Former CIA agent “Werther” explains what a likely Obama victory would do to the usual suspects in the US political and media establishment:
The American political system also perceives cases of countries “testing” or “challenging” the United States in many instances where the country in question has a perfect right to pursue its own policies as an expression of political sovereignty. The Washington Consensus is inextricably linked with globalized financialism; it is an implicit assumption of the Consensus that other nations must accept the requirements of globalized financialism; otherwise, they will be treated as troublemakers, if not rogues. Typically, being a nation in good standing involves allowing its financial sector to be controlled from New York or London; privatization of local utilities and transport; giving multinational corporations favorable terms to exploit the country’s mineral resources; and subjection to International Monetary Fund austerity policies. Those who do not play ball, whether tiny Ecuador or mighty Russia, are “challenging” the United States and, accordingly are “testing” a new president.
All that having been stipulated, yes, it is true that Pearl Harbors do happen. But their rarity no less than their catastrophic nature should impel us to be more discriminating about perceiving real “threats” and “challenges” and “tests” from the background events of ordinary international conduct. Evo Morales in Bolivia is not testing anything other than his domestic popularity, no matter how much American energy companies may dislike him.
It is to be expected as a matter of course that should Obama be elected president, the noise machine of the Murdoch press will jump on every remote terrorist attack in Indonesia, every diplomatic incident or cross-border incursion anywhere in the world, every friction in the workings of the international system as a deliberate action on the part of sinister forces to test the President of the United States. Should an incident occur on Obama’s watch like that of the Chinese internment of a U.S. EP-3 spy plane as happened early in the Bush presidency, we can only imagine how the Kristols, Krauthammers, and Victor Davis Hansons would work themselves into a demented fury about the president’s manifest unfitness to be commander in chief.