United Liberty
Is Obama Anti-war?
Tue, 09/23/2008 - 2:03am | posted by Michael Orion Powell
Somehow the Democratic Party is conceived by many as the anti-war party.
Despite a history of foreign interventions occurring during all of the last four Democratic administrations (in which even the Nobel Peace Prize winning President Jimmy Carter armed the Mujahideen in Afghanistan), the overt hawkishness of the Bush Administration has resulted in a perception of the Democrats as doves. This is aided by remarks such as those by Speaker Nancy Pelosi referring to Iraqis as “all God’s children” and the fact that both the current Democratic nominee, Barack Obama, and the chair of the DNC, Howard Dean, opposed the Iraq war from the beginning.
Is Obama really anti-war? Or does he just oppose the Iraq war? A candidate who is generally against intervention and nation building would be preferable to one who simply thinks the Iraq war was a mistake. An intervention in Sudan, which Hollywood liberals have been calling for, would be potentially as disastrous as Iraq because of the very real possibility of conflict with China, who gets a good deal of oil from Sudan.
According to David Weigel of Reason, Obama is surrounding himself with many Clinton-era foreign policy analysts. During Clinton’s reign, we saw prolonged sanctions against Iraq, an invasion of Haiti, the bombing of Bosnia and Kosovo and the “Black Hawk Down” incident in Somalia. Also, according to Weigel, Obama is close to Harvard professor Samantha Power. In Power’s book A Problem from Hell, she argues that the United States “creates long-term problems when it fails to intervene in failing states or to protect threatened populations.”
The United States has plenty of “long-term problems” of its own to deal with, and getting bogged down in another third-world country that hasn’t threatened our national security isn’t going to help. It’s certainly not “change we can believe in.”
Do you do blogroll exchanging? If you want to exchange links let me know.
Email me back if you’re interested.
You bring up a good point: Is Obama anti-war or just against the war in Iraq?
As far as trying to figure this out by looking at the people around Obama: I don’t know about your circle, but most of my family and many of my friends have very different political (and other) beliefs than I do. However, not one of them has ever said anything that would change MY mind. They just keep me running in the opposite direction!
If we all were surrounded by people who thought exactly the way we do, life would get pretty boring. Would you agree?
Kim,
Just about everyone in my family is liberal and tends to vote Democrat every cycle. A typical political discussion with my family will lead to topics that usually are some variation on the theme of America being the worst society in the history of humanity.
In New Hampshire, there is something called the “Free State Project,” which encourages libertarians to migrate and live with their brethren. I like being in an environment where my views are accepted and tolerated, but I’m with you on believing that if everyone agreed with me it’d be pretty boring.
The only people I really don’t like are those that bring up politics, but then beat down those who speak up with differing views to the degree of making them afraid to speak their mind. I call these folk “small-time authoritarians.” I unfortunately come across them fairly often.
Some have tried to convince me that Barry is playing possum but I don’t believe it. His stated policies on Afghanista/Pakistan are truly just as bad as Bush/Cheney’s. I can’t vote for a guy who promotes a huge military and a continued $500+ billion defense budget. It’s just the same old corporate pandering by another Democrat who won’t stand up to the Pentagon and military madness.
The last president we had who showed some leaning towards non-interventionism and constitutional adherence was Dwight Eisenhower. There is hope that a John McCain or Barack Obama presidency wouldn’t be able to pull off a war in Sudan or Iran because the American people are leaning more isolationist these days.
Post new comment