It appears that one word, "refine," is setting off the media firestorm today about Obama's Iraq position.  I don't think he handled whatever he meant to say or do particularly well today and suspect that news will leak about how the generals and military officials in Iraq strongly advised him, when he visits Iraq, to abandon his 16-month withdrawal plan.  I don't think the argument that he used today about the president being the one who sets the mission while the generals execute it is a very convincing one politically.  However, does Afghanistan present him with a rationale for why his withdrawal plan is the right one?

As some know, we suffered more casualties in Afghanistan last month than we did in Iraq, which is unbelievable.  I don't think there's any dispute that the Taliban is strengthening.  Obama made what I thought was a pretty persuasive argument today at his "clarification" press conference that Bush's desire to send more troops to Afghanistan was flawed because where was he going to find these troops.  Could Obama argue that we have to begin a "careful," "responsible," and "gradual," withdrawal from Iraq so that we can send more troops to Afghanistan?

Even General Petreus and Admiral Crocker admitted to Joe Biden that if they had to choose between confronting two threats, Afghanistan or Iraq, that they would both select Afghanistan since the threat there is so much greater.  Of course McCain will argue that Iraq and Afghanistan are not an either/or proposition but if Obama is correct that we won't have a sufficient number of troops to send to Afghanistan given the troop levels we have in Iraq, then we may inching towards an either/or proposition.

I don't really care much for foreign policy anyway; I'd rather that we talk about why McCain wants to give people making over a quarter-million dollars a year tax breaks and leave over 40 million without healthcare (Obama should flip on the mandates for adults) but Obama seems insistent on fighting foreign policy issues with McCain even though it's not perceived to be a huge issue anymore with the American public.  I don't feel he presses the Afghanistan issue enough and that our foreign policy focus seems completely directed towards Iraq, a country that had no ties to Al Qaeda prior to Bush sending us into the war.

Crossposted at Ich Bin Ein Oberliner.

Writer, blogger, and Atlantic associate editor Matthew Yglesias has a fascinating look at Obama's foreign policy out in this month's Atlantic. It's called--for those too lazy to click on the link--"The Accidental Foreign Policy, and it's billed as "How an early gaffe and an excruciatingly long primary season helped Barack Obama find a distinctive voice on foreign affairs."

Yglesias focuses on Obama's willingness to meet with foreign leaders--something widely lambasted by the Serious class on both sides of the aisle as dangerously naive. That is to say, it was widely lambasted by the two big centers of establishment foreign policy: neo-conservatives (i.e. President Bush, Cheney, Wolfowitz, McCain, etc.) and moderate hawks (i.e. Senator Clinton, Broderites post-partisans, Friedman, etc.).

This is going to be brief as I am still creating a diary that I promised to do last night.

I know there's been a great deal said here about how Sen. Obama isn't ready to be president yet, both politely and less so, and I never quite understood that. Haven't people been listening, haven't they been watching?

So instead of just wondering, I thought I'd do something more productive and SHOW people what it is that I see.

For the first time out, let's start with something recent and the area people say Obama is weakest in, foreign policy.

Today John McCain appeared more than willing to hug George W. Bush again, concurring with the President's ridiculous position that it is a sign of weakness rather than one of strength for America to be willing to speak with other nations of the world, both those that are friendly and those that are not. The McCain campaign went even farther, with the candidate himself becoming unhinged in questioning Barack Obama's qualifications to be President because he doesn't adhere to Bushian views on foreign policy. The response from the Obama campaign was strong:

Obama spokesman Tommy Vietor also weighs in: "It is the height of hypocrisy for John McCain to deliver a lofty speech about civility and bipartisanship in the morning and then embrace George Bush's disgraceful political attack in the afternoon.  Instead of delivering meaningful change, John McCain wants to continue George Bush's irresponsible and failed Iran policy by refusing to engage in tough, direct diplomacy like Presidents from Kennedy to Reagan have done."

The Obama campaign is completely right to invoke Presidents Kennedy and Reagan in talking about the importance of speaking with both friend and foe. They might have even invoked Teddy Roosevelt, who McCain claims to model his career after but who in fact McCain seems to know and understand little about, a President who won a nobel peace prize while in the White House specifically because of his willingness to engage with the world.

But I'd go even a step further and ask why John McCain is afraid to speak with Iran. What is it about Iran that scares McCain so much? Or is it that McCain believes Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Ayatollah Khamenei are so crafty that they would trick an American President into inadvertently ceding the state of Maine or American Samoa to Iran? Or alternatively, is it that McCain simply does not know how to act in a manner different from his true political role model, George W. Bush?

America shows its strength by being part of the world, not receding from it. If there is any lesson to learn from the period between the two world wars it is exactly that -- it is entirely counterproductive for America to turn inward and be afraid to engage with the world in a meaningful way. But when America is willing to speak with unfriendly nations from a position of strength -- whether President Kennedy speaking with Premier Kruschev, President Nixon speaking with Chairman Mao or President Reagan speaking with Premier Gorbachev, to take three examples -- both America and the world more broadly can reap serious benefits.

In 1999 and then again in January 2001 a commission chaired by former Senators Gary Hart (D-CO) and Warren Rudman (R-NH) warned that terrorist attacks on U.S. were inevitable and called for the "creation of a Cabinet-level agency to assume responsibility for defending the United States against the increasing likelihood of terrorist attacks in the country."

The historical record shows they were ignored. On September 12, Gary Hart said:

From the vantage point of April 2008, its obvious to all but 20% of Americans that the Bush administration's decision to ignore the warnings of Hart and Rudman in early 2001 amounted to nothing less than criminal negligence. And yet, if we're not paying attention, there's a high likelyhood that we'll do it again.

Hart and Rudman's current endeavor, the American Security Project, featuring a board of directors including fellow former Senator George Mitchell, General Anthony Zinni, Senators John Kerry and Chuck Hagel, and Richard L. Armitage is releasing a new report on the current national security situation called The New American Arsenal.

Here's Gary Hart talking about it on the Huffington Post:

Cassandra is speaking. Will anyone listen?

Devastating editorial on the dangers of a foreign policy that is always subordinated to domestic political interests.

Hillary seems willing to follow in the footsteps of the first Clinton presidency, where foreign policy statements/decisions are made in order to further some domestic interest. It's been well established that this was the case during Somalia, Rwanda, and even Kosovo. Hillary hasn't even occupied the Oval Office and she's already starting to create diplomatic dust ups. Here is the Boston Globe editorial, available at http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/editor ial_opinion/editorials/articles/2008/04/ 27/hillary_strangelove/?p1=email_to_a_fr iend

AMERICANS have learned to take with a grain of salt much of the rhetoric in a campaign like the current Democratic donnybrook between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. Still, there are some red lines that should never be crossed. Clinton did so Tuesday morning, the day of the Pennsylvania primary, when she told ABC's "Good Morning America" that, if she were president, she would "totally obliterate" Iran if Iran attacked Israel.
MORE POLITICAL COVERAGE

This foolish and dangerous threat was muted in domestic media coverage. But it reverberated in headlines around the world.

Responding with understatement to a question in the British House of Lords, the foreign minister responsible for Asia, Lord Mark Malloch-Brown, said of Clinton's implication of a mushroom cloud over Iran: "While it is reasonable to warn Iran of the consequences of it continuing to develop nuclear weapons and what those real consequences bring to its security, it is probably not prudent in today's world to threaten to obliterate any other country and in many cases civilians resident in such a country."

A less restrained reaction came from an editorial in the Saudi-based paper Arab News. Being neighbors of Iran, the Saudis and the other Gulf Arabs have the most to fear from Iran's nuclear program and its drive to become the dominant power in the Gulf.

But precisely because they are most at risk from Iran's regional ambitions, the Saudis want a carefully considered American approach to Iran, one that balances firmness and diplomatic engagement.

The Saudi paper called Clinton's nuclear threat "the foreign politics of the madhouse," saying, "it demonstrates the same doltish ignorance that has distinguished Bush's foreign relations."

The Saudis are not always sound advisers on American foreign policy. But they understand that Rambo rhetoric like Clinton's only plays into the hands of Iranian hard-liners who want to plow ahead with efforts to attain a nuclear weapons capability. They argue that Iran must have that capability in order to deter the United States from doing what Clinton threatened to do.

While Clinton has hammered Obama for supporting military strikes in Pakistan, her comments on Iran are much more far-reaching. She seems not to realize that she undermined Iranian reformists and pragmatists. The Iranian people have been more favorable to America than any other in the Gulf region or the Middle East.

A presidential candidate who lightly commits to obliterating Iran - and, presumably, all the children, parents, and grandparents in Iran - should not be answering the White House phone at any time of day or night.

Unfortunately this is just the latest in a series of important foreign policy statements and votes that Hillary has supported, in order to appear "strong" enough to pass the "commander in chief threshold."

Of course the first instance was voting for the AUMF - the vote granting the president the congressional authorization to begin the war in Iraq. If you've had any legal training, you will realize by reading the text of the this document, just how much power Congress handed over to the president by caving to Bush on this bill. The same argument can be made for the Kyl-Lieberman amendment.

Probably the most obvious example - since Hillary continues to suggest that she was duped into voting for war - is the recent Bosnia/Tuzla fabrication. What is so shocking about the lie she peddled was that there was really no rational reason for it. There was no marginal benefit to lying about her Bosnia experience, but she still did it! If she had never claimed to land under sniper fire, it's not like all of a sudden people would have thought "well, maybe Obama is more experienced in foreign policy!" Obama had essentially conceded the issue by trying to focus attention on judgment.

So why would she lie about Tuzla? If no one had ever heard of Tuzla, people would probably still have said she was more experienced.

The reason is, again, that Hillary's strategy is one of appearances - smoke and mirrors. If you can plant into the public consciousness that Hillary, the Wellesley and Yale Law grad, not only dodged sniper fire - but during the 1970s had actually tried to join the Marines, then it would make her look "tough." That is why she voted for the AUMF; that is why she voted for Kyl Lieberman; that is why she peddled the Tuzla lie; and that is why she says she is willing to "obliterate" Iran.

We're already suffering from the decisions of a president that is willing to sacrifice the best policy, for the most politically expedient. We don't need another.

A candidate supporter diary for MyDD

Of all the issues facing Americans in this crucial national election none is more compelling than providing a remedy to our international relations and re-framing the debate on 'national security.'  Arguably our present discussion of foreign policy fails to take into account the challenge it presents to our long-term prosperity.  One seldom sees the story presented in the US media but the challenges facing the US in trade, specifically in the competition for energy resources and markets in a rapidly changing global economy, are going to have an enormous impact on our prosperity in coming decades.  And if your priority issues are along the lines of health care reform or other important domestic social initiatives it is perhaps worth considering that these are going to be advanced most reliably or, alternatively, constrained by our performance on this one overriding issue.

It's not just the trillion dollars we have spent on basically nothing in Iraq over the last few years, that is just the tip of the iceberg.  It is the loss to US business of energy related profits and the lost opportunities this foreign policy has created in the reshaping of the global energy economy, for example, as a consequence.  The nascent North-South corridor is a potential threat, an economic shift that would see the bulk of the Gulf's energy moving overland through Russian pipelines to Europe and, possibly, China, with gas and oil moving into these growing markets potentially generating nil profit to US corporations and forcing the US into an increasingly competitive negotiation for these dwindling resources.  Health care and other social reforms, not to mention the enormous investment we will need to make in re-engineering our infrastructure for alternative and green energy are vital issues.  But if there is an erosion of our national prosperity which pays for these programs we will be unable to achieve them.  Just look at the price of fuel today and consider the impact that has on every aspect of our economy, it is money that could be well-spent elsewhere.  

One may debate whether our military and naval investment in Iraq, and the Near East generally, has improved our national security, arguably it hasn't but that's not the point.  Clearly from the perspective of the Gulf states the security situation in their region has been de-stabilised and they are considering looking elsewhere for the kind of guarantees which have seen US protection of supertanker trade routes as the status quo for a generation.  Real 'security' is not having two aircraft-carrier groups in the Persian Gulf but rather not requiring any there in the first place.

Consider, for example, the Russian response to increased tensions over Iran last year, at a time when our attention was directed to an imminent pre-emptive strike on a populous and sovereign nation in the context of our narrative of the 'global war on terror' and security concerns regarding Israel.  Putin, possessing a soul or not, didn't miss the opportunity, travelling to Tehran and crafting the beginnings of a diplomatic and economic agreement in a face-to-face meeting with Khomenei under the aegis of a trans-Caspian accord.  Not to mention stalemating US military activities in the region with the signing of the Declaration:

The declaration signed at the end of the summit covers a wide range of subjects in its 25 articles. The document virtually binds the littoral states into a non-aggression commitment, warns the outsiders to refrain from using the Caspian region soil for military operations or interfering in any other way, supports the right of Iran to pursue nuclear technology for peaceful purposes...

Tehran Summit Unites Caspian States on Major Issues News Central Asia 17 Oct 07

The outcome?  It seems we've been significantly outmanoeuvred by our old Cold War rival and apparently risk missing the point of the real shifts in regional economics and geopolitics in the global economy.