Peter Beinart: Obama Chooses An Unlikely Team of Hawks

[babylonsister]

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1862446,00.html


Obama Chooses An Unlikely Team of Hawks
By Peter Beinart Wednesday, Nov. 26, 2008


snip//

A word of advice: cheer up. It's precisely because Obama intends to pursue a genuinely progressive foreign policy that he's surrounding himself with people who can guard his right flank at home. When George W. Bush wanted to sell the Iraq war, he trotted out Colin Powell--because Powell was nobody's idea of a hawk. Now Obama may be preparing to do the reverse. To give himself cover for a withdrawal from Iraq and a diplomatic push with Iran, he's surrounding himself with people like Gates, Clinton and Jones, who can't be lampooned as doves.

To grasp the logic of this strategy, start with the fact that Obama's likely national-security picks don't actually disagree very much with the foreign policy he laid out during the campaign. Jones is on record calling the Iraq war a "debacle" and urging that the detention center at Guantánamo Bay be closed "tomorrow." Gates has also reportedly pushed for closing Gitmo and for faster withdrawals from Iraq. He has called a military strike against Iran a "strategic calamity," urged diplomacy with Tehran's mullahs and denounced the "creeping militarization" of U.S. foreign policy. (You don't hear that from a Defense Secretary every day.) For her part, Hillary Clinton during the presidential campaign embraced an Iraq-withdrawal position virtually identical to Obama's. And although they fought a sound-bite war over sitting down with the leaders of countries like Iran, the two candidates' actual Iran policies were pretty much the same. Both wanted intensive diplomacy; both wanted to start it at lower levels and work up from there.

On key policy issues, Jones, Gates and Clinton aren't significantly more hawkish than Obama. What they are is more hawkish symbolically. Gates is a Republican; Jones is a Marine general who once worked for John McCain; Clinton, as Senator from New York, has gained credibility with hawkish pro-Israel groups. In other words, what distinguishes Gates, Jones and Clinton isn't their desire to shift Obama's policies to the right; it's their ability to persuade the right to give Obama's policies a chance.

Obama knows that although Iraq has tarnished the GOP foreign policy brand, Democrats remain vulnerable. When the moderate Democratic group Third Way asked voters in September whom they trusted more on national security, Democrats trailed by 14 points. (The gap has widened substantially since late 2006.) On the question of "ensuring a strong military," they trailed by 30 points--an astonishing figure, given that it is a Republican President who has stretched the Army to its breaking point.

Politically, therefore, Obama is playing with fire. If he accelerates troop withdrawals and violence in Iraq flares up again, the GOP will pounce. If he cuts a nuclear deal with Iran, it will probably do the same, accusing him of putting his faith in an inspection agreement that Tehran will never obey. And if he pushes hard for a peace deal between Israel and the Palestinians, right-leaning Jewish groups may cry foul. That's the beauty of his emerging national-security team. Even Republicans will find it hard to call Gates and Jones latter-day Neville Chamberlains, and even many Likudniks will think twice before claiming that Hillary Clinton is in league with Hamas. (For cover on Israel, Obama will also be able to trot out Rahm Emanuel, whose father was born in Jerusalem, and, quite possibly, long-serving Middle East envoy Dennis Ross, who is tight with the pro-Israel lobby.)

Obama understands that foreign policy is, in international-relations-speak, a two-sided game. To get your way, you not only have to convince other governments; you also have to convince the folks back home. Bill Clinton negotiated the Kyoto Protocol on global warming with well over 100 other countries but couldn't get it through the 100-member U.S. Senate. He crafted a nuclear agreement with North Korea but saw it sabotaged by a Republican Congress that wouldn't provide sufficient money to carry it out. Obama knows that while it's a tough world out there, it's tough here as well. In Gates, Jones and Clinton, he's found people who can do more than sell his foreign policy to Iranians, Iraqis and Israelis; they can sell it to Americans too.

Beinart is a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations

[Truth2Tell]

1. Recommended. I have suggested this exact theory

several times here on DU, only to be laughed at.

I'm not sure I believe it myself, but it's our best hope.

We shall see.

[Hawkowl]

4. Ditto.

And I feel the same way as you do. If it is true, and he pulls it off, I think we can call Obama a brilliant president as well as a brilliant campaigner.

[Joe Chi Minh]

2. I think the reason why Dennis Kucinich isn't prominent on Obama's team right now is

because, firstly, Obama needs to implement some major policies and consolidate his Administration's stature.

So, everything in its time. As the media becomes more and more honest, more genuinely democratic/less partisan propagandist, and the right wing becomes increasingly discredited, indeed infamous, with the country's growing economic woes, the more viable and valued will Dennis' expertise and insights become in the political process, because a whole new (or rather old) paradigm will have to be adopted throughout the developed world.

http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/dn/opinion/points/stories/DN-dreher_26edi.State.Edition1.21c9278.html

[PurityOfEssence]

3. We keep being reassured that he's only lying to THEM

My skepticism has been at full boil ever since the 40 Days of Faith and Family tour in South Carolina 13 months ago. We're to believe that every rightward maneuver is somehow proof that he's really not going to go that way. Even to a contrarian, such reverse proof is perplexing.

We know for a fact that he will twist facts to suit his needs and misrepresent the actions he hasn't been able to duck out of making a commitment on, yet we're steadfastly certain that he'll change his ways and fight for what is right.

I guess it's faith, something I've never had a taste for, that brings people to these certainties.

What I see is an establishment appeaser with something to disprove, and that's a dangerous mix of traits at pivotal times like these.

If there was anything worth fighting for in Afghanistan, it might be different, but if we're just going to try to out-macho a bunch of primitive fantasists, the prospects don't look too bright.

If things transpire as I fear, it will be difficult to listen to the disillusioned, especially those who shrieked down any opposition and crammed this candidacy down our collective throats.

Still, the guy's holding a terrible hand and he deserves our support and tolerance. More than anything else, his career shows him inexperienced at precisely what's needed now: steadfastness and willing to step right up and take an unequivocal stand on various things. Perhaps I'm wrong in my character assessment, and I hope I am, but it's a tough job and he asked for it; he owes us and everyone else bigtime.

[babylonsister]

5. He's not lying to anyone. If you don't think these three know what

Obama expects of them, you're mistaken.

[tonycinla]

6. Hope

Maybe we are just suppose to HOPE for 4 years that things will change.

[babylonsister]

7. Have you even been paying attention?

Obama's been front and center all week. Where has your president been?
And do you honestly think McCain would have acted so swiftly? I don't.

[leftchick]

8. key phrase "may be"

Which makes the whole article wishful thinking. Just the fact Obama repeats daily bush's "War on Terra" bullshit makes it obvious the MIC will continue to thrive. That and his promise to kill more people in Afghanistan via our troops who should be HERE and recuperating!