News Week & Prescient Obama

In a past post I heaped some scorn upon Newsweek for coming down on Obama so quickly, concerning the Afghanistan war.

I focused on an article I thought Fareed Zakaria had written before the inauguration since it was published so soon after the inauguration:

Fahreed opines less than two weeks into Obama's administration. What a crock of weak news based upon a convenient amnesia. Since articles and magazines take a while to get ready for press, this was probably written before Obama took office.

(News Weak). In hind sight Fareed is surely in bed with the military to the point he "knows", that is, he is given information which he is directed to write about.

It is like the old retort, "when I want your opinion I will beat it into you".

In that article I pointed out how Fareed was so into the wars, and seemed to delight in them before each one began, and for a short while thereafter.

Fareed's Prescient Obama was the result of him having seen the road map the "career government employees" had drawn for the temps who come and go from election to election.

During an interview with a Kurdish journalist Noam Chomsky probably said it best, since he tends to have a form of prescience we can believe in:

Q. Why do you think people in the U.S. and even in other places of the world have been optimistic about Obama and his administration?

A. Two basic reasons. One is that they are glad to be rid of Bush. The brazen arrogance of his administration and its contemptuous defiance of world opinion drove the US standing in the world to historic lows. Almost any replacement would have been welcomed. The second reason is that Obama presents himself as an appealing person who offers partnership and conciliation, and as a kind of "blank slate" on which people can write their hopes and wishes. The serious question, always, is what is the substance behind the congenial surface? I have written elsewhere about that (as have others), and will not repeat. In brief, he is coming close to fulfilling Condolezza Rice's prediction that his administration will extend the foreign policy of the second Bush term, which took a softer line and less confrontational line on many issues than the first.

(Kurdistani News, emphasis added). I have pointed out that the election was a rejection election, and that the Obama Administration was making a strategic error if they were thinking it was an election based upon Obama's personality alone.

They may have known all of this all along but are as powerless as the rest of us to make all the changes we can believe in.