The Bush-to-Obama transition was rhetorical, not structural

Evidence

This chapter outlined US foreign policy since 9/11. The neocon wing of the policy establishment, out of power in the 1990s, was finally in a position of power to realize its vision. However, the confrontations in Afghanistan and Iraq did not go as planned. The implosion of the Bush agenda then saw the baton handed over to liberal imperialists, who instituted a rhetorical shift and continued the multilateral strategies adopted in Bush’s second term to project and maintain US hegemony. This did not, however, change the realities of people’s lives in the “Muslim world,” which in some ways got worse under Obama. Even while we witnessed a rhetorical shift from the Bush to the Obama era, the fundamentals of how empire in the twenty-first century would function remained the same. — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of Empire, 527

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Bush to Obama was a rhetorical shift masking unchanged imperial fundamentals.; Obama’s multilateral realism was a continuity of Bush-era imperial strategy — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of…, 501; Obama’s election rebranded rather than ended American imperial policy — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of…, 495 (+3 more)

Broader Connections

• Bush to Obama was a rhetorical shift masking unchanged imperial fundamentals. #corroborates (0.95)
• Obama’s election rebranded rather than ended American imperial policy #corroborates (0.95) — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of Empire, 495
• Obama’s multilateral realism was a continuity of Bush-era imperial strategy #corroborates (0.90) — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of Empire, 501
• Obama’s realist framing masked a continuation of Bush-era imperial warfare #corroborates (0.90) — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of Empire, 501