It will be interesting to see Brian explain how a President who is continuing a former President’s unpopular policies on detention (Gitmo), rendition, and intervention (Afghanistan), as well as expanding combat operations in Afghanistan (more troops) and Pakistan (dozens of new Reaper and Predator drones being deployed) is being awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. And with no sense of apparent irony.[/quote]
Allan, why don’t you support Obama then? Didn’t you think that those policies were the right ones?
You cannot undo everything all at once. It’s like holding a peak-price house on a mortgage you have difficulty affording. You can’t get rid of it, especially if you have wife, kids and “face” to uphold with the relatives and your community of friends and colleagues. You have to slowly ease out of it. In the meantime, you still have to pay for your previous bad decisions.[/quote]
Brian: I never supported those policies, regardless of banner. That’s the point, isn’t it? All excuses aside, Obama is now being laid bare by the dithering and dissembling and inaction or wrong action.
Obama could close Gitmo if he so chose. He didn’t. He could stop the rendition policy. He didn’t. He is now deciding whether to up the ante in Afghanistan and there is internal schism within the WH regarding that policy.
This doesn’t have anything to do with his color, or birth certificate or right versus left. It has to do with effective governance at home and effective policy abroad. Do you believe that the world “loving” us more will truly have a positive effect on Iran or North Korea? I have to say that I don’t think Dear Leader in the Hermit Kingdom really gives a shit one way or another.
You can deride the Bush Doctrine and with good reason in certain instances. However, a pragmatic realpolitik approach yields results where singing “Kumbaya” around the fire doesn’t. Just go back to 1979 and the Iranian hostage crisis and watch Jimmy Carter trying reason and logic and “liberal democratic principles” on the Ayatollah. Some folks just don’t get it when you try to talk sensibly with them. That’s why God invented machine guns, napalm and the B-52.
