Obama's foreign policy plan
By Libby Spencer
If you read nothing else today, this is the one piece you should read in full. Spencer Ackerman interviews Barack Obama's foreign policy team and comes away very impressed. Obama of course has staked out an anti-occupation platform for some time now but no one has dug into the specifics of what Obama has in mind when he says he doesn't want to just end the occupation. He wants to end the mindset that allowed us to get into this mess in the first place. Spencer does the digging.
Read the rest for the particulars. I was as impressed as Spencer seems to be. The idea that we reject that the only choices are to be strong and wrong, as embodied by the White House policy of the last seven years, or be meek and right, resonates with me. We can, and we must, be strong and right but after all these years of neocon propaganda that has promoted the opposite view, it seems to me that it takes great courage to stake your success on that claim.
Obama has embraced that view and defended it, even against the advice of his more politically cautious advisors. For all the talk about empty rhetoric, it appears that just maybe Obama really is willing to gamble it all on the belief that the electorate has smartened up enough to actually embrace the change behind the words.
Of course, no one can truly predict what any candidate will do once they gain that 1600 Penn Ave address, but I can't deny I'm now more hopeful that he means what he says. Obama may not have won my affection yet, but after reading this piece, he's certainly won some major respect. [via]
(Cross-posted at The Impolitic.)
If you read nothing else today, this is the one piece you should read in full. Spencer Ackerman interviews Barack Obama's foreign policy team and comes away very impressed. Obama of course has staked out an anti-occupation platform for some time now but no one has dug into the specifics of what Obama has in mind when he says he doesn't want to just end the occupation. He wants to end the mindset that allowed us to get into this mess in the first place. Spencer does the digging.
But to understand what Obama is proposing, it's important to ask: What, exactly, is the mind-set that led to the war? What will it mean to end it? And what will take its place?
To answer these questions, I spoke at length with Obama's foreign-policy brain trust, the advisers who will craft and implement a new global strategy if he wins the nomination and the general election. They envision a doctrine that first ends the politics of fear and then moves beyond a hollow, sloganeering "democracy promotion" agenda in favor of "dignity promotion," to fix the conditions of misery that breed anti-Americanism and prevent liberty, justice, and prosperity from taking root. An inextricable part of that doctrine is a relentless and thorough destruction of al-Qaeda. Is this hawkish? Is this dovish? It's both and neither -- an overhaul not just of our foreign policy but of how we think about foreign policy. And it might just be the future of American global leadership.
Read the rest for the particulars. I was as impressed as Spencer seems to be. The idea that we reject that the only choices are to be strong and wrong, as embodied by the White House policy of the last seven years, or be meek and right, resonates with me. We can, and we must, be strong and right but after all these years of neocon propaganda that has promoted the opposite view, it seems to me that it takes great courage to stake your success on that claim.
Obama has embraced that view and defended it, even against the advice of his more politically cautious advisors. For all the talk about empty rhetoric, it appears that just maybe Obama really is willing to gamble it all on the belief that the electorate has smartened up enough to actually embrace the change behind the words.
Of course, no one can truly predict what any candidate will do once they gain that 1600 Penn Ave address, but I can't deny I'm now more hopeful that he means what he says. Obama may not have won my affection yet, but after reading this piece, he's certainly won some major respect. [via]
(Cross-posted at The Impolitic.)
Labels: 2008 election, 2008 primaries, Barack Obama, U.S. foreign policy
posted by Libby Spencer at
3:27 PM
2 Comments:
I will believe a candidate is serious about changing the "mindset" that led to the Iraq debacle when an introduction to a "change" and "hope" candidate's foreign policy proposals does not contain a sentence like:
"And it might just be the future of American global leadership."
The "mindset" here is the notion that America has some sort of Divine Right to be the leader of the whole globe.
(And I say all of this as someone who is enthusiastic about Obama, despite the limitations of what he can or will propose to change about our foreign policy.)
By
MSS, at 2:35 PM
MSS, I'm late to answer this but I'm no great believer in the notion that any of them will really change anything. Still, I think Obama's our best shot at foreign policy management, if for no other reason that he is the most skilled statesman. Good oratory goes a long way in these things and you can't change a mindset that embraces the right to hedgemony in one shot.
By
Libby Spencer, at 8:31 PM
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