Popular illusions and misunderstandings.

I am amazed that even after two years of the Obama Experience some people still don’t get it. John Hanna writing in National Review believes that Obama’s foreign policy in the Middle East has been such a failure that Obama will change, and gives suggestions for what those changes should be. I believe Hanna is suffering from an illusion. The illusion is that Obama wishes a continuation of previous American foreign policy objectives.

Why is there this illusion?  Most politicians make promises that exaggerate their ability or desire to make changes. The most we ask of our political class is that they stay reasonably honest, don't do anything to make our lives worse, and not to screw up.  Yet Obama ran on "change."  His wife promised us that "Barack will never allow you to go back to your lives as usual, uninvolved, uninformed."  Most people thought that was campaign blather.  It wasn't.  But people did not believe it for one very good reason: Barack is particularly good at letting people think that he agrees with them.  If people are going to change, it's the other guy who's going to do the changing; "Barack agrees with me" is the belief of the deluded "moderate."

People can disguise who they are, but they can be understood through their friends. Obama is particularly good at being a political chameleon; a blank screen on which people can project their personal desires. Richard Epstein, who has known Obama for years testifies to the fact that even in face to face encounters, Obama remains inscrutable. His technique is asking questions rather than answering them.  "He's very, very dogmatic ... knows what he believes and he knows why he believes it and it's extremely difficult for people on the outside to change his mind."  Epstein believes that Obama lives in a "fairyland" which causes him to create programs and policies that are destined to fail or make matters worse.

In speeches he is the master of the false choice.  His false choices are designed to make his appear as the moderate middle between two extremes.

But it does not take a mind reader to understand Obama. Forget what he says.  Check out his friends and mentors; Bill Ayers and Jeremiah Wright for starters. Observe what he does. He is a committed Leftist. To understand how he will act, all you need to know is what the Left in the US believes.

In the Middle East, you can expect Obama to side reactively with the regimes that have been hostile to the US and vice versa. Why? Because the Left believes that US foreign policy has not simply been mistaken but evil. Just as Obama campaigned and began his administration as the anti-Bush, his foreign policy is anti-former-US-policy. In Obama World the enemies of the US were victims of an evil policy of neocolonial expansion and exploitation. Conversely, the friends of the US are the running dogs of imperialism and deserve to be overthrown and replaced by an authentic indigenous regime. And if that regime is hostile to the US, that’s our fault for supporting the corrupt regime that was overthrown.

In view of Obama’s worldview it’s really interesting that he unleashed the military on Libya. K.Daffy is no friend of America. On the other hand, his oil is being extracted by European oil companies and is flowing to European countries. He revealed his nuclear ambitions, fearing to follow in the footsteps of Saddam Hussein. All in all, Libya was no Iran or Syria, regimes which have stood up to what Obama views as "American hegemony" and for which Obama has a warm spot.  So when the political pressure got too much, Obama decide to throw K.Daffy under the bus, joining a  sizable pile of bodies who have found themselves to be inconvenient to his ambitions.

So it intrigues me that John Hanna thinks that Obama should wish to change his policies in the Middle East. From the traditional view of American interest and foreign policy, Obama’s policy is a disaster. From Obama’s perspective, he has been hindered from carrying out his policy, not by the regimes in the Middle East, but by elements of the American government. Not everyone in the Federal government is a committed Leftist. That transformation takes time. This is why Obama is the first candidate to announce his campaign for 2012.