The Obama Foreign Policy

One thing we did get out of Barack Obama's Middle East tour is a sense of his policy with respect to the major challenges in the region. He wants to redeploy out of Iraq, send more troops into Afghanistan, get involved with the Israel/Palestine issue early in his term, and have open negotiations but a similar hardline approach to Iran.

(this could just be a posture telegraphing that he won't be hustled... the persistent message is "they're not going to get a better deal from a new President, and the pressure is only going to build.")

On Afghanistan, I think he's wrong. I have to say that I agree with Thomas Friedman that Afghanistan has become "the good war" to Democrats, a way to parry the "soft on terror" myth by pointing to a region where they want a troop buildup.

I think Barack Obama needs to ask himself honestly: “Am I for sending more troops to Afghanistan because I really think we can win there, because I really think that that will bring an end to terrorism, or am I just doing it because to get elected in America, post-9/11, I have to be for winning some war?”

I actually think Obama gets that this is a structural problem, a problem with autocratic governments and persistent regional poverty that leads to extremism and violence. But he's not showing it in this case, instead calling for an increased military campaign that we've increasingly bungled. Yes, the lack of troops in the field means that we use airstrikes as a shorthand to maintain order and inflame the local population. But that deed has been done, the civilian casualties have been marked, and Afghanistan is besides historically resistant to foreign entities. We could end up getting sucked in like Russia without a real goal for success.

"I think we're literally running the risk of unintentionally doing what the Russians did. And that, if it happens, would be a tragedy," Brzezinski told the Huffington Post on Friday. "When we first went into Afghanistan to overthrow the Taliban, we were actually welcomed by an overwhelming majority of Afghans. They did not see us as invaders, as they saw the Soviets."

However, Brzezinski noted that just as the Soviets were able to delude themselves that they had a loyal army of communist-sympathizers who would transform the country, the U.S.-led forces may now be making similar mistakes. He said that the conduct of military operations "with little regard for civilian casualties" may accelerate the negative trend in local public opinion regarding the West's role. "It's just beginning, but it's significant," Brzezinski said.

Then there's Iran, and Obama certainly seems cognizant of the pressures posed by Israel, who in his belief will strike if the latest round of sanctions don't work (this could also be information that he knows would be made public - Israel's been doing a lot of talking lately). That is a horrifying thought, especially since neocon Likudniks still have such enormous influence in our government. Kudos, by the way, to Joe Klein for fighting back against them.

I have now been called antisemitic and intellectually unstable and a whole bunch of other silly things by the folks over at the Commentary blog. They want Time Magazine to fire or silence me. This is happening because I said something that is palpably true, but unspoken in polite society: There is a small group of Jewish neoconservatives who unsuccessfully tried to get Benjamin Netanyahu to attack Saddam Hussein in the 1990s, and then successfully helped provide the intellectual rationale for George Bush to do it in 2003. Their motivations involve a confused conflation of what they think are Israel's best interests with those of the United States. They are now leading the charge for war with Iran.

On the broader Middle East, Obama's interview with the Jerusalem Post is, I think, significant. He had a real command of the different contours of the debate, understanding that even the most well-intentioned perspectives have negative consequences. I recommend the whole article.

It may well be that foreign policy, believe it or not, is actually the top priority of an Obama Administration, although he may be overtaken by events on the domestic front. I think he wants to make that aspect work and change the mindset around foreign policy, as he has said. Hopefully he can be resolute and unencumbered by the bullshit needs to be "tough".