|
well, first off it's pretty bloody disengenuous for any supporter of the bush administration to talk about a lack of clarity on obama's part in afghanistan. seven years of incoherence and now obama's is a Problem? horsepucky. that's right, i said horsepucky.
i haven't a real sense of how afghanistan makes sense. never had it. this ludicrous "war on terror" was the ostensible motivator, then it turned into the americans being part of a civil war in afghanistan and later on the border of pakistan and then the americans as a dimension of what was happening in the swat valley...none of this makes any sense. obama keeps troops there because, apparently, he buys something about this nitwit "war on terror" thing--at least enough to see it as something potentially rational, which i don't and haven't. i think he's kinda boxed in there. but i can't say that i know the strategy---or the objectives.
my main problem with obama is that he's gone nowhere near far enough in torching the legacy of the bush people and the neoliberalism of which they were a singularly incompetent expression. nowhere near.
the problems neoliberalism has wraught are not over, the "crisis" is not finished--but obama seems to be more or less content with half-assed measures circumscribed by assumptions that are of almost exactly the same logic as that of the bush people.
it's not great.
there are things he's doing that i support--i think he's right about health care for example, even i am continually baffled about why the french model is not considered as a template for an alternative to the american. but whatever, he's doing something about it. i like his green emphasis, but haven't really seen much action in that direction yet. i'm more supportive of the changes in direction in foreign policy, particularly with respect to israel. but we'll see how things play out.
__________________
a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear
it make you sick.
-kamau brathwaite
|