Neoconservative view: Obama's a Commie (and he'll destroy America)

I’m happy to read commentary from all sides on a given topic; I think that’s how you get a full picture of what’s really going on in the world. Even if I don’t agree with your point of view, I’m willing to be swayed if you make a good, fact-based argument.

Unfortunately the arguments from the Right coming out against Barack Obama have been light on facts on heavy on rhetoric, and some very confused rhetoric at that. The Right has been describing the Obama administration by turns as Communist, Socialist, Fascist and McCarthyist – apparently forgetting (or not knowing) that Communists and Fascists are ideologies inherently opposed to each other and that Sen. Joe McCarthy made his name as an anti-Communist crusader (not to mention his being viewed as a hero of sorts by right-wing commentators like Ann Coulter).

So into this confusing mess, enters Frank Gaffney, one of the more vocal Neoconservative backers of the George W. Bush worldview. In an opinion piece for the Washington Times, Gaffney informs us that Barack Obama is really a Communist bent on destroying the military and political power of the United States and who will surrender to Islamic extremists (seriously).

Mr. Gaffney offers few facts, or reasoned arguments, to back up his allegations, which in a sense is good since the few facts he offers he gets terribly wrong…Gaffney claims that Russia is “squeezing our supplies lines into Afghanistan”, when in reality Russia just opened a new supply route after NATO was unable to protect the main one up from Pakistan against Taliban insurgents. He accuses Obama of planning to abandon our allies in the Czech Republic by backing out of our pledge to base a system to protect them against “Iranian nuclear-armed missiles” – this ignores the fact that Iran posses neither nuclear warheads, nor missiles that can reach the Czech Republic (nor does he explain why the Iranians would want to nuke the Czechs…), and that the majority of the Czech people don’t want our ABM system in the first place. Finally Frank says that Obama will give the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights region to Syria; bypassing the fact that Israel and Syria have been negotiating the return of Golan to Syria for months now.

While I think the Obama administration is off to a good start in international affairs, I’m concerned about some of his decisions – like putting Richard Holbrooke in charge of Afghan-Pakistan relations, and I’m reserving judgment on how effective the Obama foreign policy is until we move from the talking phase to the action one. So I’m willing to listen to critiques, I just expect them to be of a far better quality than the screed Mr. Gaffney offers.