Anxiety Over Obama's Foreign Policy
In this photo taken Wednesday March14, 2012 , rugby hopeful, Elliot Mau, makes off with a ball past dummies during a team exercise at a rugby clinic, at the Emthomjeni Community Center in Zandspruit, South Africa. A group of white rugby fans in the Johannesburg area is trying to close the racial divide and rid rugby of its prejudices. In recent months, members of the Panorama sports club began working with the community to develop rugby playing talent with black kids, some of whom have never touched a rugby ball, in a sport that has had a predominantly white Afrikaner following.(AP Photo/Denis Farrell) / Denis Farrell
This column was written by Alan W. Dowd.
Hillary Clinton may be calling herself "the new comeback kid" after wins in Ohio and Texas. But as a number of observers are pointing out, the delegates don't add up. Barring some cataclysm, Sen. Barack Obama's lead will hold all the way to the convention, which means he's going to be the nominee.
What Obama's once-improbable bid for the presidency has achieved at the ballot box makes many Americans proud about how far this country has come. It also makes many Americans a little anxious about the likely policies of an Obama administration.
Count me among the proud and anxious.
First, we should take pride that the promise of Jefferson's masterpiece - "that all men are created equal" - is now underlined by the fact that an American who happens to be black is just a few steps away from the presidency. We are indeed building a more perfect union.
Yet there is another side to this still-unfinished story.
Obama didn't offer too many specifics about what his promise of "change we can believe in" meant until after Super Tuesday. As Time's Joe Klein has observed, "The Obama campaign all too often is about how wonderful the Obama campaign is." But when the Illinois senator finally started adding some substance to his style, what he put forward sounded more like the old way than the Third Way: a rollback of NAFTA, reminders that "we've got CEOs making more in 10 minutes than ordinary workers are making in a year," nationalized healthcare, new programs for this group and that group, a promise to "cover two-thirds the cost of tuition at the average public college or university."
No matter what he says about change, these are the same sort of grow-the-government policies that characterized the old way of doing things.
Yet nothing causes as much anxiety as what Obama has said about foreign policy.
Obama, who launched his presidential bid less than three years after being elected to the Senate, has worn his inexperience like a badge of honor at times, contrasting his politics of hope with Hillary Clinton's "politics as usual" and John McCain's "party of yesterday." But the Oval Office is not a good place for on-the-job training. No matter what fans of "The Daily Show" say, things actually can get worse.
Give Obama credit for consistency. The centerpiece of his foreign policy has always been an immediate withdrawal from Iraq. Reasonable people can and do disagree over whether it was right to invade in March 2003, but even some of the loudest critics of the war warn that withdrawing now could derail the fragile progress made during the surge and make a difficult but tenable situation worse.
How much worse? Imagine a Balkan-style ethno-religious war with more guns and less restraint, a Rwanda with arsenals of modern weaponry instead of machetes, or a California-sized Beirut. And then imagine what an American retreat would do to U.S. standing outside Iraq.
Trying to address such worries, Obama assures us that "Nobody is proposing we leave precipitously." But actually, somebody is proposing that - and that somebody is Barack Obama.
In January 2007, for example, he outlined a plan to begin "redeployment of U.S. forces no later than May 1, 2007" and "remove all combat brigades from Iraq by March 31, 2008." Today, he vows to "immediately begin to remove our troops from Iraq."
That is the very definition of precipitous.
Hedging a bit, Obama recently explained that "If al Qaeda is forming a base in Iraq, then we will have to act in a way that secures the American homeland and our interests abroad."
McCain couldn't resist pointing out the obvious: "Al Qaeda is in Iraq. And that's why we're fighting in Iraq."
Even as Obama vows to cede the battlefield in Iraq, where the Iraqi government is fighting alongside Americans against the jihadists, he proposes bombing the jihadists in Pakistan - over the objection of the Pakistani government. "If we have actionable intelligence about high-value terrorist targets and President Musharraf won't act, we will," he has warned.
There's nothing wrong with that. In fact, the Bush administration has attacked targets in Pakistan - with and without the permission of the AWOL Musharraf. But Obama's anti-terror strategy seems to be premised on the notion that the United States can't fight jihadists in Iraq and Pakistan.
In truth, the United States can and must fight the enemy wherever it is - the Sahara and the Horn of Africa, Iraq and Iran, Afghanistan and Pakistan, the list goes on.
However, there's more - and less - to Obama's foreign policy than pulling out of Iraq and pummeling Pakistan.
Obama, who reminds us that his grandfather served in "Patton's army and marched across Europe" and helped shut down Hitler's death camps, says it is not America's job to prevent genocide - in Iraq or elsewhere, apparently.
The AP reported it this way in July 2007: "Presidential hopeful Barack Obama said Thursday the United States cannot use its military to solve humanitarian problems and that preventing a potential genocide in Iraq isn't a good enough reason to keep U.S. forces there."
His defense of this position sounds surprisingly, jarringly, similar to that of isolationists on the far fringes, who always justify non-intervention somewhere by pointing out that America has not intervened everywhere.
"If that's the criteria by which we are making decisions on the deployment of U.S. forces," Obama explained, referring to genocide, "then by that argument you would have 300,000 troops in the Congo right now - where millions have been slaughtered as a consequence of ethnic strife - which we haven't done." He continued: "We would be deploying unilaterally and occupying the Sudan, which we haven't done."
But the problems with Obama's fusion foreign policy don't end there. When a questioner during the CNN-YouTube debate asked whether as president Obama would be willing to meet with the leaders of Iran, Syria, Cuba, Venezuela, and North Korea, his answer was unequivocal. "It is a disgrace that we have not spoken to them," he intoned. Worse, as the New York Times reported last November, Obama made it clear "that he planned to talk to Iran without preconditions."
Without preconditions? The mullahs wouldn't have to stop funding and fomenting the guerilla war that is killing American troops in Iraq, or come clean with the IAEA on their subterranean nuclear program, or stop arming Hamas with rockets that terrorize and kill Israeli civilians?
Now that would be a disgrace.
By Alan W. Dowd
?
Weekly Standard Hillary Clinton may be calling herself "the new comeback kid" after wins in Ohio and Texas. But as a number of observers are pointing out, the delegates don't add up. Barring some cataclysm, Sen. Barack Obama's lead will hold all the way to the convention, which means he's going to be the nominee.
What Obama's once-improbable bid for the presidency has achieved at the ballot box makes many Americans proud about how far this country has come. It also makes many Americans a little anxious about the likely policies of an Obama administration.
Count me among the proud and anxious.
First, we should take pride that the promise of Jefferson's masterpiece - "that all men are created equal" - is now underlined by the fact that an American who happens to be black is just a few steps away from the presidency. We are indeed building a more perfect union.
Yet there is another side to this still-unfinished story.
Obama didn't offer too many specifics about what his promise of "change we can believe in" meant until after Super Tuesday. As Time's Joe Klein has observed, "The Obama campaign all too often is about how wonderful the Obama campaign is." But when the Illinois senator finally started adding some substance to his style, what he put forward sounded more like the old way than the Third Way: a rollback of NAFTA, reminders that "we've got CEOs making more in 10 minutes than ordinary workers are making in a year," nationalized healthcare, new programs for this group and that group, a promise to "cover two-thirds the cost of tuition at the average public college or university."
No matter what he says about change, these are the same sort of grow-the-government policies that characterized the old way of doing things.
Yet nothing causes as much anxiety as what Obama has said about foreign policy.
Obama, who launched his presidential bid less than three years after being elected to the Senate, has worn his inexperience like a badge of honor at times, contrasting his politics of hope with Hillary Clinton's "politics as usual" and John McCain's "party of yesterday." But the Oval Office is not a good place for on-the-job training. No matter what fans of "The Daily Show" say, things actually can get worse.
Give Obama credit for consistency. The centerpiece of his foreign policy has always been an immediate withdrawal from Iraq. Reasonable people can and do disagree over whether it was right to invade in March 2003, but even some of the loudest critics of the war warn that withdrawing now could derail the fragile progress made during the surge and make a difficult but tenable situation worse.
How much worse? Imagine a Balkan-style ethno-religious war with more guns and less restraint, a Rwanda with arsenals of modern weaponry instead of machetes, or a California-sized Beirut. And then imagine what an American retreat would do to U.S. standing outside Iraq.
Trying to address such worries, Obama assures us that "Nobody is proposing we leave precipitously." But actually, somebody is proposing that - and that somebody is Barack Obama.
In January 2007, for example, he outlined a plan to begin "redeployment of U.S. forces no later than May 1, 2007" and "remove all combat brigades from Iraq by March 31, 2008." Today, he vows to "immediately begin to remove our troops from Iraq."
That is the very definition of precipitous.
Hedging a bit, Obama recently explained that "If al Qaeda is forming a base in Iraq, then we will have to act in a way that secures the American homeland and our interests abroad."
McCain couldn't resist pointing out the obvious: "Al Qaeda is in Iraq. And that's why we're fighting in Iraq."
Even as Obama vows to cede the battlefield in Iraq, where the Iraqi government is fighting alongside Americans against the jihadists, he proposes bombing the jihadists in Pakistan - over the objection of the Pakistani government. "If we have actionable intelligence about high-value terrorist targets and President Musharraf won't act, we will," he has warned.
There's nothing wrong with that. In fact, the Bush administration has attacked targets in Pakistan - with and without the permission of the AWOL Musharraf. But Obama's anti-terror strategy seems to be premised on the notion that the United States can't fight jihadists in Iraq and Pakistan.
In truth, the United States can and must fight the enemy wherever it is - the Sahara and the Horn of Africa, Iraq and Iran, Afghanistan and Pakistan, the list goes on.
However, there's more - and less - to Obama's foreign policy than pulling out of Iraq and pummeling Pakistan.
Obama, who reminds us that his grandfather served in "Patton's army and marched across Europe" and helped shut down Hitler's death camps, says it is not America's job to prevent genocide - in Iraq or elsewhere, apparently.
The AP reported it this way in July 2007: "Presidential hopeful Barack Obama said Thursday the United States cannot use its military to solve humanitarian problems and that preventing a potential genocide in Iraq isn't a good enough reason to keep U.S. forces there."
His defense of this position sounds surprisingly, jarringly, similar to that of isolationists on the far fringes, who always justify non-intervention somewhere by pointing out that America has not intervened everywhere.
"If that's the criteria by which we are making decisions on the deployment of U.S. forces," Obama explained, referring to genocide, "then by that argument you would have 300,000 troops in the Congo right now - where millions have been slaughtered as a consequence of ethnic strife - which we haven't done." He continued: "We would be deploying unilaterally and occupying the Sudan, which we haven't done."
But the problems with Obama's fusion foreign policy don't end there. When a questioner during the CNN-YouTube debate asked whether as president Obama would be willing to meet with the leaders of Iran, Syria, Cuba, Venezuela, and North Korea, his answer was unequivocal. "It is a disgrace that we have not spoken to them," he intoned. Worse, as the New York Times reported last November, Obama made it clear "that he planned to talk to Iran without preconditions."
Without preconditions? The mullahs wouldn't have to stop funding and fomenting the guerilla war that is killing American troops in Iraq, or come clean with the IAEA on their subterranean nuclear program, or stop arming Hamas with rockets that terrorize and kill Israeli civilians?
Now that would be a disgrace.
By Alan W. Dowd
?
That is, surround himself with experts in all fields, military, finance, Homeland Security, et al.
No one, no one, comes to that office with all the answers.
I feel Obama to be the most intelligent of the candidates and as such, will take his time before making and critical decisions.
The strength of the U.S. will not diminish under any candidate, the U.S. is and will always be strong militarily.
I like that Obama would like to speak with our enemies as well as our international friends. I think that that approach is sorely needed in this shaky world.
"Speak softly and carry a big stick."
I''ll go with Obama.
No, these are the grow-the-people policies that will make us a stronger and more civilized society. Conservatives have clearly shown they will never get serious about finding a method of providing health care or higher education to the whole population, or that they even recognize this as a mandatory component of an advanced civilization, so the next liberal administration in the White House will have to do it and it will become etched in stone as surely as Social Security has.
As for foreign policy, all of the analysis above is based on the false neocon premise (which the neocons know is false but the Bush Administration pretends not to) that "Al Quaeda is in Iraq". Having about 5 true Al Quaeda operatives in Iraq is not a justification for continuing to misallocate 150,000 troops which should be in Afghanistan hunting down the Taliban and Bin Laden.
Thankfully, the neocon era ends on January 20 2009 and all of the Weekly Standard''s political program will be defeated and eradicated for generations to come and probably forever...
BARRY, SITS DOWN WITH PUTIN TO DISCUSS RUSSIA''''S THREATS TO USE FORCE IN A SERIOUS SITUATION IN THE MIDDLE EAST. HE LOOKS INTO PUTIN''''S EYES AND SEES HIS SOUL.
THEN HE BEGINS TO USE WORDS THAT MATTER, QUOTING MLK, RFK, JFK, ALL HIS OTHER IDOL''''S. AFTER TWO HOURS OF TALK, PUTIN GIVES IN AND THE WORLDS PROBLEMS ARE SLOVED.
YEA RIGHT."
How quickly we forget. But then again, it wasn''t Putin....It was Gorbachev. And it wasn''t Barry....It was Reagan. Silly disillusioned actor thinks he can solve the worlds problems by sitting down and having a conversation with someone.
When we all wake up from our Pollyanna fantasies, we''ll see that the real solution is to bully the rest of the world and spend billions of dollars blowing up villages and killing people.
We should meet with them, tell them what our minimal needs are in order to come to an agreement, and then ask what it''s going to cost us to achieve those needs without bombing them. Now you have something to talk about. If there is a position that''s acceptable to both sides with luck we''ll find it. If there''s no overlap in each side''s minimal requirements, the talks will fail. If you can''t cut a deal you can always walk out and then we''ll at least be able to tell the world that we tried to find a solution.
By: Logan Murphy @ 2:39 PM - PST
It%u2019s a cold, gray day in December, and I%u2019m walking down Sixtieth Street in the Dora district of Baghdad, one of the most violent and fearsome of the city%u2019s no-go zones. Devastated by five years of clashes between American forces, Shiite militias, Sunni resistance groups and Al Qaeda, much of Dora is now a ghost town. This is what %u201Cvictory%u201D looks like in a once upscale neighborhood of Iraq: Lakes of mud and sewage fill the streets. Mountains of trash stagnate in the pungent liquid. Most of the windows in the sand-colored homes are broken, and the wind blows through them, whistling eerily. House after house is deserted, bullet holes pockmarking their walls, their doors open and unguarded, many emptied of furniture. What few furnishings remain are covered by a thick layer of the fine dust that invades every space in Iraq. Looming over the homes are twelve-foot-high security walls built by the Americans to separate warring factions and confine people to their own neighborhood. Emptied and destroyed by civil war, walled off by President Bush%u2019s much-heralded %u201Csurge,%u201D Dora feels more like a desolate, post-apocalyptic maze of concrete tunnels than a living, inhabited neighborhood. Apart from our footsteps, there is complete silence.
(cont)
This article by Nir Rosen is a long read, but it%u2019s well worth it. Rosen describes in detail how the situation on the ground in Iraq is tenuous at best, a powder keg ready to ignite at any given moment. We haven%u2019t been getting much honest or detailed reporting from Iraq in quite some time and this article unveils much of what many of us have assumed for some time. The successes of the surge amount to trapping people in run down neighborhoods turned to rubble, imprisoning thousands and creating millions of refugees. Freedom is on the march%u2026
Crooks and Liars
You%u2019ll never guess who was the most excited about yesterday%u2019s endorsement.
As of this writing, there%u2019s no mention of it on the home page of McCain%u2019s Web site. There%u2019s no mention of it all on the Republican National Committee%u2019s home page. In fact, I can%u2019t find any mention whatsoever of the event on either Web site at all. (It%u2019s like: Bush Who?)
But on the Democratic National Committee Web site, the lead headline blares: %u201CBush Endorses John McCain as His Successor.%u201D
%u201CSince the event was held in the middle of the afternoon we fear that some Americans may miss George Bush%u2019s assurances that John McCain would continue the Bush Administrations failed economic and foreign policies,%u201D the DNC explains. %u201CAs a public service we%u2019ve posted a video of the press conference for voters to see.%u201D
I wonder why that is?
Crooks and Liars