a New American Security (CNSA), as a "top farm team" to stock its national security shelves. The founders of the center are - don't be shocked now - former Clinton administration officials providing yet more "centrists" to an administration that seems to believe the essence of "experience" is having been in Washington between 1992 and 2000. CNAS, by the way, is officially against a fixed timeline for withdrawal from Iraq. In that, it seems typical of the coalescing national security team, almost none of whom, so far, opposed the invasion of Iraq (other than the president-elect). Having been anti-war is evidently a sign of inexperience and so a negative.
Add in the military line-up - Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Mike Mullen, Centcom Commander David Petraeus, Generals Raymond Odierno and David McKiernan, the U.S. commanders in Iraq and Afghanistan - all second term Bush picks, all reportedly ready to push for a major "surge" in Afghanistan, all evidently against Obama's timeline for withdrawing U.S. combat forces from Iraq.'
The Obama national security "team" - part of that much-hailed "team of rivals" - does not yet exist, but it does seem to be heaving into view. And so far, its views seem anything but rivalrous. Mainstream reporters and pundits lovingly refer to them as "centrist," but, in a Democratic context, they are distinctly right of center. The next secretary of state looks to be Hillary Clinton, a hawk on the Middle East. During the campaign, she spoke of our ability to "totally obliterate" Iran, should that country carry out a nuclear strike against Israel. She will evidently be allowed to bring her own (hawkish) subordinates into the State Department with her. Her prospective appointment is now being praised by the likes of Newt Gingrich and Henry Kissinger.
The leading candidate for National Security Advisor is General James L. Jones, former Marine Corps commandant and NATO commander, who remained "publicly neutral" during the presidential campaign and is known to be personally close to John McCain and, evidently, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates as well. Not surprisingly, he favors yet more spending for the Pentagon. The reputed leading candidate for Director of the CIA, John Brennan, now head of the National Counterterrorism Center, was George Tenet's chief of staff and deputy executive director during the worst years of the CIA's intelligence, imprisonment, and torturing excesses.
The new Secretary of Defense is odds on to be... the old secretary of defense, Robert Gates, a confidant of the first President Bush. Still surrounded at the Pentagon by former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld's holdovers, he has had a long career in Washington as a clever apparatchik. He was the adult brought in - the story of how and by whom has yet to be told - to clean up the Bush foreign policy mess (and probably prevent an attack on Iran). He did this. He now favors no fixed timelines for an Iraq withdrawal, but a significant American troop "surge" in Afghanistan, "well north of 20,000," in the next 12-18 months. He has overseen the further growth of the bloated Pentagon budget and has recently come out for the building of a new generation of nuclear weapons. (Other candidates for Defense include former Clinton Navy Secretary and key Obama advisor Richard Danzig, who may end up - for the time being - as an undersecretary of defense, Clinton former Deputy Secretary of Defense John Hamre, and Republican Senator Chuck Hagel, who might instead land the job as the Director of National Intelligence.)
Drop down a tier, as Yochi Dreazen of the Wall Street Journal wrote last week, and you find the Obama transition people using a little known think-tank, the Center for a New American Security (CNSA), as a "top farm team" to stock its national security shelves. The founders of the center are - don't be shocked now - former Clinton administration officials providing yet more "centrists" to an administration that seems to believe the essence of "experience" is having been in Washington between 1992 and 2000. CNAS, by the way, is officially against a fixed timeline for withdrawal from Iraq. In that, it seems typical of the coalescing national security team, almost none of whom, so far, opposed the invasion of Iraq (other than the president-elect). Having been anti-war is evidently a sign of inexperience and so a negative.
Add in the military line-up - Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Mike Mullen, Centcom Commander David Petraeus, Generals Raymond Odierno and David McKiernan, the U.S. commanders in Iraq and Afghanistan - all second term Bush picks, all reportedly ready to push for a major "surge" in Afghanistan, all evidently against Obama's timeline for withdrawing U.S. combat forces from Iraq.'
Lees vereder: http://www.truthout.org/112608L
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