The Obama they don't talk about


Expanding the military
I never have been a fan of savior politics. You know, the whole "if only we elected THE RIGHT MAN, he'd save us from..." I didn't like it when the Lew Rockwell crowd was pushing Ron Paul, and I really don't like it with Barak Obama.

See, when it comes to foreign wars, it's not that Democrats object in principle, it's just that they don't like it when it's not their guy calling the shots.

Don't believe me? Read Robert Dreyfuss in The Nation. Emphasis added.

But in many respects, Obama seems likely to preside over a restoration of the bipartisan consensus that governed foreign policy during the cold war and the 1990s, updated for a post-9/11 world. That conclusion arises from an in-depth examination of the Illinois senator's views as well as dozens of interviews with foreign policy experts, including lengthy exchanges with the core group of Obama's foreign policy team and other participants in his task forces on the military, Iraq and the Middle East. It's also based on a careful review of speeches and position papers, Obama's 2007 article in Foreign Affairs and a key chapter, "The World Beyond Our Borders," in his book The Audacity of Hope. All this suggests there is a gap between Obama's inspirational speeches and the actual policies he supports. "So far, what you're seeing is rhetoric that we can make bold changes in our foreign policy," says John Cavanagh, director of the Institute for Policy Studies. "But when he lays out specifics, it's not as transformational as the rhetoric." Will Marshall, director of the right-leaning Progressive Policy Institute of the Democratic Leadership Council, agrees. "On most of the details, he's aligned with the general Democratic consensus," Marshall says. Says Tom Hayden, the veteran activist and former California state senator, "At best, he will be a gradualist."

Even as he pledges to end the war in Iraq, Obama promises to increase Pentagon spending, boost the size of the Army and Marines, bolster the Special Forces, expand intelligence agencies and maintain the hundreds of US military bases that dot the globe. He supports a muscular multilateralism that includes NATO expansion, and according to the Times of London, his advisers are pushing him to ask Defense Secretary Robert Gates to stay on in an Obama administration. Though he is against the idea of the United States imposing democracy abroad, Obama does propose a sweeping nation-building and democracy-promotion program, including strengthening the controversial National Endowment for Democracy and constructing a civil-military apparatus that would deploy to rescue and rebuild failed and failing states in Africa, Asia and the Middle East.

Let's see, return to the foreign policy ideas that brought about 9-11.

That's change all right.

Although I do agree that the Bush Administrations have been a failure, one thing that Bush Number Two did right was recognize that appeasement did more to destabilize the Middle East than anything else. A pity he mostly forgot about it. His father didn't even do that much.

Oh, I don't like McCain either. I still think he should be brought up on treason charges.

And Bob Barr, who subverted what was left of the Libertarian Party? He's not getting my vote.

If ever there was an election year we needed None of the Above, this is it.

— NeoWayland

Posted: Tue - July 22, 2008 at 03:46 PM  Tag


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