Barack Obama, Manifest Destiny’s New Prophet

At the end of semester ceremony at West Point Military Academy this past May 28, President Barack Obama confessed that he believes with every fiber of his being in the exceptionalism of his country over any other country in the world, and he emphasized in an exaggerated nationalistic speech that the United States is and continues to be the only indispensable nation. “That has been true for the century past, and it will be true for the century to come.” This openly imperialist mentality founded on the quasi-religious belief that the United States constitutes a chosen and predestined nation-state, with self-assigned rights and responsibilities on a world level that are above the international legal framework that was established in the last post-war era, expounded itself in other dogmas and sophisms transformed into equally revealing state politics, “… that America’s willingness to apply force around the world is the ultimate safeguard against chaos.” (And what about the chaos caused by imperialist interventions?)

“America must always lead on the world stage. If we don’t, no one else will. The military that you [he is referring to the officers who are graduating from the military academy] have joined is, and always will be, the backbone of that leadership.”

And if there were to remain any doubt: “The United States will use military force, unilaterally if necessary, when our core interests demand it — when our people are threatened; when our livelihoods are at stake; when the security of our allies is in danger … International opinion (and I would add international law) matters, but America should never ask permission to protect our people, our homeland or our way of life.”

These ideas expressed by Obama demonstrate the continuation of the thoughts of the ruling class of this country for more than two centuries. The supposed right to intervene militarily, when and where its interests require it, and to expand and conquer territories by any means, including colonial war — certainly carried out in 1898 against Spain, taking over various Spanish colonies — with the justification of imposing upon peoples and nations the laws and forms of government considered “the best on earth,” define the mentality of the elite leaders since the 18th century, when the Founding Fathers of the republic that was newly independent from Britain planned to take control over the entire continent.

Jefferson believed in 1786 that the rising confederation should consider itself “the nest,” from which “all America, North and South, is to be peopled,” and he worried that Spain would be too weak to be able to maintain dominion over its colonies “until our population has grown sufficiently enough to win from them their dominion inch by inch.”

James Monroe’s declaration in 1823, based on the concepts of John Quincy Adams, summarized in the phrase “America for Americans” as well as the belief in “Manifest Destiny,” constitutes the ideological-discursive form that pointed out to the European colonial powers that the United States entered into the colonial distribution under equal conditions, in that America, in effect, was to be considered free from all outside interference for the exclusive benefit of America itself.

Apart from this renewal of the beliefs of the chosen people, the prophet Obama, certainly with more rhetorical and intellectual abilities than his predecessor Bush, twists the historical truth or demonstrates his profound ignorance in contemporary reality by maintaining that “America had the wisdom to shape institutions to keep the peace and support human progress — from NATO and the United Nations, to the World Bank and IMF.”

The initiative to establish a new international organization was discussed at the end of the World War II by the victorious powers, and 51 states initially signed the U.N. Charter. Yet, NATO has been the supreme expression of American-European militarism, provocations and armed aggressions, especially during the Cold War, very far from peace and human progress. On the other hand, the World Bank and International Monetary Fund constitute the main institutions used by the capitalist countries to financially pillage the underdeveloped world and impose the current neoliberal transnationalization on a planetary scale.

Obama maintains that one of the elements of the leadership of his country is “its willingness to act in the name of human dignity. The United States’ support of democracy and human rights goes beyond idealism, it is a matter of national security.” And in that direction, he reminds “that because of America’s effort — because of American diplomacy and foreign assistance, as well as the sacrifices of our military — more people live under elected governments today than at any time in human history.” Iraq is one of the most recent and notable examples of that willingness to act in the name of human dignity, and above all, the sacrifices of U.S. military personnel: a devastated country, with its sanitation, educational and health infrastructures completely destroyed, with more than 1 million dead, 4.5 million displaced and made refugees, 5 million orphans, more than 8 million who require humanitarian aid, with 70 percent of the population without potable water and immersed in the chaos of a religious war started by the occupying power.

To paraphrase Simon Bolivar, “The United States seems destined by Providence to plague America with misery in the name of liberty.”