Monday, January 07, 2008

Obama Could Force GOP To Defend War Policies

By Cernig

I see Michael O'Hanlon, the war hawk who likes to pretend he isn't, is having a go at Obama in today's Wall Street Journal because Obama won't respect his authoritay!

Matt has a good point when he says that Obama's diserspect for the VSP's who got so very much utterly wrong is a feature rather than a bug. He adds:
From the standpoint of foreign policy doctrine, this has been a frustrating primary to watch. The candidates have debated the main issues of domestic policy at a high level of detail, despite (or perhaps because of) everyone agreeing that they share the same basic approach. On national security issues, it's always been far less obvious how big or small the disgareements really are. And yet, few broad issues have really been mooted and everyone's quite vague. Instead of hearing thing straightforwardly, we're left in the position of trying to assess the contenders' likely conduct by judging the shadows. But this shadow definitely points in Obama's favor.
It's true that the race has been about personalities rather than policies - so far. But Captain Ed notes that the GOP are worried enough about Obama to be circulating emails pointing to O'Hanlon's op-ed to the usual talking heads. he goes on to spout the party line that "the country is at war" blah blah and "needs experience" blah blah. (Like Bush had any foreign policy experience.) Yet the GOP frontrunners own policies and experience all point to them being Bush clones - with Bush policies on Iraq permanent basing, crappy diplomacy, sabre rattling against Iran and ignoring the elephant in the room that is Pakistan.

In other words, while everyone has been saying that the coming election won't be about the War on Brown People Terror and Mission: Iraqi Occupation Forever... Obama as the Dem nominee might force the GOP to make that exactly what the election is all about. In all its dirty and inglorious detail and with room aplenty to put bigoted and warmongering Republican feet in mouths. Which is fine by me.

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