Tyler Durden of Zero Hedge and others are misinterpreting Steve Kroft’s “60 Minutes” interview with President Obama. They see weakness and confusion in Obama’s responses and conclude that Kroft shredded Obama.
What I see is entirely different. Steve Kroft is either a neoconservative or he is inculcated into the neocon mind-set that the US must prevail everywhere. Kroft’s view is that weakness and indecision on Obama’s part is the reason the US is not prevailing in Syria. Kroft’s purpose is to embarrass Obama and push him into escalating the situation.
However, Obama is too strong for him. I read the interview as Obama saying that the neocon program has turned out not to be in America’s national interest. At the end of the Syria section of the interview, Obama says, “If, in fact, the only measure [of US strength] is for us to send another 100,000 or 200,000 troops into Syria or back into Iraq or perhaps into Libya, or perhaps into Yemen, and our goal somehow is that we are now going to be, not just the police, but the governors of this region, that would be a bad strategy. If we make that mistake again, then shame on us.”
The interview shows me Obama’s strength in recognizing and stating the failure of the neocon program to which his administration was hitched by policymakers in the government. There is hope in this demonstration of strength that in his final year as president he will pull back from the crazed, insane neoconservative agenda of US world hegemony.
Those who dislike Obama, and those inculcated by years of propaganda into the neocon view that America must always and everywhere prevail, will see what they want to see. They will not see the hope.
To prevent the neocon policymakers and the neocon press from squashing this hope, we must do what we can to support Obama. It is the neocon policy that has failed. In recognizing this failure, Obama is trying to take America off the neocon road to failure and more war. This is a very lonely and dangerous position for Obama to take in Washington.
Click here for the part of the interview that is about Syria.
Copyright © 2015 Paul Craig Roberts
Dr. Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Economic Policy and associate editor of the Wall Street Journal. He was columnist for Business Week, Scripps Howard News Service, and Creators Syndicate. He has had many university appointments. His internet columns have attracted a worldwide following. Roberts’ latest books are The Failure of Laissez Faire Capitalism and Economic Dissolution of the West and How America Was Lost.
Is Steve Kroft a neocon? Who knows. Who cares. What is he really? He is a spokesman for a media organization that, ultimately, is not controlled by US citizens, or persons concerned with the intersts of the US public.
Obama is, or at least is willing to do as much as he can in that direction without getting shot. These people control the ‘Deep State’ too, which includes the US intelligence agencies that have been perpetrating these conflicts in the Middle East since the defeat and withdrawal of the US military from Iraq. A humiliation, I might add, that the US military still stings from and has been plotting to avenge by re-entering Iraq. This was the purpose of the media outsized exposure of IS and the jingoism accociated with the film ‘American Psycopath’.
These people, who represent money, not people, are quite willing to totally sacrifice the US and the rest of the world in their aim of global domination. After all, if the US cannot dominate the globe, what use is it to them. Tommy Rimes
amen. hopefully Roberts is right about Obama