Tuesday, May 03, 2011
That was then...
This is now...
Three years ago, when I was predicting that Obama's war policies would be exactly the same as McCain's, everyone thought I was crazy. Perhaps now that the President has renewed the Patriot Act, kept Guantanamo open, restarted the military tribunals, launched new offensives in both Iraq and Afghanistan, (not to mention quietly giving up on timetables and admitting that we're not leaving 'til it's done), launched a war "of choice, not necessity" in another Middle Eastern country, and violated the sovereignty of a supposed ally by sending a mordgruppe in to launch an attack on their soil without their permission or consultation, my predictions look a little less silly.
I am not criticizing President Obama; it was, and is my contention that a President's actions are largely defined by physical and political realities, and that Obama isn't, and Bush wasn't a villain. No matter how much they might long to, a President cannot effect real change by himself; I wish people would invest some of their attention into the Congressional, Gubernatorial, and State Legislature races instead of thinking a single vote every four years is going to fix everything.
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3 comments:
I still maintain that a lot of it is that Bush started a lot of things that were very difficult to finish neatly. Colin Powell's warnings that Iraq was "you break it, you buy it" came true.
Obama was overly optimistic about, say, the willingness of any state in the Union to accept prisoners from Guantanamo Bay so it could be closed, and, well, everything else, but it is hard to imagine we would be where we are had Bush not set us up to be here.
CC
who had pretty low expectations for Obama in the foreign policy department herself.
Agreed; but those were the kind of realities that I was arguing would constrain the new President's actions and why both candidates would perforce react the same way.
Very nice, thanks.
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