{"id":142843,"date":"2014-12-31T15:16:50","date_gmt":"2014-12-31T15:16:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/?p=142843"},"modified":"2014-12-31T16:22:59","modified_gmt":"2014-12-31T16:22:59","slug":"obama-says-improving-world","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/editorials\/obama-says-improving-world\/","title":{"rendered":"Obama Says He Is Improving the World"},"content":{"rendered":"

He asserts: “wherever we have been involved over the last several years, I think the outcome has been better because of American leadership.”<\/b><\/span><\/p>\n

Eric Zuesse<\/span><\/p>\n

U.S. President Barack Obama said in a December 30th Oval Office interview with Steve Inskeep of National Public Radio<\/span><\/a>, that, \u201cwherever we have been involved over the last several years, I think the outcome has been better because of American leadership.\u201d This statement from him was part of his answer when Inskeep asked whether the President had regrets about \u201coverthrowing the Gadhafi regime\u201d in Libya.<\/span><\/p>\n

Obama answered: <\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWe are hugely influential; we’re the one indispensable nation. But when it comes to nation-building, when it comes to what is going to be a generational project in a place like Libya<\/span><\/a> or a place like Syria<\/span><\/a> or a place like Iraq, we can help, but we can’t do it for them.\u201d In other words: the Libyan people failed, and the Syrian people failed, and the Iraqi people failed, according to America\u2019s President \u2013 but he himself and his predecessor Bush did not fail by bombing those countries under false pretenses as they did.<\/span><\/p>\n

Obama then pivoted into a direct criticism of Russia\u2019s President, Vladimir Putin. He started his attack here by praising himself for \u201chaving some strategic patience. You’ll recall that three or four months ago, everybody in Washington was convinced that President Putin was a genius.\u201d Obama was suggesting that the real<\/i> genius was himself, for his \u201cstrategic patience.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Inskeep (who apparently was ignorant that the people of Crimea had always opposed the donation of Crimea from Russia to Ukraine by Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev in 1954, and who was also ignorant that Crimeans in March 2014 were delighted to be reunited again with Russia and had not been \u201ctaken\u201d by Russia<\/a> but were instead saved by Russia from the fate that befell Donbass<\/a>) interjected, there, for clarification to his listeners, that Obama meant that Putin was thought to be a \u201cgenius\u201d \u201cfor taking Crimea.\u201d Inskeep was here trying to help Obama by clarifying Obama\u2019s anti-Putin reference in his \u201cgenius\u201d term; and, by doing so, Inskeep falsely assumed that Crimea had been seized, against the will of Crimeans.<\/p>\n

The President skillfully built upon Inskeep\u2019s ignorance, and anti-Russian bias, here, by playing along with Inskeep\u2019s false intrinsic assumption, and by continuing directly from it in such a way as to present himself as being the real \u201cgenius\u201d; he asserted, \u201cAnd he had outmaneuvered all of us and he had, you know, bullied and, you know, strategized his way into expanding Russian power. And I said at the time we don’t want war with Russia\u00a0<\/span>[even though his February 2014 anti-Russian coup in Ukraine<\/span><\/a> and actions afterwards<\/span><\/a>\u00a0show otherwise]\u00a0but we can apply steady pressure working with our European partners, being the backbone of an international coalition to oppose Russia’s violation of another country’s sovereignty [as if it weren\u2019t the case that two recent Gallup polls in Crimea showed an overwhelming public support there for leaving Ukraine and for reuniting with Russia, and as if it weren\u2019t the case that America\u2019s takeover of Ukraine on Russia\u2019s border hadn\u2019t been the aggressive act here<\/span><\/a>], and that over time, this would be a strategic mistake by Russia [when, in fact, Obama knows quite well that the people he installed in his February coup in Ukraine had already been initiating the process to kick out of Crimea, Russia\u2019s crucial Black Sea Fleet, which had been stationed there since 1783, and that this reversal of Khrushchev’s 1954 gift of Crimea to Ukraine was crucial for Russia’s own national security]. And today, you know, I’d sense that at least outside of Russia [such as among the trusting listeners to NPR<\/span><\/a>], maybe some people are thinking what Putin did wasn’t so smart [when Obama knows quite well that what Putin did by his re-absorbing Crimea back into Russia was actually vital to Russian national security under the circumstances of Obama\u2019s February coup in Ukraine<\/span><\/a>].\u201d<\/p>\n

Inskeep responded to Obama\u2019s distortions, with what he perhaps hoped his listeners would think to be a challenging question to the President: \u201cAre you just lucky that the price of oil went down and therefore their currency collapsed or \u2026 is it something that you did?\u201d Inskeep was apparently quite ignorant there that Obama\u2019s Secretary of State had met in Riyadh with the Saudi King on September 11th<\/span><\/a> widely viewed as having actually produced the King\u2019s decision to flood oil markets in order to drive oil prices so low as to cripple Russia\u2019s economy, so that Inskeep\u2019s question here was assuming a non-existent polarity, in any case (between the sanctions from Obama, vs. the falling oil-price, which was supposedly not<\/i> from Obama).<\/span><\/p>\n

Obama answered Inskeep\u2019s ignorance there by triumphantly bragging against Putin:\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cIf you’ll recall, their economy was already contracting and capital was fleeing even before oil collapsed. And part of our rationale in this process was that the only thing keeping that economy afloat was the price of oil. [Actually, Russia\u2019s economy under Putin had been growing much faster than had the U.S. economy under the George W. Bush and Barack Obama regime<\/span><\/a>.] And if, in fact, we were steady in applying sanction pressure, which we have been, that over time it would make the economy of Russia sufficiently vulnerable that if and when there were disruptions with respect to the price of oil \u2013 which, inevitably, there are going to be sometime, if not this year then next year or the year after [which also is a lie from him because the current low oil price is the engineered price, and even the Saudis will have to quit doing it within a few years] \u2013 that they’d have enormous difficulty managing it. I say that, not to suggest that we’ve solved Ukraine [by producing the civil war there?], but I’m saying that to give an indication that when it comes to the international stage, these problems are big, they’re difficult, they’re messy [like America\u2019s coups were in Iran 1953, Guatemala 1954, Chile 1973, etc.<\/span><\/a>]. But wherever we have been involved over the last several years, I think the outcome has been better because of American leadership.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

So, the particular<\/i> instance in which America\u2019s President feels proudest of having produced an \u201coutcome [that] has been better because of American leadership\u201d was in Ukraine, where Obama\u2019s policy produced a takeover of the Ukrainian Government by racist anti-Russian fascists, or nazis who hate Russians \u2013 nazis who are ethnically cleansing ethnic Russians away from Ukraine\u2019s Donbass region<\/span><\/a>, the region that had voted 90% for the President<\/span><\/a>, Viktor Yanukovych, whom Obama had overthrown with the crucial armed muscle of those nazi snipers who carried out his coup<\/span><\/a>. (And virtually no U.S. \u2018news\u2019 medium has reported that the actual person whom Obama placed in control of Ukraine is a longstanding leader of Ukraine\u2019s nazis<\/span><\/a>.)<\/span><\/p>\n

With \u2018news\u2019 coverage like this, it\u2019s clear why, as Gallup headlined on December 29th, \u201cBarack Obama, Hillary Clinton Extend Run as Most Admired.\u201d<\/span><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

That sort of thing \u2013 respect for people who are actually war-mongers \u2013 has become routine in the United States. In 2001, the most-admired man was George W. Bush, and the most-admired woman was his wife. In 2002-2006, the most-admired man was President Bush, and the most-admired woman was former President Bill Clinton\u2019s wife.<\/span><\/a> (Hillary Clinton is a big backer of all invasions and coups by the U.S.<\/span><\/a>)<\/span><\/p>\n

And, without \u2018news\u2019 coverage like that, it\u2019s also clear why people outside the United States consider the U.S. to be the biggest threat to world peace<\/span><\/a>. Internationally, Russia is way down this list. However, America\u2019s President won\u2019t need to ask those foreigners whether to launch a nuclear attack against Russia<\/span><\/a>. All that he will need to control is America\u2019s press \u2013 and he (and the aristocrats who placed him into power) do.<\/span><\/p>\n

———-<\/span><\/p>\n

Investigative historian Eric Zuesse is the author, most recently, of They\u2019re Not Even Close: The Democratic vs. Republican Economic Records, 1910-2010<\/i><\/span><\/a>,<\/i> and of \u00a0<\/i>CHRIST\u2019S VENTRILOQUISTS: The Event that Created Christianity<\/i><\/span><\/a>.<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

He asserts: “wherever we have been involved over the last several years, I think the outcome has been better because of American leadership.” Eric Zuesse U.S. President Barack Obama said in a December 30th Oval Office interview with Steve Inskeep of National Public Radio, that, \u201cwherever we have been involved over the last several years, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1254,"featured_media":141077,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[461,1622],"tags":[115,30,32,96,535,59,524,523,49,76,40],"class_list":{"0":"post-142843","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-editorials","8":"category-featured","9":"tag-barack-obama","10":"tag-big-brother","11":"tag-cia","12":"tag-cover-up","13":"tag-global-news","14":"tag-military","15":"tag-russia","16":"tag-ukraine","17":"tag-usa-news","18":"tag-warfare","19":"tag-white-house"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/142843","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1254"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=142843"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/142843\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/141077"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=142843"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=142843"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=142843"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}