Simon Schama on Obama's America
BBC2, Tuesday 12 January 9:00pm - 10:00pm
The Price of FreedomSimon Schama's thoughtful essays on US affairs are always worth watching. The reason he so crisply diagnoses America's present problems is that he's so steeped in its past: he knows every precedent, every foreshadowing of events and the lessons it can teach, even when those lessons are contradictory. This two-part series was being edited as RT went to press, but promises to take the temperature of Obama's presidency one year in. The issue on which Schama argues Obama will stand or fall is not the economy or his health-care reforms, but the Afghan war. Schama argues that landing the US in two foreign wars simultaneously was a mistake of historic proportions - and a refusal to learn from the past. He explores the Korean War of the early 1950s, which set the pattern for later conflicts in Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan. It was in Korea that the hard questions Obama has to answer today were first asked: What does victory look like? How much should America sacrifice? And what, realistically, are the limits of US power?
VIDEO Plus+: 4831
Subtitled, Widescreen, Audio-described
Directed by: Ashley Gething
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