Great Quote from George Friedman on Foreign Policy

[dalmations202]

This is not a criticism of Obama. Presidents — all presidents — run on a platform that will win. If they are good presidents, they will leave behind these promises to govern as they must. This is what Obama has done. He ran for president as the antithesis of Bush. He has conducted his foreign policy as if he were Bush. This is because Bush’s foreign policy was shaped by necessity, and Obama’s foreign policy is shaped by the same necessity. Presidents who believe they can govern independent of reality are failures. Obama doesn’t intend to fail.

More truth than most people know......

Link

[Underdog]

Other than the lies they tell, the only difference I've noticed between Bush and Obama is the color of their skin...

[DirkFTW]

And their baseball pitches.

[Mavdog]

obama can make a jump shot

[Underdog]

Originally Posted by Mavdog

obama can make a jump shot

He's a lefty!

[92bDad]

Really, the only difference I noticed was the "R" and "D" behind their names...that at the radical leftist push coming out of Obama.

I'm like Colbert, I didn't know the President was black...I'm color blind :-)

[Mavdog]

there are major differences in the two administration's conduct on foreign policy, from dealing with israel to north korea, to how the obama approach on iran is different.

the differences and the lack of differences will be more evident as we get into year 2 of obama's first term.

[alexamenos]

I think the Trotsky wing of the Republican Party, aka the neocons, may be move back to the Democrats...for a while at least....

A Dangerous Delusion

...the rest of the surge rationale: the claim that we needed to secure the Iraqi population so a stable government, one that would be a reliable ally against terror, could emerge. The same argument now is being made about Afghanistan. Have you taken a look at Iraq lately? We went there to topple Saddam; we stayed to build an Islamic “democracy,” and the result is an Iranian satellite. The new Iraq is a sharia state that wants us gone, has denied us basing rights for future military operations, has pressured a weak American president into releasing Iran-backed terrorists....If that’s success, what does failure look like?*

The idea that we could make the world a better place through democratic revolution was the stuff of ultra-leftist wet dreams...stuff which found a home on the nominal right for some time. Now that Obamanation is running the war machine, folks on the n-right are returning to their anti-nation building Clinton-days...

...sorta...I think the neocons are just changing jerseys for a while and the n-right are playing the part of the Washington Generals for a while...kinda like the used-to-be-anti-war-left did for a while...

But I digress....the idea that we can make the world a better place (and make the USA a safer place) by bombing the shit out of countries until they become democracies is profoundly stupid and delusional. Nice to see the National Review figure this out (after only 8 or so years).


*for the record, Alex has been saying for about 6 years that Iraq is a Phyrric Victory...so yeah, we've won in Iraq. Yeah us! Can we now retire?

[Mavdog]

no, we can't make america safer by "bombing the shit out of countries".

we can make america safer by improving the socio-economic lives of people living in lesser developed countries, and that is what we should be doing.

[alexamenos]

Originally Posted by Mavdog

we can make america safer by improving the socio-economic lives of people living in lesser developed countries, and that is what we should be doing.

As I was saying, the nominal right re-taken their role as impotent opposition while the Left is reverting to their smiley-faced warmongering ways. This is the MO of the war machine....changing jerseys every 4 to 8 years but always playing the same game.

It's in this sense that I very much agree with mr. Friedman's quote--no matter what is said during the political campaign, the agenda is substantially the same from one administation to the next.