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The Lesser of Two Evils, Reasons WhyBy Mike Moody | March 5, 2008 |
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Although the choice is not in the hands of any conservative, I have come to the conclusion that we would be better off as a nation for Hillary Clinton to become the Democratic nominee rather than Barack Obama. I take that position because of an unstated issue that Hillary Clinton has never exploited. Much has been made of the fact that Barack Obama is very inexperienced in foreign affairs. What has been completely missed is the fact that Barack Obama is part Kenyan. I think it is a highly legitimate to ask what would Barack Obama use his powers as Commander in Chief to do in Africa that other candidates would not do. For me the turning point on Barack Obama happened when Kenya almost imploded in the month of January. The proximate cause of the violence in Kenya in the last month was an election that was without any doubt both rigged and poorly executed. The United States and the European Union exerted a lot of pressure on the two competing claimants to the Presidency of Kenya to stabilize and settle an incendiary and potentially catastrophic political situation. Senator Barack Obama, who as far as I know, has no standing on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, called the leader of the party that claimed the vote had been stolen and spoke with him about the situation. It was stated in the one article I read that he intended to call the other party to the dispute, who claimed that he had won the election, and claimed the title of President of Kenya. I am not aware that Senator Obama ever made that call. The political chaos in Kenya resulted in a lot of violence. Over a thousand people were killed and most of these were members of the majority Kikuyu tribe. I am not aware that Senator Obama ever officially condemned this record of minority violence against the majority group. Besides his first call to the leader of a minority tribe, I am not aware that he did anything to try to defuse the situation or take a stand against the obvious targeted violence against members of the majority, Kikuyu tribe. In recent days, there has been a settlement of the crisis in Kenya. I sincerely hope it works. Kenya is one of the few bright spots in sub-Saharan Africa. It is also much larger and of much greater strategic importance than a country few remember called Rwanda. I make the prediction here and now that if Kenya starts slipping down that bloody path and Barack Obama is President, that there will be American combat troops on the ground in six months. Even granting that Kenya stabilizes and the government begins working toward a resolution of the schism revealed in Kenyan society, there is still the very large question of what Barack Obama will commit us to in Africa. I think he is more committed to helping Afrcia than he is to helping the African American community in America. Why no one has challenged him on this I don't know. It goes without saying that Africa has a lot of needs. In the next four years I think it is easy to predict that conditions in Africa will get significantly worse. I personally see little hope for Africa south of the Congo basin and the Great Lakes region. Things are very bad there, and in my opinion, they will get worse. There are some things that in my opinion can be done to ease the suffering of ordinary, typically destitute people. My opinion on Africa obviously doesn't matter very much. The more important question is what is Barack Obama's opinion. What will he use his powers as Chief Executive to do for Africa? In my opinion, the problems of Sub Saharan Africa are threefold. First there is the lack of secure property rights. For the most part, people in Africa have no assurance that they can keep what they can earn and as far as ordinary individuals buying land or a house, you can just forget about it. We all know how interested the Democratic Party is in protecting individual property rights, in Africa, America or anywhere else. Of almost equal concern is tribalism. Tribal conflicts in Africa have killed many thousands of ordinary people in the last ten years in Africa. The conflict in Darfur is as much a tribal conflict as it is a case of Islamic extremism. Unless we are prepared to deal with the issue of tribalism, prograss in Africa will be at best one step forward and many steps back. Finally, the most obvious problem in Africa is a class of largely incompetent, and brutal kleptocrats masquerading as rulers. We will all want to do something about Africa in the coming four years. I think that things are going to get that bad in certain regions of the continent. But even palliative life support type of assistance will be squandered and frittered away if we continue to sanction grand theft at the highest levels. There are steps that can be taken to take away the funds that the ruling kleptocrats have stolen and will stole. There is not much we can do in Africa, but we can make sure that political grand theft is not rewarded. But in order to do that, we have to make sure that we keep our distance from the dictators that rule Africa. We have to send them strong signals that we are not prepared to accept business as usual in return for U. S. support and assistance. Despite his claim to be an agent of change, I don't think Senator Barack Obama is going to change our policy toward Africa in any way that is desirable. That is why I have to hope, that if we have to have a Democratic President, it will be Hillary. |
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| The Lesser of Two Evils, Reasons Why | ||||||||||||||||||||
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