The Scheunemann Factor
August 22, 2008, Matthew Good I’ve been doing my best to steer clear of US politics lately, primarily because it’s a shit show. In the past I have conceded that of the two Presidential candidates I prefer Barack Obama, and that hasn’t changed. To be honest, John McCain just scares the hell out of me.
If Obama wins in November he will enter the White House in 2009 with the same, if not slightly more, foreign policy experience than John Kennedy possessed. Obama is routinely attacked for his lack of foreign policy experience, but the truth is that, no matter who wins, the next President of the United States will inherit the most devastating foreign policy mess in US history and will, in my opinion, be limited to a single term in office because of the massive hole left in the Bush Administration’s wake. That hole is so massive that four years isn’t long enough to seriously confront it, which will only lead to the early demise of whomever is elected in November.
That said; a recent piece by Patrick Buchanan entitled And None Dare Call It Treason is worth a look. An excerpt…
“Who is Randy Scheunemann?
He is the principal foreign policy adviser to John McCain and potential successor to Henry Kissinger and Zbigniew Brzezinski as national security adviser to the president of the United States.
But Randy Scheunemann has another identity, another role.
He is a dual loyalist, a foreign agent whose assignment is to get America committed to spilling the blood of her sons for client regimes who have made this moral mercenary a rich man.
From January 2007 to March 2008, the McCain campaign paid Scheunemann $70,000 – pocket change compared to the $290,000 his Orion Strategies banked in those same 15 months from the Georgian regime of Mikheil Saakashvili.
What were Mikheil’s marching orders to Tbilisi’s man in Washington? Get Georgia a NATO war guarantee. Get America committed to fight Russia, if necessary, on behalf of Georgia.
Scheunemann came close to succeeding.
Had he done so, U.S. soldiers and Marines from Idaho and West Virginia would be killing Russians in the Caucasus, and dying to protect Scheunemann’s client, who launched this idiotic war the night of Aug. 7. That people like Scheunemann hire themselves out to put American lives on the line for their clients is a classic corruption of American democracy.
U.S. backing for his campaign to retrieve his lost provinces is what Saakashvili paid Scheunemann to produce. But why should Americans fight Russians to force 70,000 South Ossetians back into the custody of a regime they detest? Why not let the South Ossetians decide their own future in free elections?
Not only is the folly of the Bush interventionist policy on display in the Caucasus, so, too, is its manifest incoherence.”
This little symbol lets you @ another comment
Matt- 4 years is definitely not enough time to sweep up a pile of shit as big as the us foreign policy, but I’m kinda thinking that Obama is going to do more about it than we might imagine if only to prove the size of the balls he keeps telling us he has. That’s what I hope for, anyway. If he shares your “one term” view, I doubt he’ll even bother to pick up the broom.
I totally agree with the “massive hole” idea. Whoever is elected might be better off working on the actual state of the country - medicare, school, social issues etc…
Scheunemann - he is a businessman afterall, so what can you expect? Is he supposed to just drop his Orion Strategies and bet all his money on McCain? Remember Catch 22 - everybody’s got a share :)
And, finally, McCain with support from Hilary Clinton nominated Saakashvili for Noble peace prize back in 2005 for his support of “universal values of democracy, individual liberty, and civil rights.” Funny.
I think what the US really needs is a string of presidents with real moral values. Based on the two candidates, I think Obama is closer to that. That was one of the virtues I thought Kennedy had — a strong sense of right and wrong, and the desire to move the world in a direction of equality and peace. Obviously his presidency wasn’t all roses, especially with regards to the Bay of Pigs incident and some of his personal affairs. But given his dedication to human rights and the desire for peace in the midst of the Cuban Missile crisis, I think he did a far better job than many presidents since his time.
[quote comment="62749"]I think what the US really needs is a string of presidents with real moral values. Based on the two candidates, I think Obama is closer to that. That was one of the virtues I thought Kennedy had — a strong sense of right and wrong, and the desire to move the world in a direction of equality and peace. Obviously his presidency wasn’t all roses, especially with regards to the Bay of Pigs incident and some of his personal affairs. But given his dedication to human rights and the desire for peace in the midst of the Cuban Missile crisis, I think he did a far better job than many presidents since his time.[/quote]
Funny, im not a huge John McCain fan but of the two ive often thought that it was Obama who lacks any real moral values.
[quote comment="62747"]
And, finally, McCain with support from Hilary Clinton nominated Saakashvili for Noble peace prize back in 2005 for his support of “universal values of democracy, individual liberty, and civil rights.” Funny.[/quote]
Ridiculous! Does it even mean anything to win a Nobel prize these days??
Also, excellent article. I can’t believe it. Well, I can but I don’t really want to.
I liked Obama before he had announced he was going to run. Since then he’s become less and less impressive with each passing moment. And John McCain’s time was probably four years ago, since he seems to have become a robotic religious shell of his former self.
I only wished for there to be someone other than Obama this time around on the basis of: he won’t last more than 4 years if he wins. Neither Republican nor Democrat will. Our neighbours to the South are just in too much trouble for one man to clean up in four years and not be destroyed by it.
It’s like I tell everybody all the time. It’s MORE than the man. (Obama or McCain) It’s WHO they make their administration up with that counts. McCain is surrounding himself with nothing but lobbyists and NONE of them list the American people as their client.
I have an Obama lawn sign up in front of my house now.
[quote comment="62757"]I liked Obama before he had announced he was going to run. Since then he’s become less and less impressive with each passing moment. And John McCain’s time was probably four years ago, since he seems to have become a robotic religious shell of his former self.
I only wished for there to be someone other than Obama this time around on the basis of: he won’t last more than 4 years if he wins. Neither Republican nor Democrat will. Our neighbours to the South are just in too much trouble for one man to clean up in four years and not be destroyed by it.[/quote]
That’s because to secure victory he, and his team, know that he has to slowly creep towards the middle to secure votes.
Obama has the potential to appear to be one of the greatest American presidents, but whether that is because he’ll do well or because he’d be coming in right after one of (or, THE) worst in American history has yet to be decided.
Hopefully he’ll buckle down and start cleaning things out, maybe the one-term theory will put a little fire under his ass to get things done and make his (positive) mark.
Foreign policy mess up? Hell yeah.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/21/washington/21fbi.html?_r=1&oref=slogin
http://www.swamppolitics.com/news/politics/blog/2008/08/mukasey_to_delay_approval_of_n.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/22/opinion/22fri2.html
Ron Paul is the man who should be elected, the rest of the canditates will go on with the secret agenda of the world order. Vote Paul even if the election are fake. Presidents are selected and not elected. Dont believe me?? Go and watch for yourselves:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g1LixQUegLU
Matthew Good, for someone who is politically informed like you, you dont talk about the new world order real much. I dont mean to say or start bullshit here on your site so if im wrong about what I just said fell free to tell me.
cheers from quebec
[quote comment="62777"]Ron Paul is the man who should be elected, the rest of the canditates will go on with the secret agenda of the world order. Vote Paul even if the election are fake. Presidents are selected and not elected.
Dont believe me?? Go and watch for yourselves:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g1LixQUegLU/quote
I don’t believe you. I believe the political system is fundamentally broken possibly beyond repair. The problems are many and complex and I’m too lazy to go into detail, but Ron Paul would not be capable of repairing the phenomenal damage done by the Bush administration. Even the relatively good Clinton administration was inept by the standards of a decent political system. Obama can talk “Change!11″ all he likes but it simply isn’t going to happen when he can win the ‘election’ without actually having a solid platform (and he likely will, too). It’s not so much who we elect in the longer term as how we elect them.
[quote comment="62749"]I think what the US really needs is a string of presidents with real moral values. Based on the two candidates, I think Obama is closer to that. That was one of the virtues I thought Kennedy had — a strong sense of right and wrong, and the desire to move the world in a direction of equality and peace.[/quote]
Agreed and disagreed, and much of this is not a direct response to your comment, Duane. The moral values which the Presidents must observe and respect are the secular democratic principles of governing in the Constitution. Personally, federalism is not a religion, and no religion or non-secular belief system may hijack federalism. It’s a social contract. If you don’t like secular social contracts, there are a lot of religiously-inspired countries to which you may relocate. But, I digress. Whether strict constructionist or what might pejoratively be labeled “activist” (or “living tree”) interpretation is applied to that document, the theory of the unitary executive has left the protections of America’s People in tatters on the floor of the Oval Office. If Matt will indulge me, I would encourage you all to read the wikipedia article here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unitary_executive_theory. Though wikipedia is not exactly a legal text, it sets out the basics.
The simple principle that administrative agencies created by the People through Congress and vested in the Executive should be subject to Congressional review and monitoring to guarantee that they are operating within their defined mandate must be respected. And, the opposite case, the case in which the Executive creates agencies which are redundant to the administrative agencies created by Congress (e.g., Cheney’s intelligence outfit, created within the Office of the Vice President, which fabricated a significant part of the Iraq war intelligence and crafted the fraudulent Habbush letter linking Muhammad Atta and the top levels of the Iraqi government) must be avoided, as a question of division of powers. John Yoo’s legal memoranda floating out from the Office of Legal Counsel effectively defined “war” subjectively and authorized the Executive branch to act outside the restrictions of the Constitution under any “threat condition” which might be affixed with the label “war”. Now you know why we kept getting those yellows, oranges and reds: the Bush administration’s fountainhead of Executive power is directly conditional upon being at war.
In summary, I think it is time for a constitutional law professor (O.K., fair enough, he was only a “senior lecturer, having declined tenure” at a top 20 law school in the U.S.) and a former civil rights attorney to reverse the concentration of Executive power which has occurred under the Bush administration. Obama does not have the governing experience which almost all the senior ranking officials in the Bush administration had and have, but look what constitutional havoc that experience has bought us (twice). You are entirely correct that there is reason to despair the political process. However, all is not lost, and I need two things from the next President (and these are the two reasons I support Senator Obama): First, I don’t need a President who will solve America’s problems in one term. But, I do need a President who will give younger generations of voters a voice. The next President must raise my questions of international co-operation, secularism in governing (faith practiced without restriction in the home, if you choose) and environmental activism and engagement. Those questions do not need to be solved in four year, but they do need to be fixed in the American political debate as the questions which decide future elections. Those questions need to be made important to Americans, like the Second Amendment and abortion have been made important to Americans in the last 30 years. Second, I need a President who will restore the Constitution to the center of governing. The legal opinions which direct Presidential governing must not violate the fundamental spirit of that document.
Ultimately, every voter has to have articulable reasons for his or her vote. I seriously doubt whether that is even attempted by most Americans. Many will be voting “Change” and many will be voting “POW”. This, sadly, I know. You do have to go with your “gut” about which candidate will make a good faith effort to achieve the objectives which are important to you (and national health care is not getting done for us, friends), and you have to simply predict which candidate has the capacity to give it the best shot. Your conclusion about candidates’ “good faith” and “capacity” may be different, but, as you might expect for someone as biased as me (I do like the Constitution.), it’s not a close call.
One might get the impression, that miserable US politics is directly linked to the german heritage of its protagonists I mean: Fleischer, Zoellick, Rumsfeld, Scheunemann…
That’s disillusioning…
I have to say for the first time in a long while, I am going to have a hard time deciding who I want for President. Right now I am sitting on the fence with this one. Neither candidate is worth a dam to me right now. If I had to decide right now to vote or to not vote, I chose not to. Maybe come election time things will change but I doubt it. May have to go to vote booth blind and just pull the lever and leave.
[quote comment="62899"]I have to say for the first time in a long while, I am going to have a hard time deciding who I want for President. Right now I am sitting on the fence with this one. Neither candidate is worth a dam to me right now. .[/quote]
Now that’s kind of interesting to me. Of what I now there are much more canditates up for vote than just Obama and McCain. Why not vote for one of them? Perhaps there is a significant need for the american people to stand up and say “NO!” to the policies of the two big parties. You have that choice, so why not give it a try and see what happens? The problem with that is: people usually don’t feel like putting their secure conditions on the line by voting for the possibility of starting up something completely new. They rather ignore negative side effects of approved strategies as long as the negative impact they have on onesself is rather small.
I’m sorry but you have to take the majority of what Pat Buchannan says with a pinch of salt. The guys it a nutjob after his book on Poor Hilter and those Meddling Britons…
http://www.antiwar.com/pat/?articleid=13021
vs
http://www.newsweek.com/id/141501/page/3
His agenda is perverse at the best of times…
I agree, but it doesn’t change anything about Randy Scheunemann.
[quote comment="62924"]I’m sorry but you have to take the majority of what Pat Buchannan says with a pinch of salt. The guys it a nutjob after his book on Poor Hilter and those Meddling Britons…
http://www.antiwar.com/pat/?articleid=13021
vs
http://www.newsweek.com/id/141501/page/3
His agenda is perverse at the best of times…[/quote]
Hu? I truly hope that at least you read the book you’re tearing to shreds right now. As for what I could get out of the links you posted, it sounds to me that Buchanan has a pretty broad knowledge on prussian and german history. Being that I have been studying history for years, I would carefully second what he wrote about the incidents that lead to WWI and II as well. That doesn’t take any of the responsibility for WWII off of Germany nor does it resemble an attempt to white wash the Nazis. I say “carefully” since I have to admit that I haven’t read the book yet and thus are only referring to the links.
The difference Buchanan is making compared to other historian is, that he puts focus on the whole of europe - not only on germany. Both are acceptable methods, that’s what people should keep in mind before overhastily commenting on books that in most cases took the author years of research and hard work.
“…of the two Presidential candidates…”
Way to add to the problem. There are more than 2 candidates.