Obama on National Security

I do think it's notable that John Kerry endorsed Barack Obama today. Kerry has a 2 million-strong email list from his run for President. I don't think anyone has a much bigger contact set on the Democratic side. This follows Tim Johnson of South Dakota's endorsement yesterday. And there's at least speculation that Ted Kennedy could be next. If Obama is so dead in the water after the New Hampshire victory for Hillary Clinton, why are so many people and organizations now rushing to endorse him?

(Update: I forgot that he also got George Miller's endorsement, which is a de facto Nancy Pelosi endorsement.)

I don't think that you can look at this news story about Obama's grandmother in Kenya and not think that there's something really transcendant here, something that actually could resonate around the globe. I don't want to put too much on this "Great Man" theory that a cosmopolitan American President would be a game-changer, but the fact that Obama also seems committed to a different kind of foreign policy is something that I find very attractive. I think this Ari Berman article misses the mark. Almost all of the foreign policy advisors to Obama had the judgment to oppose the Iraq war, whereas in the Clinton camp you have people like Lee Feinstein who say things like "the problem with pre-emption is that it may not go far enough." Berman calls the differences "stylistic," though he does say that "doesn't make them less interesting." I think the difference is very simple: wankers like Michael O'Hanlon can't stand Obama. That's actually good enough for me.

1. O’HANLON: “[Obama] seems contemptuous of the motivations of those who supported the war.”

O’Hanlon offers up a thinly-veiled defense for analysts like himself who offered tragically wrong advice in the war in March 2003 — O’Hanlon cannot seem to face up to the fact that he lined up on the wrong side of the arguments on Iraq, and America has suffered serious damage to its national security as a result [...]

2. O’HANLON: “Obama’s second Iraq problem is his insistence that, whatever happens there during 2008, he would withdraw all our main combat forces in the first 16 months of his presidency.”

Here O’Hanlon again offers bad advice and displays his unwillingness to recognize the Bush surge in Iraq has failed to achieve its fundamental goal — to advance political reconciliation among Iraq’s leaders. It’s a good thing that fewer Iraqis are dying, but Iraq’s leaders are no closer to a political settlement, which was the point of the surge. Unless Iraq’s leaders strike the power-sharing deals necessary to stabilize their country, the drop in violence is not likely to be sustainable. O’Hanlon favors fostering the dangerous and dysfunctional culture of dependency among Iraq’s leaders that comes with his proposals to keep U.S. troops in Iraq indefinitely.

Today is the first anniversary of the Bush speech on the surge, and here O'Hanlon is making the same false arguments that propagandists like John McCain and Joe Lieberman make today in the Wall Street Journal. They try to say that "the surge has worked" while acknowledging that "there has been no political progress," when political progress was the only function of the surge. Both Clinton and Obama have been fine in speeches and debates talking about this, but only Obama is singled out for scorn from the kind of people like Michael O'Hanlon. Michael Bérubé has more.

In the wake of the Bush Administration failures, progressive have an opportunity to lead on national security, just as there was an opportunity to lead on economic security in the 1990s.

...there is a substantive policy reason for progressives to offer a clear contrast: Americans are less secure at the start of 2008 because of a failure of conservative ideology. Growing instability around the world is not simply a result of mismanagement or poor implementation. How conservatives view the world and the role of government is at the core of America's inability to tackle global terrorism in the nearly seven years since 9-11. The conservative push for ever smaller government at home and an obsession with tax cuts has not only weakened America economically, it has also created a budgetary house of cards that could collapse and create strains on America's ability to project its power and influence in the world in the years to come [...]

First, progressives need to continue to provide a clear alternative on the key issues like Iraq and the fight against global terrorist groups. Saying "me too" and just simply stating that we're "tough and smart" didn't work before, and it won't work in the coming year.

Second, progressives need to beware of muddled arguments to blindly move to the "center" without evaluating the reality (which is exactly what progressives did in 2002 when they mistakenly supported bad arguments for invading Iraq). In addition, the center has shifted on national security, and Americans want a clear alternative that puts more emphasis on other components of American power like diplomacy and economic might.

Finally, progressives should also avoid tactical arguments like the ones presented in 2004, such as plans on how America will train Iraq's troops effectively. Americans want to hear more from their leaders about how they are going to revive American power and moral authority after eight years of Bush and his allies in Congress making the wrong choices.

And I think that someone like Obama, who reaches out to heal the nation of Kenya while on his campaign bus, has the temperament and moral authority to lead in this area. It's a past-versus-future argument that I believe is much more than stylistic.