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He opposed the war on Iraq from the beginning, but called it a "dumb war," implying that it should be opposed on tactical grounds, not legal and moral grounds. Once he was elected to the Senate, he continued to vote to fund the war. Even after the Democrats gained control of Congress, he and the other Democrats continued to fund the war.
The Democrats could end the war today if they wanted - they say they want to, but their actions prove otherwise. Since the Democrats are in control, all they have to do is not bring up a bill to fund the war, and tell the president that they're not going to.
There's nothing he can to about it. There's already enough money in the pipeline that would keep the war going for another year or so, so the president would be forced to plan accordingly and bring all the troops home by then.
Obama takes a similar position of Clinton's toward Iran. He has stated that the U.S. "should take no option, including military action, off the table" and that Iran is "a threat to all of us." There is a simple course of action that could be taken toward Iran: first, rescind the threat of use of force; second, get out of Iraq; and third, live up to our own obligations under the Non-Proliferation Treaty to get rid of our own nuclear weapons. Unlike Iran, which has not yet violated the NPT, the U.S. has violated the treaty by not reducing our stockpiles of nuclear weapons - instead, we are building new ones.
Obama has taken the same stance as most others toward Israel - to just keep doing what we're doing. He has called Ariel Sharon's involvement in the conflict as "constructive," despite his involvement in numerous war crimes. He has pledged to continue military funding toward Israel, which is used to maintain the illegal and brutal occupation.
These foreign policy positions of the two leading Democratic candidates demonstrate the lack of alternatives available to Americans. All of these policy positions should be expected from the Republicans, but the Democrats are supposed to be the opposition party - and they are merely serving as the party that attempts to correct tactical errors from the warmongers on the right. There are alternatives, Dennis Kucinich and Mike Gravel, but they find themselves shut out of the debates, ignored, and presented as wackos, despite the fact that most of their policy positions are in line with U.S. public opinion and international law.
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I strongly recommend that you take the time to go to www.barackobama.com and actually READ what his stands are. It's all right there, including the economic stimulus package. You can read the brief summaries, or you can read the more lengthy tomes on each issue.
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A couple points from my first reading of this. First, "strategic national interestes in the region" does not refer explicitly to oil. Keep in mind that the United States actually purchases less than half of the oil it uses from OPEC; the protection of the oil interests in the region allows the market to remain more stable globally and as a result keeps the cost of oil from those countries which we do have as business partners down. With the advent of ethanol (a fuel source of which I am dubious) and cars which require less and less fuel, the next decade or so will likely see a significant decrease in US oil consumption (with, incidentally, a significant rise in Chinese oil consumption as their economy continues to develop). The real US interest in the region is political stability; specifically, a prevention of two political catestrophies. The first would be a successful Islamic uprising which elimenates the state of Israel. The ramifications of this are fairly obvious. Also of great concern is the potential for an extremist Iran to sweep in to control any vacuum of power in the Middle East. This, I believe, is the primary reason why we remain in Iraq, and the principal reason why we cannot simply 'up and leave' as so many people seem to desire we do. I'm a little lost as to where you find the Israeli 'occupation' brutal - or, at least, any less brutal than the aggression enacted against the Israeli state by the Palestinian authority. I'm not great lover of Israel - it was, in my opinion, an error in the post World War II environment to simply 'create' a state in such an unstable area with a known penchant for hating specifically the Jewish people. That having been said, Israel has become among the most stable (both politically and economically) nations in the Middle East, and has historically been among the most willing to forefit its land and its rights in the hopes of obtaining peace. Historically, however, other countries around Israel (Palestine, Syria, Egypt, etc.) have been fairly unwilling to compromise and have, at times, been downright violent in their disapproval of Israel's existence. Many look at the quantity of force in their analysis of Israel's retaliations - it's important to realize, however, that Israel has only rarely been on the aggressive end of its conflicts, reserving the use of their powerful military almost explicitly for defensive purposes.
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A quick second point - though I have come to expect this kind of ideologically feeble writing on the CT Opinions page, it still disheartens me to see the intellectual dishonesty of the author exposed through his implicit assertion that none of the Republican candidates (or other independents, for that matter) presents a 'viable' choice for the Presidency in 2008. The author, of course, is entitled to his opinion and the expression thereof, but to simply hand wave the GOP candidates away, seemling implying that 'the democrats don't provide a solid alternative, and WE ALL KNOW that the Republicans cannot be trusted to hold power ever under any circumstances.' This sort of bogus intellectual argument does a discredit to the opinions page of the Collegiate Times and the author of this article.
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Kyle, I think the author's point is simply that the available Democrats don't have platforms that differ greatly enough from the Republicans. On a related note, I do think it's curious that despite what we often hear about "all of America" wanting to be out of the Middle East, most of the viable candidates desire some degree of continued presence in the region.
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Kyle: You cannot expect to be taken seriously when you comment about the Middle East and Israel-Palestine when you make such ridiculous comments about "aggression enacted against Israel by the Palestinian Authority". The facts show that Israel has killed at least 300% as many Palestinians as Israelis killed by Palestinians. It is like Israel claiming it was attack by its neighbors in Syria, Egypt and Jordan in 1967. If so, how was it that the air forces of all three countries were destroyed on the ground by the Israeli air force? Do I attack you by leaving all my aircraft on the ground??? Oh and yes, at the same time as she attacked her enemies, she also viciously attacked the surveillance ship the USS Liberty with great loss of life, and injuries and damage to the vessel. Why do we need a friend like Israel who attacks on of our ships, and via people like Jonathan Pollard and others, spies on us, steals our secrets and barters them to our enemies? Kyle, I am an American nationalist and want my country to act in its own interests and not those of Israel. If you have trouble with that notion, and want to put Israel first, perhaps you should consider emigrating there. Regards, Don
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Don, my point isn't so much that Israel is the pinnacle of Democracy and Peace (it is certainly not), nor is it that the protection of Israeli interests ought to be more important to the US government than the protection of US interests (it is not). But it would be a poor decision, to put it lightly, to simply abandon the Israeli government as more and more arab nations speak openly about their desires to 'wipe the Zionist state off the map.' Your point about the six day war is aconowledged, but its analysis is somewhat flawed - Egypt, at the time, had committed what would be considered an act of war by amassing its armed forces at its border. Israel's response was a preemptive strike against what seemed at the time to be an enemy that was preparing to attack it. We can look at statistics all we want, and if what you really want is a discussion of just war theory we can have that too, but the fact that there have been more Palestinain casualties than Israeli casualties doesn't really illegitimize the Israeli defense of its people. It seems like you criticise Israel because it has superior firepower and is willing to use it when provoked - if they didn't use the firepower they have as a means of responding to Palestinian provocations, the provocations will simply continue (see the "land for Peace deal attempted a decade or two ago). History has proven that the Arab nations in the region are wholly unwilling to compromise with an Israeli state which they don't officially recognize, and as a result the numerous peace accords that have been struck have fallen apart with near instancy. This isn't to say that the US ought to 'put Israel first,' and I certainly don't advocate that, but it important to note that Israel is among our more powerful allies, both in the world and specifically in the region. They can be a powerful too for maintaining some sort of balance of power in the region which is at least marginally friendly to the West.
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Jason, I understand your point. Maybe it is the infamous CT editing that has fooled me again, but the title of the piece led me to believe that 'all sides' would be considered. Given the article's title, I assumed that the discussion was going to be about how there wasn't a good candidate to be found anywhere.
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Neither a "republican" or a "democrat" is an "alternative" candidate, because both political parties are simply different sides of the establishment coin. In terms of politics, Hillary Clinton is no different then the candidates running for the Republican ticket, and Obama is nothing more then a very conservative Democrat whose strength lies in the rhetoric of the word "change".
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I'm not so sure, Alex, that Mr. Obama is quite so conservative as you may think. In many facets, his voting record (short though it may be) leans quite heavily to the left; perhaps even moreso than Mrs. Clinton's. That having been said, I do tend to agree with you - the major political parties tend to stand for so little anymore that they both border on being dangerous for society as a whole. At the end of the day, though, I try to cast my vote for the candidate I feel will do the least damage to the nation. . .
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Well, Alex, it should come as no surprise that all viable candidates tend to be relatively moderate. After all, the way to win the presidency is to forget about pissing of the extremists and focus on winning the more populous moderates. The differences among candidates, which may appear subtle in the grand scheme of severe right to severe left, are found when we zoom in on the "moderate" portion of the political spectrum. Clinton and Obama certainly have very different ideas for domestic economic and social policy than their Republican counterparts, for instance. On the Republican side of the coin, I am at least encouraged that several candidates are claiming to support a return to smaller government - an interesting phenomenon that has produced heretofore unheard of ideas like conservative candidates who don't want to ban abortion or actively ban same-s e x unions, despite their own moral views, because they acknowledge that these issues have no place in politics.
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"Right wing imperialist policies?" I would find that funny if I thought you were joking. If you think Hillary is a "right-winger" then you are seriously mistaken.
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