He is the creator of ThePeoplesCube.com, a satirical website where he writes under the name of Red Square.
Posted on 08/24/2009 10:42:24 AM PDT by Tolik
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Obama's policy on Iran and Honduras is to respect the sovereignty of the dictator, not the people. (This is part four of a series. Read parts one, two, and three.) | Oleg Atbashian, a writer and graphic artist from Ukraine, currently lives in New York. He is the creator of ThePeoplesCube.com, a satirical website where he writes under the name of Red Square. |
In his speech to graduate students in Moscow, Obama opined:
State sovereignty must be a cornerstone of international order. … States must have the right to borders that are secure, to their own foreign policies.
This sounds very statesmanlike, except that without defining the true meaning of sovereignty it becomes an empty word and a pawn in the games of political demagogues — especially when no distinction is made between a democratic state and a tyranny.
In theory, Obama’s position amounts to moral equivalency between a democracy and an autocratic rogue state. In practice, it gives the roguish Iranian regime added legitimacy and protection, while leaving the democratic Honduras exposed to threats from Ortega and Chavez, aggravated by diplomatic pressure from the United States, the United Nations, the European Union, and the 35-member Organization of American States.
The idea of unconditional sovereignty is, in fact, a clever ploy used time and again during the Cold War to advance leftist dictatorships and undermine free democracies. The trick is simple — it takes advantage of the decency of those who honestly abide by international law, preventing them from interfering in the affairs of tyrants who abide by nothing except the expansion of their ill-gained power.
While free democracies invest mostly in the creation of goods and services, tyrants invest their nation’s capital in the creation and dissemination of propaganda. It pays off handsomely in the form of moral support from the brainwashed “global community” when a tyrannical regime takes over another country allegedly “to advance progress in the interests of all people.”
On the eve of every major state holiday, the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) used to publish a list of up to a hundred official talking points that covered all aspects of its domestic and foreign agendas. Printed in the form of slogans on the front pages of Pravda and local newspapers, they were meant to be enthusiastically announced on the radio, amplified during the state-sponsored “spontaneous” demonstrations, written on propagandistic posters, and memorized by schoolchildren and college students.
Endlessly rewritten and reshuffled to reflect the “current truth” about the ever changing party line, these talking points were always consistent with one and the same Orwellian template. The socialist USSR and its allies were the forces for peace and progress, while any resistance to their military operations, especially coming from the capitalist U.S.A. and its allies, represented “imperialism, reaction and war.”
Below are a few excerpts of such slogans prepared for the 60th anniversary of the “Great October Socialist Revolution.” They concern international relations and are addressed to the “people of the world.” Compare them to the essence of Obama’s statements:
Peoples of the world! Strengthen the efforts in the struggle for the complete liquidation of the results of Israeli aggression, for the establishment of just peace for all the governments and peoples of the Middle East, against imperialist interference in the internal affairs of Arab nations!
Peoples of the world! Struggle for the deepening of the lessening of international tension, for its expansion to all continents! Expose the efforts of the forces of aggression, revanchism, and reaction — enemies of peace and the peoples’ defense!
Peoples of the world! Strive so that the unacceptability of the use of force becomes the law in international relations and nuclear weapons are forever banned! Strengthen the struggle to end the arms race and to achieve universal and complete disarmament!
Long live the Leninist foreign policy of the Soviet Union — the policy of peace and friendship of peoples, the unity of all forces struggling against imperialism, reaction and war!
Anyone familiar with the Soviet propaganda methods knew that the same “peoples of the world” would be in big trouble should their governments take these Byzantine formulations at face value. But President Obama seems to believe the template enough to reiterate its points in Moscow — of all places!
It’s foolish to expect a fair game from forces whose moral code is limited to “the end justifies the means.” That is why the implication that “all sovereignties are equal” is a loss for law-abiding democracies and a win for leftist expansionists, whose only measure of legitimacy is the advancement of their perverted idea of the “common good.” Successfully applied by the Soviet communists to bamboozle Western diplomats, it has now become a preferred con of every dictator in the business of advancing socialism, communism, fascism, Islamism, or any other cockamamie heresy of the archetypal collectivist tyranny.
And while Obama’s speech was also meant to cover the sovereignties of Ukraine and Georgia, it does nothing to protect these countries from Russia’s meddling, but gives the Russian leaders a chance to call Obama on his own word if in the future he raises an issue with their policies.
Abiding by his own declarations, Obama would never have gone into Iraq or Afghanistan, thus allowing both Saddam and the Taliban to violate the sovereignty of their own citizens and other countries, invading neighbors and training gangs of international terrorists. Today this approach practically gives assurances to the dictators of Iran, North Korea, Venezuela, and other rogue regimes that the United States will “respect their sovereignty” regardless of their propensity to support terrorism, develop nuclear weapons, and threaten to invade neighboring democracies.
But whose sovereignty is he really respecting? When a free democratic society protects the individual sovereignty of each member, the sovereignties of all citizens add up to the entire nation’s collective sovereignty. But in a dictatorship where individual sovereignty is non-existent, where no one is safe from the government’s arbitrary powers, collective sovereignty adds up to exactly nothing. The only sovereignty Obama’s approach protects is that of the tyrant, who is the single sovereign individual in the entire nation.
The 2003 U.S.-led invasion didn’t violate the sovereignty of the Iraqi citizens because it is impossible to violate that which doesn’t exist. It only violated the sovereignty of Saddam Hussein and his two sons, Uday and Qusay — and deservedly so. Even Saddam’s closest henchmen had no personal sovereignty and lived in constant fear of his whims, just like Stalin’s henchmen before them.
Likewise, it would be impossible for America to “steal the Iraqi oil” because it had been long ago stolen by Saddam, who treated it as his personal asset and used the proceeds to build palaces, finance terrorism, develop weapons, bribe foreign leaders, corrupt the UN, and do other things that had nothing to do with the interests of the Iraqis.
But with America’s help, the Iraqi people have now regained both their oil and their sovereignty. And this time, their national sovereignty is absolutely legitimate because it is comprised of the sovereignties of millions of free individuals, who elect their government and are protected by law from its arbitrary dictate. And while their democracy is far from perfect, the Iraqis already are a world apart from the lawlessness of Saddam’s national-socialist regime.
In contrast, the ousting of President Manuel Zelaya, whose goal was to impose a dictatorship on Honduras, was done precisely to protect the individual sovereignties of all Hondurans. An attempt to return him to power as once advocated by Mr. Obama would, in fact, violate the sovereignty of every Honduran, who would lose personal liberties as a result of Zelaya’s leftist policies.
In the end, national sovereignty cannot be unconditional. Its condition is simple: the presence of an elected government that acts in the interests of its people, maintains the rule of law, and respects individual sovereignty of every one of its citizens.
This approach eliminates the false premise of moral equivalency and makes painfully clear that the right course of action with regards to Iran and the right course of action with regards to Honduras should be the exact opposites of what President Obama has chosen.
Except the United States, of course, the great satan.
I didn't know this. Cool!
More by Oleg Atbashian: http://www.freerepublic.com/tag/olegatbashian/index?tab=articles and
Agree wholeheartedly in re: satire & I already had the cube on bookmark - in fact I often shamelessly swipe their fantastic graphics, lol. But didn’t realize til your post just now its owner was also the other guy at pjm! (memo to self: need to read byline notes more closely). Thanks!
Oleg Atbashian, a writer and graphic artist from Ukraine, currently lives in New York. He is the creator of ThePeoplesCube.com, a satirical website where he writes under the name of Red Square.
I didn’t know this. Cool!
Yes! Oleg is cool!
I posted a collection of articles by Oleg Atbashian, from The People's Cube fame. Check them out
This ping list is not author-specific for articles I'd like to share. Some for the perfect moral clarity, some for provocative thoughts; or simply interesting articles I'd hate to miss myself. (I don't have to agree with the author all 100% to feel the need to share an article.)
I will try not to abuse the ping list and not to annoy you too much, but on some days there is more of the good stuff that is worthy of attention.
You are welcome to browse the list of truly exceptional articles I pinged to lately. Updated on August 24, 2009. on my page.
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Now you are stretching.
You must prove that you are a trusted Komrade and not the imperialist pawn.
It's how the UN works - they've become a dictator protection agency...
Something I just kinda thought about...With everyone having their boels in an uproar about how we are somehow going down the tubes as a nation...This may be true from a certain point of view, yet I feel very confident that if the government of this country were to cease to function, exist, legislate or proclamate...
I feel as conservatives we will actually survive very well if this were to happen...Albiet it is something we (conservatives) will do our best to keep from happening, but the flip-side to the coin is this...
It is actually the liberal/socialist leaning people who cannot survive without someone (government) intruding on their lives, their liberties and happinesses...How utterly sad...When they have it amongst themselves to provide that, they become physically and intellectually lazy to the point where, try as we may, we cannot convince certain demographics to see the true path to those inalienable rights...
Therefore I believe the battle for the hearts and minds of those who cannot stand up for themselves is a lost cause...
But I am sure we (conservatives) will continue to do our best to do what is right dispite all the spike strips put in front of the fleeing car chase that is this countries government run amok...
(boy, I must be full of beans to write this drivle, hehehe)
Time & again, I have to ask myself: who are the real "conservatives" in the true sense of the word when it's the folks in this country who are called 'liberals' who cling to the failed programs & discredited policies of the past?
The core values of exposed by the last 8 months of this President's regime seem straight out of the 1960's (& I'd venture most of the people on FR weren't even born then!) and the agenda promoted in the 60's was itself derived from an agenda created in Europe in the early part of that past century.
It seems to be that it's liberals (who are credited by the state-run media as being progressive & rushing headlong into the future imbued with a love for hope & change) who would actually prefer to bring us back to a troglodytic past. THEY are the ones who are bitterly clinging to their bibles - only the ancient orthodox canon to which they rigidly adhere just has the names of a bunch of dead white guys named Marx, Lenin, Stalin & Alinsky engraved on the cover of their sacred texts rather than Peter, Paul, John & whoever the other one was - lol, I forget.) It's liberals who are stuck in the past, afraid to look real progress in the eye. It's they who are so locked into the past they can't adapt to current exigincies.
This country was founded by people who courageously sought change from the status quo back in their home countries - they left everything behind & risked their very lives to seek it. Those that were content to passively lie back & accept their lot - dictated to them the empowered elites - would remain behind.
Why in heaven's name would those of us descended from those courageous immigrants wish to emulate the hodgepodge of social, economic & political philosophies devised by people sharing the genetic material of the passive folks who were willing to allow themselves to continue under subjugation back in the old countries. Why would we accept their 'new' philosophies modeled on the old, which would force the citizens to lie back & accept yet another lot dictated to them by just another empowered elite such as socialism or communism would create?
Conservatives are truly the more forward looking among us, nimble enough to adapt to current exigencies by venturing out to newer frontiers which require self-reliance, not reliance on their government or the elites who run it, as you say. It's our liberal cousins who cringe with timidity from the unknown by hunkering down in the past & are paralyzed by their fears of the new.
If the world were to fall apart tomorrow, it's the people who are called 'conservatives' who will do just fine, as you suggested, because the government to which we hold the most allegiance is the government within each & every one of us.
I'm keeping my Obama Komrade badge though, Tolik! I'm thinking it will be worth something some day.
Very astute!!!
I love the term “troglodytic past”...
I just got to wedge that into a conversation or two in the future...You will get full credit for it though!!! hehehe
Tolik can sure stir the pot can’t they!!! Whew!!!
I feel kinda warped because in my original post I didn’t mention a thing about soveriegnty I believe, yet that particular issue is almost an afterthought in the bigger scheme of things...We have bigger issues (fish) to kill before that even comes into play apparently...
One thing that frustrates me to no end is the fact that the conservatives who are in a position to steer the ship are not doing so from any perspective, either from a majority or a minority position...
With a flick of a dial the liberal/socialist/statists are able to muster up an incredible amount of negativity every single time we try to correct a situation...With little or no effort, from a position of strength or weakness...
It truely is an amazing thing to observe...
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