Obama Accused of Morphing Into Cheney

Michael Klare in Tom's Dispatch compares Obama to Bush in his appetite for military action. He quotes foreign policy people as calling him "George Bush on Steroids."
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Obama protested the Bush involvement in Iraq, saying he was not against all wars, but against "dumb wars." In his view, Bush expended thousands of American lives when he could have used technology -- drones, targeted strikes, assassinations, covert operations -- to accomplish the same objectives.
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Obama's rationale is clear -- he rationalizes that he is saving lives through these methods by using technology and black ops that would have required a multiple-front war in previous times. Or Vietnam on a worldwide scale.
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As for energy policy, Cheney believed that oil was so fundamental to the world's economy that it was sometimes necessary for the US to go to war to prevent someone else from controlling the world's oil supplies. He was one of the pushers for war against Saddam both times.
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This sort of thinking has led to out of control deficits; after all, the ends justified the means in Cheney's view.
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The unemployment problem could be solved tomorrow if we wanted to solve it. Simply take all the money that is being waged on all these covert wars and use it to rehire every teacher, policeman, and firefighter laid off since Bush/Cheney took office in 2001 and the unemployment rate would drop below 7.
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Obama is now mimicking Cheney's geopolitical oil games in many respects, such as his boasting about more and more offshore drilling. In fact, we have opened more than 75% of our potential offshore oil and gas resources for drilling under Obama, as he himself said this year in his State of the Union Address.
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The article goes on to talk about Obama's plan of expanding our network of bases and alliances surrounding China. It is ironic that Vietnam is included in this network, given that we fought a war against them just one generation ago.
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This is dangerous brinksmanship on Obama's part, given the fact that the UN was formed by the five major powers after World War II -- the US, UK, France, USSR, and China. It was formed to prevent a third world war and was set up in a way that requires the Big Five to cooperate in order to get things done. While we can and should take a stand against human rights abuses in China and everywhere, we must also engage in a cooperative relationship with our other four partners.
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Klaire concludes:

But as history suggests, engaging in aggressive global geopolitical confrontations with other determined, well-armed players usually leads to friction, crisis, war, and disaster.
In this regard, Cheney’s geopolitical maneuvering led us into two costly Middle Eastern wars while heightening tensions with both China and Russia.  President Obama claims he seeks to build a more peaceful world, but copying the Cheney energy blueprint is bound to produce the exact opposite.
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Brinksmanship over cooperation and reliance on oil over developing new forms of energy means less and less money domestically to build roads and bridges, maintain adequate funding for our schools, and preserving our national infrastructure, and hiring more teachers, firefighters, and police. But that has been the Washington Way since 1945 even as it fundamentally undermines our way of life.