Post subject: obama vs. mccain: on international affairs
Posted: Fri May 16, 2008 4:57 pm
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Joined: Sun Oct 17, 2004 12:47 am Posts: 46000 Location: Reasonville
i figure now that we pretty much know the matchup, we could have a rolling thread on major issues and where the two candidates stand on each. i can change the issue as we move along in discussion, or do it abruptly as a certain amount of time passes, or we can even make a new thread on each issue every few weeks. i guess we'll see how it goes. up for anything, really.
i'll post an opinion piece from today's times to start it off:
Hezbollah is one of the world’s most radical terrorist organizations. Over the last week or so, it has staged an armed assault on the democratic government of Lebanon.
Barack Obama issued a statement in response. He called on “all those who have influence with Hezbollah” to “press them to stand down.” Then he declared, “It’s time to engage in diplomatic efforts to help build a new Lebanese consensus that focuses on electoral reform, an end to the current corrupt patronage system, and the development of the economy that provides for a fair distribution of services, opportunities and employment.”
That sentence has the whiff of what President Bush described yesterday as appeasement. Is Obama naïve enough to think that an extremist ideological organization like Hezbollah can be mollified with a less corrupt patronage system and some electoral reform? Does he really believe that Hezbollah is a normal social welfare agency seeking more government services for its followers? Does Obama believe that even the most intractable enemies can be pacified with diplomacy? What “Lebanese consensus” can Hezbollah possibly be a part of?
If Obama believes all this, he’s not just a Jimmy Carter-style liberal. He’s off in Noam Chomskyland.
That didn’t strike me as right, so I spoke with Obama Tuesday to ask him what he meant by all this.
Right off the bat he reaffirmed that Hezbollah is “not a legitimate political party.” Instead, “It’s a destabilizing organization by any common-sense standard. This wouldn’t happen without the support of Iran and Syria.”
I asked him what he meant with all this emphasis on electoral and patronage reform. He said the U.S. should help the Lebanese government deliver better services to the Shiites “to peel support away from Hezbollah” and encourage the local populace to “view them as an oppressive force.” The U.S. should “find a mechanism whereby the disaffected have an effective outlet for their grievances, which assures them they are getting social services.”
The U.S. needs a foreign policy that “looks at the root causes of problems and dangers.” Obama compared Hezbollah to Hamas. Both need to be compelled to understand that “they’re going down a blind alley with violence that weakens their legitimate claims.” He knows these movements aren’t going away anytime soon (“Those missiles aren’t going to dissolve”), but “if they decide to shift, we’re going to recognize that. That’s an evolution that should be recognized.”
Obama being Obama, he understood the broader reason I was asking about Lebanon. Everybody knows that Obama is smart (and he was quite well informed about Lebanon). The question is whether he’s seasoned and tough enough to deal with implacable enemies.
“The debate we’re going to be having with John McCain is how do we understand the blend of military action to diplomatic action that we are going to undertake,” he said. “I constantly reject this notion that any hint of strategies involving diplomacy are somehow soft or indicate surrender or means that you are not going to crack down on terrorism. Those are the terms of debate that have led to blunder after blunder.”
Obama said he found that the military brass thinks the way he does: “The generals are light-years ahead of the civilians. They are trying to get the job done rather than look tough.”
I asked him if negotiating with a theocratic/ideological power like Iran is different from negotiating with a nation that’s primarily pursuing material interests. He acknowledged that “If your opponents are looking for your destruction it’s hard to sit across the table from them,” but, he continued: “There are rarely purely ideological movements out there. We can encourage actors to think in practical and not ideological terms. We can strengthen those elements that are making practical calculations.”
Obama doesn’t broadcast moral disgust when talking about terror groups, but he said that in some ways he’d be tougher than the Bush administration. He said he would do more to arm the Lebanese military and would be tougher on North Korea. “This is not an argument between Democrats and Republicans,” he concluded. “It’s an argument between ideology and foreign policy realism. I have enormous sympathy for the foreign policy of George H. W. Bush. I don’t have a lot of complaints about their handling of Desert Storm. I don’t have a lot of complaints with their handling of the fall of the Berlin Wall.”
In the early 1990s, the Democrats and the first Bush administration had a series of arguments — about humanitarian interventions, whether to get involved in the former Yugoslavia, and so on. In his heart, Obama talks like the Democrats of that era, viewing foreign policy from the ground up. But in his head, he aligns himself with the realist dealmaking of the first Bush. Apparently, he’s part Harry Hopkins and part James Baker.
_________________ No matter how dark the storm gets overhead They say someone's watching from the calm at the edge What about us when we're down here in it? We gotta watch our backs
WATERTON, S.D.– Senator Barack Obama responded sharply Friday to recent criticism of his foreign policy by President Bush and Senator John McCain, saying that the Republican leaders were guilty of “dishonest, divisive attacks” and had engaged in “hypocrisy, fear-peddling, fear-mongering” in an effort to continue what Mr. Obama called “the failed policies” of the past seven years.
“George Bush and John McCain have a lot to answer for,” Mr. Obama said at a town hall meeting in a barn here, listing the war in Iraq and stalled diplomacy in other parts of the Middle East. He added “If George Bush and John McCain want to have a debate about protecting the United States of America, that is a debate I am happy to have any time, any place.”
On Thursday, Mr. Bush, addressing the Israeli parliament, spoke of what he called a tendency toward “appeasement” in some quarters of the West and rejected negotiations with what he called “terrorists and radicals.” Hours later, Mr. McCain broached the same subject, saying “the president is exactly right” and adding that Mr. Obama “needs to explain why he is willing to sit down and talk” with the president of Iran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
In his response to what he called “a little dust up about foreign policy yesterday,” Mr. Obama yoked Mr. Bush and Mr. McCain, the presumptive Republican nominee for president, together. Mr. McCain, he said, has failed to articulate a foreign policy that is different in any substantial way from Mr. Bush’s and is merely “doubling-down” on policies that have already proven disastrous.
“In the Bush-McCain worldview, everyone who disagrees with their failed Iran policy is an appeaser,” Mr. Obama said. He added: “I believe we need to use all elements of American power to pressure Iran – including tough, principled and direct diplomacy.”
_________________ No matter how dark the storm gets overhead They say someone's watching from the calm at the edge What about us when we're down here in it? We gotta watch our backs
Post subject: Re: obama vs. mccain: on international affairs
Posted: Sat May 17, 2008 9:30 am
Supersonic
Joined: Thu Nov 04, 2004 2:43 am Posts: 10694
bart d. wrote:
Obama will soon have to start spouting the pro-Likud crap that every Presidential candidate has to say. It'll be depressing.
I thought Obama was different? I guess he really isn't the messiah? What's the deal here? There was supposed to be a new face in Washington. I guess that notion is out the door.
In regards to foreign policy differences? One is incredibly naive, and the other is incredibly stupid. Stupidity can be corrected, overzealous ideologists cannot.
Post subject: Re: obama vs. mccain: on international affairs
Posted: Sat May 17, 2008 11:51 am
Former PJ Drummer
Joined: Fri Jun 03, 2005 1:32 am Posts: 17563
LittleWing wrote:
In regards to foreign policy differences? One is incredibly naive, and the other is incredibly stupid. Stupidity can be corrected, overzealous ideologists cannot.
In what way is Obama incredibly naive? The whole "I'll talk to Iran" issue? I think it's naive and dangerous for people to pretend like we don't have to in some way deal with Hamas, Hezbollah, Ahmadenijad, etc.
McCain doesn't strike me as stupid, but he is unforgivably ignorant about the middle east for a man in his position, especially one running on his supposed foreign policy cred.
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Post subject: Re: obama vs. mccain: on international affairs
Posted: Sat May 17, 2008 2:51 pm
Interweb Celebrity
Joined: Sun Oct 17, 2004 12:47 am Posts: 46000 Location: Reasonville
"hamas is going to hate me when i'm president."
sounds like a good plan.
_________________ No matter how dark the storm gets overhead They say someone's watching from the calm at the edge What about us when we're down here in it? We gotta watch our backs
Post subject: Re: obama vs. mccain: on international affairs
Posted: Sat May 17, 2008 4:16 pm
Former PJ Drummer
Joined: Sun Oct 17, 2004 4:01 am Posts: 19477 Location: Brooklyn NY
Bart d.: Red Mosquito Nazi appeaser
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LittleWing sometime in July 2007 wrote:
Unfortunately, it's so elementary, and the big time investors behind the drive in the stock market aren't so stupid. This isn't the false economy of 2000.
Post subject: Re: obama vs. mccain: on international affairs
Posted: Sun May 18, 2008 12:00 am
Interweb Celebrity
Joined: Sun Oct 17, 2004 12:47 am Posts: 46000 Location: Reasonville
appeasing, talking, same thing.
_________________ No matter how dark the storm gets overhead They say someone's watching from the calm at the edge What about us when we're down here in it? We gotta watch our backs
Post subject: Re: obama vs. mccain: on international affairs
Posted: Tue May 20, 2008 12:54 pm
Supersonic
Joined: Thu Nov 04, 2004 2:43 am Posts: 10694
bart d. wrote:
LittleWing wrote:
In regards to foreign policy differences? One is incredibly naive, and the other is incredibly stupid. Stupidity can be corrected, overzealous ideologists cannot.
In what way is Obama incredibly naive? The whole "I'll talk to Iran" issue? I think it's naive and dangerous for people to pretend like we don't have to in some way deal with Hamas, Hezbollah, Ahmadenijad, etc.
McCain doesn't strike me as stupid, but he is unforgivably ignorant about the middle east for a man in his position, especially one running on his supposed foreign policy cred.
It is one thing to talk with people like Iran. It is another to be naive and actually think it will do anything. Then another to peddle it out to stupid naive people trying to get them to vote for you. It also sets a dangerous precedent for future third rate despots of the world. Obama will talk to you, but that is pretty much it. Cool. This probably why Hamas wants him to be president.
Post subject: Re: obama vs. mccain: on international affairs
Posted: Tue May 20, 2008 1:10 pm
Former PJ Drummer
Joined: Fri Jun 03, 2005 1:32 am Posts: 17563
LittleWing wrote:
bart d. wrote:
LittleWing wrote:
In regards to foreign policy differences? One is incredibly naive, and the other is incredibly stupid. Stupidity can be corrected, overzealous ideologists cannot.
In what way is Obama incredibly naive? The whole "I'll talk to Iran" issue? I think it's naive and dangerous for people to pretend like we don't have to in some way deal with Hamas, Hezbollah, Ahmadenijad, etc.
McCain doesn't strike me as stupid, but he is unforgivably ignorant about the middle east for a man in his position, especially one running on his supposed foreign policy cred.
It is one thing to talk with people like Iran. It is another to be naive and actually think it will do anything. Then another to peddle it out to stupid naive people trying to get them to vote for you. It also sets a dangerous precedent for future third rate despots of the world. Obama will talk to you, but that is pretty much it. Cool. This probably why Hamas wants him to be president.
Talking seems to have worked pretty well in North Korea, no?
And as for Iran, Ahmadinejad was only elected after Bush did the whole Axis of Evil bullshit, after we labeled the entire country a terrorist organization and decided to throw diplomacy out the window. Despite the fact that Iran has steadily been moving closer to a more Western-friendly democracy and dragging the Ayatollahs along kicking and screaming, their preffered candidate won thanks to Bush's masterful job of rallying normal Iranians around a guy who was only months before considered unelectable even under Irans undemocratic standards. Don't you think talking with not only Ahmadinejad but also lower level gov't workers and normal Iranians would help to undercut the religious radicals' ability to use us as a distraction from the fact that they themselves have been growing ever less popular?
And Ahmadenikad is NOT a despot. He was actually elected by the majority of Iranians. He may be an ass, but he's not a doctator, autocrat, despot, etc.
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Post subject: Re: obama vs. mccain: on international affairs
Posted: Wed May 21, 2008 12:08 pm
Supersonic
Joined: Thu Nov 04, 2004 2:43 am Posts: 10694
bart d. wrote:
LittleWing wrote:
bart d. wrote:
LittleWing wrote:
In regards to foreign policy differences? One is incredibly naive, and the other is incredibly stupid. Stupidity can be corrected, overzealous ideologists cannot.
In what way is Obama incredibly naive? The whole "I'll talk to Iran" issue? I think it's naive and dangerous for people to pretend like we don't have to in some way deal with Hamas, Hezbollah, Ahmadenijad, etc.
McCain doesn't strike me as stupid, but he is unforgivably ignorant about the middle east for a man in his position, especially one running on his supposed foreign policy cred.
It is one thing to talk with people like Iran. It is another to be naive and actually think it will do anything. Then another to peddle it out to stupid naive people trying to get them to vote for you. It also sets a dangerous precedent for future third rate despots of the world. Obama will talk to you, but that is pretty much it. Cool. This probably why Hamas wants him to be president.
Talking seems to have worked pretty well in North Korea, no?
And as for Iran, Ahmadinejad was only elected after Bush did the whole Axis of Evil bullshit, after we labeled the entire country a terrorist organization and decided to throw diplomacy out the window. Despite the fact that Iran has steadily been moving closer to a more Western-friendly democracy and dragging the Ayatollahs along kicking and screaming, their preffered candidate won thanks to Bush's masterful job of rallying normal Iranians around a guy who was only months before considered unelectable even under Irans undemocratic standards. Don't you think talking with not only Ahmadinejad but also lower level gov't workers and normal Iranians would help to undercut the religious radicals' ability to use us as a distraction from the fact that they themselves have been growing ever less popular?
And Ahmadenikad is NOT a despot. He was actually elected by the majority of Iranians. He may be an ass, but he's not a doctator, autocrat, despot, etc.
LOL! You actually think talking worked with NK? How naive. But hey, look who you support right? The goal with NK was to prevent them from having a bomb PERIOD! We talked with KJI for what -- 10 or 15 years? We asked nicely, and said pretty please. I am pretty sure that Slick Will gqve him a blow job on top of a nuclear reactor. Obama is the type of person that would sell nuclear technology to a despotic nation actually believing that they would stop their goal of getting a nuke. NK made a nuke. They blew it up. They North Koreans; through all that well intentioned and worthless talk, still has nuclear bomb technology. That is awesome is it not? Super. Super stuff.
We had a discussion about Ahmadenijad and the elections years ago. His election had more to do with the mullahs appointing a mullah for the mullahs sake than anything we said. Those elections were rigged, and they were utterly curropt. They have had people like Ahmadenijad running the show over there ever since Jimmy Carter butt fucked everything in that country...with his worthless talk.
It is extremely clear to me that you know zilch about Irans election and the process which would inevitably put Ahhh in power.
Post subject: Re: obama vs. mccain: on international affairs
Posted: Wed May 21, 2008 2:50 pm
Former PJ Drummer
Joined: Fri Jun 03, 2005 1:32 am Posts: 17563
LittleWing wrote:
We had a discussion about Ahmadenijad and the elections years ago. His election had more to do with the mullahs appointing a mullah for the mullahs sake than anything we said. Those elections were rigged, and they were utterly curropt. They have had people like Ahmadenijad running the show over there ever since Jimmy Carter butt fucked everything in that country...with his worthless talk.
It is extremely clear to me that you know zilch about Irans election and the process which would inevitably put Ahhh in power.
Inevitable? Actually it seems as if I know a bit more than you on this subject. 1998 was a huge victory for democrats in Iran, as the preferred candidate of the Ayatollah and the mullahs, Nouri, was rejected by the people in favor of Khatami, who had clashed with the religious conservatives and openly favored free speech and increased democracy. Khatami was the first President to take advantage of the constitutional amendments of '89, which gave him the power to hold municipal elections. There was an enormous turnout and reformist candidates (including many women) won easily. He and the other pro-democracy candidates won a landslide victory (80%) again in the 2000 elections. All of this progress was erased, however, when the reformists were faced with the Bush administration's idiotic "with us or against us" bullshit. They became more and more unpopular, but Ahmadinejad's win was still a shock. Although you're right about the fact that the conservatives did everything they could to ensure his victory, including rigging elections and disenfranchising groups of voters. Hmm, where have we seen that before?
And what's with the "mullahs appointing a mullah" line? You do know that Ahmadenijad isn't a mullah or any other kind of religious authority, right? He's a textbook example of a government bureaucrat.
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Post subject: Re: obama vs. mccain: on international affairs
Posted: Wed May 21, 2008 7:40 pm
Former PJ Drummer
Joined: Fri Jun 03, 2005 1:32 am Posts: 17563
I should add that the office of the President is not nearly as powerful in Iran as it is here in the US. Certainly it'd be wrong to claim the Iranian President to be a despot, anyway. The Ayatollah and the Supreme Council have veto power over everything he does precisely because it's an office that is somwhat democratic, and he has virtually NO say in foreign policy. So to call him some kind of dictator just betrays your lack of knowledge about the subject.
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Post subject: Re: obama vs. mccain: on international affairs
Posted: Fri May 23, 2008 1:10 pm
Former PJ Drummer
Joined: Fri Jun 03, 2005 1:32 am Posts: 17563
Quote:
Republicans and Our Enemies By JOSEPH R. BIDEN JR. May 23, 2008
On Wednesday, Joe Lieberman wrote on this page that the Democratic Party he and I grew up in has drifted far from the foreign policy espoused by Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman and John Kennedy.
In fact, it is the policies that President George W. Bush has pursued, and that John McCain would continue, that are divorced from that great tradition – and from the legacy of Republican presidents like Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush.
Sen. Lieberman is right: 9/11 was a pivotal moment. History will judge Mr. Bush's reaction less for the mistakes he made than for the opportunities he squandered.
The president had a historic opportunity to unite Americans and the world in common cause. Instead – by exploiting the politics of fear, instigating an optional war in Iraq before finishing a necessary war in Afghanistan, and instituting policies on torture, detainees and domestic surveillance that fly in the face of our values and interests – Mr. Bush divided Americans from each other and from the world.
At the heart of this failure is an obsession with the "war on terrorism" that ignores larger forces shaping the world: the emergence of China, India, Russia and Europe; the spread of lethal weapons and dangerous diseases; uncertain supplies of energy, food and water; the persistence of poverty; ethnic animosities and state failures; a rapidly warming planet; the challenge to nation states from above and below.
Instead, Mr. Bush has turned a small number of radical groups that hate America into a 10-foot tall existential monster that dictates every move we make.
The intersection of al Qaeda with the world's most lethal weapons is a deadly serious problem. Al Qaeda must be destroyed. But to compare terrorism with an all-encompassing ideology like communism and fascism is evidence of profound confusion.
Terrorism is a means, not an end, and very different groups and countries are using it toward very different goals. Messrs. Bush and McCain lump together, as a single threat, extremist groups and states more at odds with each other than with us: Sunnis and Shiites, Persians and Arabs, Iraq and Iran, al Qaeda and Shiite militias. If they can't identify the enemy or describe the war we're fighting, it's difficult to see how we will win.
The results speak for themselves.
On George Bush's watch, Iran, not freedom, has been on the march: Iran is much closer to the bomb; its influence in Iraq is expanding; its terrorist proxy Hezbollah is ascendant in Lebanon and that country is on the brink of civil war.
Beyond Iran, al Qaeda in Afghanistan and Pakistan – the people who actually attacked us on 9/11 – are stronger now than at any time since 9/11. Radical recruitment is on the rise. Hamas controls Gaza and launches rockets at Israel every day. Some 140,000 American troops remain stuck in Iraq with no end in sight.
Because of the policies Mr. Bush has pursued and Mr. McCain would continue, the entire Middle East is more dangerous. The United States and our allies, including Israel, are less secure.
The election in November is a vital opportunity for America to start anew. That will require more than a great soldier. It will require a wise leader.
Here, the controversy over engaging Iran is especially instructive.
Last week, John McCain was very clear. He ruled out talking to Iran. He said that Barack Obama was "naïve and inexperienced" for advocating engagement; "What is it he wants to talk about?" he asked.
Well, for a start, Iran's nuclear program, its support for Shiite militias in Iraq, and its patronage of Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in Gaza.
Beyond bluster, how would Mr. McCain actually deal with these dangers? You either talk, you maintain the status quo, or you go to war. If Mr. McCain has ruled out talking, we're stuck with an ineffectual policy or military strikes that could quickly spiral out of control.
Sen. Obama is right that the U.S. should be willing to engage Iran on its nuclear program without "preconditions" – i.e. without insisting that Iran first freeze the program, which is the very subject of any negotiations. He has been clear that he would not become personally involved until the necessary preparations had been made and unless he was convinced his engagement would advance our interests.
President Nixon didn't demand that China end military support to the Vietnamese killing Americans before meeting with Mao. President Reagan didn't insist that the Soviets freeze their nuclear arsenal before sitting down with Mikhail Gorbachev. Even George W. Bush – whose initial disengagement allowed dangers to proliferate – didn't demand that Libya relinquish its nuclear program, that North Korea give up its plutonium, or even that Iran stop aiding those attacking our soldiers in Iraq before authorizing talks.
The net effect of demanding preconditions that Iran rejects is this: We get no results and Iran gets closer to the bomb.
Equally unwise is the Bush-McCain fixation on regime change. The regime is abhorrent, but their logic defies comprehension: renounce the bomb – and when you do, we're still going to take you down. The result is that Iran accelerated its efforts to produce fissile material.
Instead of regime change, we should focus on conduct change. We should make it very clear to Iran what it risks in terms of isolation if it continues to pursue a dangerous nuclear program but also what it stands to gain if it does the right thing. That will require keeping our allies in Europe, as well as Russia and China, on the same page as we ratchet up pressure.
It also requires a much more sophisticated understanding than Mr. Bush or Mr. McCain seem to possess that by publicly engaging Iran – including through direct talks – we can exploit cracks within the ruling elite, and between Iran's rulers and its people, who are struggling economically and stifled politically.
Iran's people need to know that their government, not the U.S., is choosing confrontation over cooperation. Our allies and partners need to know that the U.S. will go the extra diplomatic mile – if we do, they are much more likely to stand with us if diplomacy fails and force proves necessary.
The Bush-McCain saber rattling is the most self-defeating policy imaginable. It achieves nothing. But it forces Iranians who despise the regime to rally behind their leaders. And it spurs instability in the Middle East, which adds to the price of oil, with the proceeds going right from American wallets into Tehran's pockets.
The worst nightmare for a regime that thrives on tension with America is an America ready, willing and able to engage. Since when has talking removed the word "no" from our vocabulary?
It's amazing how little faith George Bush, Joe Lieberman and John McCain have in themselves – and in America
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Post subject: Re: obama vs. mccain: on international affairs
Posted: Fri May 23, 2008 1:12 pm
Former PJ Drummer
Joined: Fri Jun 03, 2005 1:32 am Posts: 17563
Here's the Lieberman Op-Ed to which Biden was responding:
Quote:
Democrats and Our Enemies By JOSEPH LIEBERMAN May 21, 2008; Page A19
How did the Democratic Party get here? How did the party of Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman and John F. Kennedy drift so far from the foreign policy and national security principles and policies that were at the core of its identity and its purpose?
Beginning in the 1940s, the Democratic Party was forced to confront two of the most dangerous enemies our nation has ever faced: Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union. In response, Democrats under Roosevelt, Truman and Kennedy forged and conducted a foreign policy that was principled, internationalist, strong and successful.
This was the Democratic Party that I grew up in – a party that was unhesitatingly and proudly pro-American, a party that was unafraid to make moral judgments about the world beyond our borders. It was a party that understood that either the American people stood united with free nations and freedom fighters against the forces of totalitarianism, or that we would fall divided.
This was the Democratic Party of Harry Truman, who pledged that "it must be the policy of the United States to support free peoples who are resisting attempted subjugation by armed minorities or by outside pressures."
And this was the Democratic Party of John F. Kennedy, who promised in his inaugural address that the United States would "pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, to assure the survival and the success of freedom."
This worldview began to come apart in the late 1960s, around the war in Vietnam. In its place, a very different view of the world took root in the Democratic Party. Rather than seeing the Cold War as an ideological contest between the free nations of the West and the repressive regimes of the communist world, this rival political philosophy saw America as the aggressor – a morally bankrupt, imperialist power whose militarism and "inordinate fear of communism" represented the real threat to world peace.
It argued that the Soviets and their allies were our enemies not because they were inspired by a totalitarian ideology fundamentally hostile to our way of life, or because they nursed ambitions of global conquest. Rather, the Soviets were our enemy because we had provoked them, because we threatened them, and because we failed to sit down and accord them the respect they deserved. In other words, the Cold War was mostly America's fault.
Of course that leftward lurch by the Democrats did not go unchallenged. Democratic Cold Warriors like Scoop Jackson fought against the tide. But despite their principled efforts, the Democratic Party through the 1970s and 1980s became prisoner to a foreign policy philosophy that was, in most respects, the antithesis of what Democrats had stood for under Roosevelt, Truman and Kennedy.
Then, beginning in the 1980s, a new effort began on the part of some of us in the Democratic Party to reverse these developments, and reclaim our party's lost tradition of principle and strength in the world. Our band of so-called New Democrats was successful sooner than we imagined possible when, in 1992, Bill Clinton and Al Gore were elected. In the Balkans, for example, as President Clinton and his advisers slowly but surely came to recognize that American intervention, and only American intervention, could stop Slobodan Milosevic and his campaign of ethnic slaughter, Democratic attitudes about the use of military force in pursuit of our values and our security began to change.
This happy development continued into the 2000 campaign, when the Democratic candidate – Vice President Gore – championed a freedom-focused foreign policy, confident of America's moral responsibilities in the world, and unafraid to use our military power. He pledged to increase the defense budget by $50 billion more than his Republican opponent – and, to the dismay of the Democratic left, made sure that the party's platform endorsed a national missile defense.
By contrast, in 2000, Gov. George W. Bush promised a "humble foreign policy" and criticized our peacekeeping operations in the Balkans.
Today, less than a decade later, the parties have completely switched positions. The reversal began, like so much else in our time, on September 11, 2001. The attack on America by Islamist terrorists shook President Bush from the foreign policy course he was on. He saw September 11 for what it was: a direct ideological and military attack on us and our way of life. If the Democratic Party had stayed where it was in 2000, America could have confronted the terrorists with unity and strength in the years after 9/11.
Instead a debate soon began within the Democratic Party about how to respond to Mr. Bush. I felt strongly that Democrats should embrace the basic framework the president had advanced for the war on terror as our own, because it was our own. But that was not the choice most Democratic leaders made. When total victory did not come quickly in Iraq, the old voices of partisanship and peace at any price saw an opportunity to reassert themselves. By considering centrism to be collaboration with the enemy – not bin Laden, but Mr. Bush – activists have successfully pulled the Democratic Party further to the left than it has been at any point in the last 20 years.
Far too many Democratic leaders have kowtowed to these opinions rather than challenging them. That unfortunately includes Barack Obama, who, contrary to his rhetorical invocations of bipartisan change, has not been willing to stand up to his party's left wing on a single significant national security or international economic issue in this campaign.
In this, Sen. Obama stands in stark contrast to John McCain, who has shown the political courage throughout his career to do what he thinks is right – regardless of its popularity in his party or outside it.
John also understands something else that too many Democrats seem to have become confused about lately – the difference between America's friends and America's enemies.
There are of course times when it makes sense to engage in tough diplomacy with hostile governments. Yet what Mr. Obama has proposed is not selective engagement, but a blanket policy of meeting personally as president, without preconditions, in his first year in office, with the leaders of the most vicious, anti-American regimes on the planet.
Mr. Obama has said that in proposing this, he is following in the footsteps of Reagan and JFK. But Kennedy never met with Castro, and Reagan never met with Khomeini. And can anyone imagine Presidents Kennedy or Reagan sitting down unconditionally with Ahmadinejad or Chavez? I certainly cannot.
If a president ever embraced our worst enemies in this way, he would strengthen them and undermine our most steadfast allies.
A great Democratic secretary of state, Dean Acheson, once warned "no people in history have ever survived, who thought they could protect their freedom by making themselves inoffensive to their enemies." This is a lesson that today's Democratic Party leaders need to relearn.
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