Obama Sells the Exceptionalist Snake Oil

President Barack Obama ‘s foreign policy speech to the corporate cannon fodder at West Point last week has been lambasted by the usual neocon warmongers for not being sufficiently bellicose for their world domination tastes. It was however a speech that while missing the bombastic rhetoric that is so beloved by the Dick Cheney-William Kristol rat pack doubled-down on that most obscene and dangerous concept of American exceptionalism. This idea so long that it exists - and particularly when the political class in the - USA! USA! USA! – toss it around so casually without regard to the consequences, and it will be the phrase of the next two and a half years in the never-ending election cycle  - will never allow for the sort of honest introspection that would allow for a change of course. Not that the Empire would want such a thing, that happened after Vietnam and it only took a few years to trot out the pitchman Ronald Reagan to make America feel good about itself again and get back to the business of killing others in foreign lands.

The exceptionalist concept is really very Aryan in nature when you think about it, William Blum pointed out the correlation correctly in observing that some common Nazi phrases apply rather well in The Homeland:

Seig Heil! = Hail Victory!

Arbeit macht frei = Work makes you free

Denn heute gehört uns Deutschland und morgen die ganze Welt = Today Germany, tomorrow the world.

Ich habenur den Befehlen gehortch! = I was only following orders

Deutschland über alles = Germany above all

Each of those are easily adapted to the American experience in the 21st Century along with:

War is Peace

Ignorance is Strength

Freedom is Slavery

2+2=5

And from Barack Obama’s West Point Address:

 I believe in American exceptionalism with every fiber of my being. But what makes us exceptional is not our ability to flout international norms and the rule of law; it is our willingness to affirm them through our actions.”

The speech could have been given by George W. Bush, so full of interventionism, bogus historical references and a call for US world domination – albeit a bit more subtle than the Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle and Michael Ledeen blitzkrieg of shock and awe. Obama in his speech continued to promulgate the falsehood of “democracy” in Ukraine omitting the $5 billion dollars spent by NGO groups to plot the overthrow of the corrupt oligarch Viktor Yanukovych by US sponsored fascist and neo-Nazi thugs only to install another corrupt oligarch in Petro Poroshenko aka “the Chocolate King”. Obama’s stem-winder was a wretched excess of fables, an orgy of lies and a bacchanalia of bullshit.

Former Reagan administration official Paul Craig Roberts, a prolific critic of the rottenness that emanates from Washington really nailed Obama’s peddling of exceptionalism in his most recent piece entitled “What Obama Told Us at West Point”:

At West Point Obama told us, to the applause of West Point cadets, that “American exceptionalism” is a doctrine that justifies whatever Washington does. If Washington violates domestic and international law by torturing “detainees” or violates the Nuremberg standard by invading countries that have undertaken no hostile action against the US or its allies, “exceptionalism” is the priest’s blessing that absolves Washington’s sins against law and international norms. Washington’s crimes are transformed into Washington’s affirmation of the rule of law. Here is Obama in his own words:

“I believe in American exceptionalism with every fiber of my being. But what makes us exceptional is not our ability to flout international norms and the rule of law; it is our willingness to affirm them through our actions.”

Actions indeed. In the 21st century “American exceptionalism” has destroyed seven countries in whole or in part. Millions of people are dead, maimed, and displaced, and all of this criminal destruction is evidence of Washington’s reaffirmation of international norms and the rule of law. Destruction and murder are merely collateral damage from Washington’s affirmation of international norms.

“American exceptionalism” also means that US presidents can lie through their teeth and misrepresent those they choose to demonize. Listen to Obama’s misrepresentations of the Putin and Assad governments:

 “Russia’s aggression towards former Soviet states unnerves capitals in Europe . . . In Ukraine, Russia’s recent actions recall the days when Soviet tanks rolled into Eastern Europe .” Obama misrepresents Assad as “a dictator who bombs and starves his own people.”

Did any of the cadets in Obama’s West Point audience wonder why, if Assad is a brutal dictator who bombs and starves his own people, the Syrian people are supporting Assad instead of the American-backed “liberation forces,” the combination of imported jihadists and al Qaeda fighters who object to Assad’s government because it is secular? The US military is taught to respect its civilian commander-in-chief, but if West Point cadets actually do obtain an education, it is remarkable that Obama’s audience did not break out in laughter.

The reference to Soviet tanks rolling into Eastern Europe is a reference to the Hungarian (1956) and Czech (1968) “revolutions” when the Hungarian and Czech communist leaders attempted to assert independence from Moscow. It is doubtful that Washington’s response to countries attempting to exit NATO would be any different. A few months ago Washington responded to political talk in Germany and England about leaving the EU by informing both governments that it was not in Washington’s interest for them to depart from the European Union.

Obama used the image of Soviet tanks in order to color Russia with the Soviet Threat, to mischaracterize Russia’s response to the Georgian invasion of South Ossetia, and to misrepresent Crimea’s vote in favor of reunification with Russia as “Russia’s invasion and annexation of Crimea.” These lies are still a mainstay in the US media and in Washington’s official propaganda.

Obama’s speech is probably the most disingenuous ever given by a Western politician. We could have fun for hours with all the crimes that Washington commits but buries in rhetoric directed at others. Perhaps my favorite is Obama evoking a world in which “individuals aren’t slaughtered because of political belief.” I am sure Obama was thinking of this just world when he murdered without due process of law four American citizens “outside of areas of active hostilities.”

Another favorite is the way Obama flushed the US Constitution of its meaning. Obama said, with reference to bringing the Guantanamo prisoners to the US, that “American values and legal traditions don’t permit the indefinite detention of people beyond our borders.” No, Obama, the US Constitution prevents the indefinite detention of US citizens by the US government anywhere on earth, especially within our borders.

By detaining and by murdering US citizens without due process of law, Obama has violated his oath of office and should be impeached. It was only a short time ago that President Bill Clinton was impeached by the US House of Representatives (the Senate saved him from conviction) for lying about his sexual affair with a White House intern. How times change. Today a president who violates his oath of office to protect the Constitution from enemies foreign and domestic gets a free ride. The Constitution has lost its power to protect citizens from the arbitrary power of government. The US is the Constitution. Without the Constitution the US ceases to exist, and the country becomes a tyranny, both at home and abroad.Today the US is a tyranny cloaked in the garb of “freedom and democracy.”

Instead of laughing our way through Obama’s ridiculous speech to what apparently was a dumbed-down West Point graduating class, lets pay attention to Obama’s bottom line: “America must always lead on the world stage. . . . The military is, and always will be, the backbone of that leadership.”

In other words, Washington doesn’t use diplomacy. Washington uses coercion. The favorite threat is: “Do as you are told or we will bomb you into the Stone Age.” Obama’s speech is a justification of Washington’s criminal actions on the grounds that Washington acts for the exceptional Americans whose exceptionalism places them and, thereby, their government above law and international norms. In this way of thinking, only the failure to prevail constitutes failure.

Americans are the new ubermensch, the new master race. Inferior humans can be bombed, invaded, and sanctioned. Obama’s West Point speech asserts American superiority over all others and Washington’s determination to continue this superiority by preventing the rise of other powers. This arrogant hubris was not enough for the Washington Post editorial board. The newspaper’s editorial damned Obama for binding US power and limiting its use to “a narrow set of core interest,” such as direct threats to America.

The American “liberal media” object that Obama’s claim of exceptionalism is not broad enough for Washington’s purposes. Obama’s address, the Washington Post wrote, bound “US power” and “offered scant comfort” to those militarists who want to overthrow Syria, Iran, Russia, and China.

The world should take note that the most militarily aggressive American president in history is considered a wimp by the neoconized American media. The media drives wars, and the American media, firmly allied with the military/security complex, is driving the world to the final war.

HEAR! HEAR!  Now that is something to salute!

The narcotic of exceptionalism is what leads to a population that has been brainwashed by years of propaganda, indoctrinated in the mythology of a national destiny and greatness as surely as Germany was circa 1933 and enamored with war and hegemony in a way that makes acceptable the crucifixion of a soldier who questioned the morality of it all – Sergeant Bowe Bergdahl – to a red, white and blue cross of sick hypocrisy dipped in national glory.

Salute the Flag, Drink the Kool Aid, Drop the Bombs – USA! USA! USA!

Neocons Yowl Like Scalded Cats Over Obama Speech

President Barack Obama gave his heralded speech to the cannon fodder at West Point yesterday and the neocons went batshit in that the emperor failed to give a full-throated endorsement of their insane ideology of global conquest. By the time that the last words were ticking off of the teleprompter the neocon propaganda flagship at the Washington Post had already published a blistering screed by their morally bereft, warmongering editorial board denouncing what was in actuality a support of continued American interventionism by the Commander in Chief.

The editorial board screed, "At West Point, President Obama binds America’s hands on foreign affairs" is nothing more or less than the standard chickenhawk, spread "democracy" at gunpoint malarkey that roils one's stomach to even read it. I excerpt from this wretched, whining jeremiad as follows:

In his address Wednesday to the graduating cadets at West Point , Mr. Obama marshaled a virtual corps of straw men, dismissing those who “say that every problem has a military solution,” who “think military intervention is the only way for America to avoid looking weak,” who favor putting “American troops into the middle of [Syria’s] increasingly sectarian civil war,” who propose “invading every country that harbors terrorist networks” and who think that “working through international institutions . . . or respecting international law is a sign of weakness.”

Few, if any, of those who question the president’s record hold such views. Instead, they are asking why an arbitrary date should be set for withdrawing all forces from Afghanistan, especially given the baleful results of the “zero option” in Iraq. They are suggesting that military steps short of the deployment of U.S. ground troops could stop the murderous air and chemical attacks by the Syrian regime of Bashar al-Assad. They are arguing that the United States should not be constrained by Cyprus or Bulgaria in responding to Russia’s invasion and annexation of parts of Ukraine.

To those doubters, the president’s address offered scant comfort. Reiterating and further tightening a doctrine he laid out in a speech to the United Nations last fall, Mr. Obama said the United States should act unilaterally only in defense of a narrow set of “core interests,” such as the free flow of trade. When “crises arise that stir our conscience or push the world in a more dangerous direction,” he said, “we should not go it alone.”

This binding of U.S. power places Mr. Obama at odds with every U.S. president since World War II. In effect, he ruled out interventions to stop genocide or reverse aggression absent a direct threat to the U.S. homeland or a multilateral initiative. Those terms would exclude missions by previous administrations in places such as Somalia and Haiti and Mr. Obama’s own proposal to strike Syria last year — but not the war in Iraq, which was a multilateral campaign.

Mr. Obama made one new practical proposal: to set up a $5 billion fund to “train, build capacity and facilitate partner countries on the front lines” of fighting terrorism. The initiative is worthy of support as a way of checking emerging threats in places such as Yemen, Libya, Somalia and Mali. But just as a U.S. invasion is not needed for every terrorist haven, not all can be eliminated by training other countries’ forces.

Mr. Obama also pledged to “ramp up support” for the Syrian opposition. But he made the same promise last year and failed to follow through. Those U.S. allies who worry about Mr. Obama’s foreign policy retreat — and those who have exploited it — will be impressed by a change in U.S. behavior, not the president’s rhetoric.

More whining about Syria - given that the neocons are such ardent supporters of extremist right-wing Israel it is more than a bit mind boggling that advocacy of supporting extremist Islamist elements in Syria - including flesh eating cannibals who actually boast about their actions - but the same traffickers of outrage also hypocritically line up behind the neo-Nazis that are being backed in Ukraine despite the devastation wreaked upon the Jewish people by Hitler and his real Nazis.

Tellingly, the "army of straw men" applause line also appeared in another WaPo Editorial but Iran-Contra criminal and deeply embedded arch-neocon Elliott Abrams who went on his own tirade over Obama's 'failure' to execute the Project for the New American Century plan. Abrams should have long ago been thrown into one of the darkest and dankest holes of a US federal prison for his crimes, instead he landed a gig with the Bush II administration and continues to be a key player within the Deep State.

As for Obama's speech, it really is nothing more but the same imperialist horseshit all wrapped up in a red, white and blue package - more of the same warmongering abroad and more tyranny and revocation of liberties, nullification of the US Constitution and repression at home.

It falls short of what the neocons desire though but even Hitler himself would have problems satisfying their insanity.