Reflections From a Murky Pond

Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt, often acronymized as FUD, is a marketing strategy used to mold, twist and control people’s perceptions through the use of strongly negative messages and doomsaying.

Use of FUD is a very common and successful tactic among activists and politicians.

They all, irrespective of agenda or ideology, use it because it works. It works because fear, uncertainty, and doubt are proven methods of pushing people to move in a certain direction or act in a certain manner, at least for a short time.

The very ubiquitousness of this means of social engineering makes it a solid metric for judging politicians and activists. What and/or whom do they wish us to fear? Who’s their chosen scapegoat? By the fears, uncertainties, and doubts that they sow we can know them.

Are the fears, uncertainties, and doubts they promulgate designed to brings us a people together to eradicate, combat, or defend against some foreign or outside threat, or are they designed to divide us by naming ourselves, our nation, and/or our very culture as the threat to be eradicated, combated, or defended against?

What is boils down to is are they peddling fear of others or fear of ourselves – “Us” or “Them?”

So what exactly is the foundation of Obama’s foreign policy? What are Obama’s goals for America’s international relations? Nobody seems to know those answers, not our State Department, not Congress, not the People, not our Enemies, and certainly not our Allies.

With no apparent rhyme or reason to Obama’s statements, occasional half-measures, and string of inactions in response to any of the situations in the Mid-East, Africa, Asia, and Latin America people keep searching for some deeper game that he’s playing and ascribing various and sundry motivations to him.

There’s a far simpler and, I believe, much more likely rationale for Obama’s foreign policy inconsistencies:

Infographic: Obama’s Foreign Policy Goals

There are two rules one should always remember: “The simplest explanation is most likely the correct one” and “Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.”

I firmly believe that Obama already displayed the extent of his foreign policy. He apologied to all and sundry for America’s status as a superpower, vilified the actions of his predecessors, and thought that our enemies would now begin to like, if not America, at least him.

Beyond that, I don’t think that Obama has any foreign policy goals.

As the international situation grows ever more fluid and we in America move towards the 2012 Elections this is something to keep firmly in one’s mind.