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CFR: Bush, Obama Foreign Policy Only Differ in Rhetoric

17 September, 2009

In the latest podcast from Foreign Affairs—the public face of the Council on Foreign Relations—Gideon Rose and Robert McMahon discuss the differences in the foreign policy of Bush and Obama, concluding "there's a lot of rhetoric, but it's usually more about America and its ideals and what we want to be seen to be doing (whether in Gitmo or via interrogations or so forth) rather than the actual impact of our operations." Download the mp3 here.

As an example of the underlying similarity of Bush and Obama's foreign policies, they point out that Obama's "man in Afghanistan" Stan McChrystal was the former head of the Joint Special Operations Command...although they unsurprisingly leave out the fact that the JSOC was the special wing of the special ops community fingered by Seymour Hersh as Cheney's private assassination squad. Of course they could also have mentioned Defense Secretary Robert Gates as another obvious example of continuity between Bush and Obama in the defense sector. Or they could have pointed out that the Obama administration has merely replaced Bagram for Gitmo, a point made in an eloquent and powerful article from Andy Worthington released today. Or they could have pointed out that the Obama administration is going even further than Bush in invoking "state secrets" privileges in the ongoing rendition program (which has has also carried over from Bush).

Indeed, the CFR could have listed any of hundreds of other identical policies under Bush and Obama like those pointed out in the alternative media again and again and again. But perhaps they didn't need to point this out, after all, as anyone with political acumen has already come to the conclusion that Bush and Obama are like competing brands of cola; both were packaged and sold by elitist corporate interests and both are equally bad for you.

This is a message not lost on the Foreign Affairs audience. After all, as the mouthpiece of the Council on Foreign Relations, one would expect the audience of this podcast to be well aware of the political game. The CFR has, of course, been playing both sides of the political fence for decades, moving forward with their agenda of undermining American sovereignty ever since its founding in 1921 at the hands of Colonel Edward House (who also managed to puppeteer the Wilson administration and help found the Federal Reserve). The CFR was also identified by Carroll Quigley as the American version of a roundtable group created in England known as the Royal Institute for International Affairs and having as its aim "nothing less than to create a world system of financial control in private hands able to dominate the political system of each country and he economy of the world as a whole." If Carroll Quigley is to be dismissed as a mere "crazy conspiracy theorist" then so, too is Bill Clinton, who namedropped Quigley as his mentor in his 1992 presidential nomination speech.

Those wishing to find out more about Quigley, the roundtable groups, and their use of both sides of the fake left/right political paradigm to advance their agenda, they are directed to Episode 058 of The Corbett Report. Those who are already well aware of this can merely file away this CFR podcast for future reference when confronted by a skeptic who refuses to believe that Bush and Obama are the same unless they are told it by a big, powerful, elitist "thinktank."