Roberto Abraham Scaruffi

September 6, 2012 Tomgram: John Feffer, The Dumbing Down of American Foreign Policy Think back to the election of 2008. Do you remember how one candidate had it easy?  He had eight years of abject failure to run against.  Eight years that included the launching of two dismal wars, the creation of a torture gulag with its crown jewel at Guantánamo Bay, the ushering in of a program of robotic assassination missions and secret spying programs, all presided over by an administration that talked tough about silencing leakers and reporters who aided them, and a president who kept a list with mug shots of people he wanted bumped off.  (When his triggermen killed one, he’d cross off his face.)  The roster of the administration's “triumphs” reads like something out of dystopian fiction and people were tired of it.  They wanted change, which was good news for the change candidate, because his rival was an old hawk who talked more of the same. Fast forward to today.  The candidate who won the 2008 contest expanded the country’s war in Afghanistan, struggled to keep American troops in Iraq (before fulfilling his predecessor’s pledge to withdraw), and oversaw escalating military interventions in Pakistan, Somalia, Libya, and elsewhere.  The winning candidate failed to close Guantánamo, radically expanded the robotic assassination program, continued and expanded domestic surveillance, vigorously pursued and used the Espionage Act against more governmental whistleblowers than all other administrations combined (but prosecuted no one else in the National Security Complex for illegal activities), and kept his own extensive kill list, personally okaying assassinations.  Could it really be that the “change” candidate won?  Could it have been any worse than if the old hawk had?  Another question follows.  Almost four years later, are people happy about the types of “change” he ushered in?  After all, as president, the change candidate killed public enemy number one and he’s still fighting for his political life against a challenger whose own party once rejected him and now does little more than tolerate him. He, too, is now talking “change.”  Yet the type of change the challenger is speaking about includes even more profligate military spending, even more troops to send to war, and possibly the addition of a new war or two to the American agenda.  So much change and yet so much remains the same.  Confusing, isn’t it?  Luckily, TomDispatch regular John Feffer, author of Crusade 2.0: The West’s Resurgent War on Islam, makes some sense of this strain of American politics and what four more years under President Obama or four years under President Romney is likely to mean for us -- and the rest of the world.  No matter who wins, be ready to lose hope and fear change. (To catch Timothy MacBain's latest Tomcast audio interview in which John Feffer discusses power -- hard, soft, smart, and dumb -- click here or download it to your iPod here.)  Nick Turse Dumb and Dumber Obama’s “Smart Power” Foreign Policy Not Smart at All By John Feffer Barack Obama is a smart guy. So why has he spent the last four years executing such a dumb foreign policy? True, his reliance on “smart power” -- a euphemism for giving the Pentagon a stake in all things global -- has been a smart move politically at home.  It has largely prevented the Republicans from playing the national security card in this election year. But “smart power” has been a disaster for the world at large and, ultimately, for the United States itself. Power was not always Obama’s strong suit. When he ran for president in 2008, he appeared to friend and foe alike as Mr. Softy. He wanted out of the war in Iraq. He was no fan of nuclear weapons. He favored carrots over sticks when approaching America’s adversaries. Click here to read more of this dispatch.