Recent United States Articles

Why Obama didn’t turn it around last night, and ‘change’ still matters

by Sunny Hundal     October 17, 2012 at 8:09 am

The consensus is that President Obama narrowly won the second debate last night against Mitt Romney. That will stem some of the heavy loss in support he’s had over the past week after the first debate.

The Washington Post’s Greg Sargent makes a good case for why Obama turned it around, but I want to offer the case for why he didn’t.

Obama has problems with a key constituency of undecided voters: these are people who were really hopeful that Obama’s election would turn things around in the economy. They wanted change and they were hoping Obama would create lots of jobs.

But the US slump has been much more protracted than anyone expected. There are swathes of voters in swing states likes Colorado, Nevada and Wisconsin that are depressed that the economy still isn’t working for them (Virginia and Ohio aren’t doing so bad in comparison).

What they don’t want to hear from Obama is that he will carry on the last four years of policies because those policies haven’t worked for them. These people don’t really trust Mitt Romney and know that he’s only interested in helping rich people.

But they want some form of change because the status quo isn’t working for them. So many of them are willing to give Romney a chance.

Last night President Obama did a much better of undermining and putting question marks over Mitt Romney’s policies.

But what he didn’t do is make a succinct, positive case for why he remains the candidate of change who will turn things around for people who are still unemployed and/or struggling. They want change not the status quo, and Obama’s narrative was mostly: give me four more years to complete the job.

There are still too many people around Obama who want red-meat for core voters and wanted him to focus on ‘the 47%’ comments. I saw lefties in the UK (Mehdi Hasan and Jonathan Freedland) and in the US constantly baying for this. But they miss the point – those aren’t the people Obama needs in his camp any more.

I think Obama made a good case last night but not a good enough case for the narrow sliver of undecided voters whose fate Obama’s re-election depends on. I suspect the polls will very narrowly move back in Obama’s favour but this still remains a very tight election.

Why do lefties keep ignoring the threat of the Taliban to Pakistanis?

by Sunny Hundal     October 13, 2012 at 10:15 am

The New York Times made a poignant and very worrying documentary in 2009 on how the Taliban were ruling parts of Pakistan and had issued a command that all girls should stop attending schools.

The documentary has resurfaced because the NYT then interviewed an 11-yr old Malala (see box) saying she really wanted to go to school and become a doctor.

Malala Yousafzai is now in critical condition and yet the Taliban have vowed to kill her anyway.

A 15-year-old girl who was wounded alongside Ms. Yousafzai described how easily the Taliban had been able to attack the school bus. “A young man in his early 20s approached the bus and asked for Malala,” the girl, Kainat Riaz, said in an interview at her family’s home in Swat. “Then he started firing.”

What frustrates me about all this is that while left-wingers in the US and UK constantly criticise US drone attacks in Pakistan and Afghanistan – there is virtual silence on what to do about the Taliban.

Let me be clear: I think the drone attacks are counter-productive and also end up hitting a lot of innocent people. And they set an awful precedent for other countries to also use them in foreign territory.

But the Taliban always have been and always will be a much greater threat to Pakistanis than the US.

The Taliban aren’t just a threat to Pakistanis but the entire region. Controlling Pakistan would mean controlling its nuclear weapons and outright confrontation and war with India. And I’m not exaggerating either.

So here’s my question: once the US withdraws from Pakistan by 2014 (assuming Obama gets re-elected, rather than Romney) – do we just ignore the Taliban? Because that is what lefties seem to want to do.

Do we ignore that the Taliban want to subjugate and control Pakistan and Afghanistan, through funding from extremists groups in the Middle East. Do we ignore the fact that they want women banned from public life there and deny them even education?

Of course I’m not calling for an invasion of Pakistan to root out the Taliban. But I’m asking: should we ignore them and leave the region at it? What happened to solidarity with the Pakistanis against the Taliban? Do we ignore them until the region blows up into a nuclear stand-off?

We focus on US actions because we can influence them more than Pakistani govt action. But this is the easy way out for two reasons: the US will never be a threat to Pakistanis on a scale like the Taliban. Secondly, it ignores the longer term threat to Pakistanis.

The Taliban were there before 9-11, so the argument that without the drone attacks they would melt away is fatuous.

They are religious extremists and want Pakistanis subjugated to their extremist version of Islam regardless of who the Prime Minister is. The United States did not create them. And they will be there a long time after the United States leaves. What then?

Without Ron Paul, American Libertarianism is likely to die

by Guest     September 9, 2012 at 9:30 am

contribution by Henry Steinberg

Until recently American libertarianism appealed solely to a certain type of radical, modern bourgeois youth. Without a large class of people to appeal to it languished in obscurity. Since it’s inception in 1972 The American Libertarian Party has passed the 1% mark at a presidential election only once.

However, in the last two Republican primaries Ron Paul, a former Libertarian Party candidate for president, managed to attract national attention and not an insignificant degree of support as a Republican candidate.

Will libertarianism finally become a permanent part of mainstream America politics, or fade back into obscurity now that Paul has announced his retirement?

The composition of Paul’s support does not suggest permanency. The slightly cultish dedication Ron Paul’s supporters had to their candidate masked deep, unspoken divisions. Polls taken before the Iowa primary showed that only half of the people who voted for him considered themselves Republicans, and more Democrats were prepared to support him than any other GOP candidate.

This reveals a fragmented and disunited base, which we can split into three distinct factions: There were of course libertarians, who largely shared Paul’s Austrian Economics and minarchism.

But there were also many paleo-conservatives, Christian militiamen from the deep south, who were enticed by Paul’s paranoid speeches about a looming police state, his creationism, his extreme isolationism, and cultural backwardness. There was a significant liberal contingent, who appreciated his fiery attacks on American foreign policy.

If this rickety coalition is to be turned into a permanent section of the Republican party, a new candidate will need to emerge from high-government who has the ability to appeal to these sections. And due to the lack of an organization that wasn’t centred around Paul, this new man will need to appear soon.

Libertarians, long suspicious of the Republican Party and conscious of the divisions within Paul’s support, have nominated the Libertarian Party candidate Gary Johnson, former governor of New Mexico, as the heir to Paul. However, it seems unlikely he can transfer over that support.

Johnson is purely a libertarian candidate, and lacks the strange mosaic of positions that allowed Paul to canvass so widely. He will fail to attract Paul’s liberals because he is fiscally a double of Paul, and on foreign policy he is quite conventional, and often appears barely interested. He will also not attract the paleo-conservatives, as he is pro-immigration, socially liberal, and isn’t interested in conspiracy theories.

The only other candidate proposed is Ron Paul’s son Rand Paul, and the question of whether he could lead his father’s movement is irrelevant, as he clearly doesn’t want to. His senate campaign was centred around the Tea Party, and all of his manoeuvres since taking office suggest a career politician.

The contemporary libertarian movement, in that it existed only to support Ron Paul. is as likely to sustain itself as a united socialist Yugoslavia.

Operation Flex: the most incompetent FBI sting ever?

by Guest     August 15, 2012 at 3:20 pm

contribution by Tom Costello

When the FBI announces, as it has done numerous times in recent years, that it has thwarted a home-grown Islamist terror plot, the American media greets the announcement with hysteria.

But as radio documentary This American Life reveals, there is a side of the story that is rarely reported.

The juicy minutiae of the plot are pored over: in 2010, Mohamed Osman Mohamud planned to detonate a bomb at a crowded Christmas event; in 2009, Hosam Maher Husein Smadi plotted to bomb a Dallas skyscraper and Farooque Ahmed planned to bomb the Washington Metro.
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US elections: why Paul Ryan wasn’t a sensible pick for Romney

by Guest     August 14, 2012 at 9:15 am

contribution by Tim Wigmore

In the two days since Paul Ryan was selected as Mitt Romney’s running-mate there’s been a lot of analysis about what this means for the race.

With the strong caveat that vice-presidential picks are seldom crucial in the final analysis, Romney’s isn’t a sensible selection. Here’s why not:
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Why Paul Ryan is likely to sink Mitt Romney’s chances for President

by Sunny Hundal     August 12, 2012 at 9:45 am

A key objective of any political campaign is to negatively define the opponent in the eyes of the public. They have to be framed in a way that says something about their character as well as their policies.

President Obama has been doing that so effectively with Mitt Romney – painting him as the out-of-touch millionaire only interested in helping the top 1% – that even Romney knew he needed a ‘game-changer’.

Everyone from the liberal Ezra Klein, neutral Nate Silver and conservative Ross Douthat accept that Romney chose Paul Ryan as his VP because he knew he was on a path to defeat in November.
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How America practices socialism in certain areas

by Guest     July 7, 2012 at 10:08 am

contribution by D.L.L. Parry

One of the most common ways to demonise even moderately progressive reforms in the USA is to call them ‘socialist’ – but why should such reforms be seen as socialist, and why would that make them bad?

Two main reasons stand out: first, they often involve spending ‘tax dollars’, in other words taking money from one group of people and giving it to another; secondly, they involve government regulation and intervention, which is believed to infringe personal freedom.

Yet redistribution and regulation can be found in many aspects of life in the USA, including three examples that are never labelled ‘socialist’, namely sports, company towns, and the military.
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Why Geert Wilders won’t find ‘Eurabia’ in America

by Guest     June 8, 2012 at 4:02 pm

contribution by Zahed Amanullah

Dutch politician Geert Wilders has long warned fellow Europeans about dangers posed by the continent’s Muslim communities.

But these Europeans aren’t yet able to pick up his latest book, Marked For Death: Islam’s War Against the West and Me, published in America only (for now).

There are good reasons for that, none of which have to do with the validity of his message.
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Why the Wisconsin defeat isn’t an omen for Obama

by John B     June 7, 2012 at 5:25 am

After a massively high-spending recall campaign in Wisconsin, union-busting Republican governor Scott Walker has held onto power with a slightly increased majority. But he lost control of the state senate.

Naturally, the oh-so-left-wing US media are spinning this as Terrible Democrat Defeat, Disaster Due for Obama in November, etc.

It has been pointed out in various places that the Walker campaign spent $7 for every $1 his opponent could muster. But this is not really a feasible plan for the November election (not even for someone with Mitt Romney’s wallet).
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Criticism of Obama for its own sake: a reply to Mehdi Hasan

by Sunny Hundal     May 25, 2012 at 4:09 pm

Mehdi Hasan has a piece in the Guardian today entitled ‘Sadly Barack Obama, like Mitt Romney, is an apologist for the 1%‘, which doesn’t stand up to scrutiny.

Now, Mehdi is a friend and I think he’s right to say Obama hasn’t gone as far as many progressives would like.

But if we’re going to criticise the US President and lump him with the Republicans then the points should stack up.
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