printYes, I award them when warranted.
• Obama has lifted the “Pentagon’s 18-year ban on media covering the return of fallen U.S. service members” to the Dover air force base in Delaware.
Excellent, honest move. I applaud Obama for taking it. In this way, Americans can see what death in the service of America’s recreational wars looks like.
As a child in Israel, I remember funerals for the fallen being state affairs. The entire nation would honor the fallen soldiers and be made to confront the agony of death. No wonder Israeli Jews have no stomach for wars.
• Recalibrating the relationship with Russia: another very good move, although, given how Bush-like Barack is—in other words, neocon-compatible—it’s hard to envision him taking a fundamentally different stand on Chechnya or Georgia, for example. Still, restarting the relationship with Russia is in itself a start.
• All in all, making nice with “Old Europe”—which is how the stupid, reckless Bush administration dismissed Europe (including its correct objection to the Iraqi invasion)—is a good thing. Sure, neoconservative war harpies get hot for over heated rhetoric against any and all. They’ll have to get their kicks playing video war games. As will they have to get through their thick skulls that this country is no longer a super power. It’s neither sexy nor smart to smite the world when you’re … broke and bankrupt.
No matter how Republicans spin it, Obama’s overtures to Islam and the Muslim world do not present any change from Imam Bush’s religion-of-peace preaching.
• It’s premature to rejoice over the cuts to some military spending announced by Defense Secretary Robert Gates today. Touted as a balancing of “want and need,” and intended to gear “Pentagon buying plans to smaller, lower-tech battlefields the military is facing now, and expects in coming years”—Gates’ proposed $534 billion budget for the coming year is up from $513 billion for 2009.
This is really nothing but a reshuffle.
Update I (April 7): Obama gets credit on Cuba too. This from MyWay News:
President Barack Obama will soon move to ease travel and financial restrictions on Cuba as his administration conducts a broad review of its policy toward the communist nation, a senior American official said Monday.
“We can expect some relaxation, some changes in terms of the restrictions on family remittances and family travel,” said Jeffrey Davidow, the White House adviser for the upcoming Summit of the Americas, which Obama will attend.
Davidow said Monday that the changes – which officials say would allow unlimited visits to Cuba by American families and remove caps on money transfers – are intended not only as a moral step for the estimated 1.5 million Americans who have relatives in Cuba, but also to foster change there.
Good going. Trade—not democracy or sanctions—is also the best antidote to war. The more economically intertwined countries are, the less likely they are to quarrel. Boycott Cuba less and barter with it more and it’s bound to tone down its belligerence and transform for the better.
Update II (April 8): Neocon Newt Gingrich is going gaga, but here again Obama’s “refusal to take military action against nations like North Korea and Iran” is the right thing to do.
Newt the nut told Fox News’s Gretta von Susteren that Obama needed to learn from his trip. And what is it that Newt believes the lessons ought to be? Obama must follow the neocons’ policy prescriptions and consider nations that do not do what we want them to do as hostile. From the fact that Europe didn’t indulge Obama, he needs to learn what Newt and the neocons preach: there is no basis for diplomacy, unless the world bows to America.
Only America has national interests; other nations have a problem aligning theirs with America’s.
I appreciate the fact that you continue to refer to the “Neocon War Harpies.” They deserve to be belittled. How disgusting that they contributed to whipping up pro-war sentiment! As you point out, we are no longer a superpower and it is neither sexy nor smart to continue to cheerlead for war (why does that blonde Monica-whatever her-surname-is come to mind?) In any case they are yesterday’s news, as we were a superpower yesterday but not today.
no disrespect but it depends on what a transformation for the better means doesn’t it?
Mexico and the US are economically intertwined including drugs and illegal aliens.
No doubt the arrangement is transforming Mexico for the better but it’s destroying us.
No question obama is merely picking up where bush left off regarding the wonders of Islam.
but here too, trade between the muslim world and the US has transformed very little for the better in the Muslim world while increasing the influence of islam here in the US. [This is an assertion, not an argument. Last I looked, Dubai was a modern wonder.–IM]
I don’t see any of that as a benefit.
Again, no offense but i don’t consider trade and commerce to be the answer to all the world’s problems.
As for obama giving Americans a chance to “see what death in the service of America’s recreational wars looks like”, well, dead American soldiers don’t get the kind of consideration the Israeli soldiers did in your childhood.
And frankly, if obama thinks it’s a good idea the chances are good the decision was made with bad intent. [Psychologizing is not an argument against a position.]
Sorry. A punk is a punk.
Finally, I find (what I perceive to be) this apparent rejoicing at the prospect of the US sliding from its perch atop the world somewhat puzzling. [You sound like Bill O’Reilly; if one adheres to reality and describes it accurately, as I do, one is unpatriotic.]
Is something better headed our way that I’ve missed? [You want someone to peddle lies and good times? Not here I don’t.]
Again, no offense.
Dubai may be a modern wonder. Saudi Arabia is not. [It’s oil installations are to die for, for example. Some Americans go there for work, which means there must be some.]
I didn’t ask for lies or assurances of the good times to come. That’s what politicians are for.
Perhaps I was unclear.
I merely wondered what might be in store for the US now that the deck has been re shuffled so to speak.
I can agree with your statements in regard to the so called new policy’s from Washington. An in depth analysis as one of the previous commenters implies is needed would take way more space. The president is trying to talk nice to Europe, that’s good, meanwhile he is attempting (successfully) to increase NATO and US Military presence, a negative. While it is good that secrecy of US dead should be discarded, Mr./Ms. TaTosian has a point that our dead do not receive the same honor as some other countries give their dead. Here in Oklahoma, we had to enact a law requiring the grieving family be given five hundred feet of space to conduct their funeral, because of so called protesters, disrupting funerals for our war dead. On Cuba, our pastor went to Cuba a few years ago and toured it with Christian’s in Cuba, close to the time when at least one of our “movie star” went to Cuba. His story of what it was like was entirely different (extreme poverty over most of the country) from the “worker’s paradise” the movie star said it was. It seems that the star, received ‘star treatment’ in an isolated segment of Cuba. You and I know who’s version of Cuba was broadcast to the citizens of the US. Open trade and relations will destroy that ‘movie star image’ and force Cuba to face itself. Somewhere, I get lost in this stuff about nationalism like America being a leader or debtor nation and how that is important to how we should relate to other nations. To me, the US is my home country, one shares space on Earth with other sovereign nations. Being of average intelligence [I doubt that], I believe that “no debt” is the only way for a nation to live, otherwise the citizens are not free, no matter the rhetoric. Personally, I agree with you, that the president is trying to do some good things and I hope he continues to do more “Good things” and will quit doing the bad. I hope that, but I read the White House Agenda. I doubt you are going to get many chances to compliment our president in the future. [Agreed; just being fair.] I applaud this attempt though.
(1) On free trade – if I wish to trade a Buick to Fidel Castro for some payment in cigars, Kim Jong Il for bulkogi, or Khatami for oil, it should be nobody’s business but mine. Whether it improves Castro or Kim or Khatami’s attitude is also not of concern if there is mutual economic interest. Does anyone check up on whether the clerk at the local grocery store appreciates Beethoven any better as a result of your commerce? The only possible concern involving others would be for me to trade weapons to them – otherwise, any “embargo” imposed by the US is a violation of my rights to free trade. (2) I suggest that Generalissimo Gingrich and the neocons emigrate to the “evil nation” of their choice, overthrow it and enjoy their new paradise. (3) Changing the topic slightly to Turkey, is it somewhat hypocritical that a nation that militantly denies a {CENSORED} event from 1915 is upset over 500 Gaza civilians? For every second getting mad at Israel, one can spend a minute denouncing the US for civilian casualties in Iraq and an hour denouncing Sudan (and Turkey??) for their atrocities which exceed a million victims.
[Brilliant defense of individual rights, justice, and general sanity! Thanks.]