So far, President-elect Obama is looking pretty good. His finance advisers could have been picked by Mr. McCain. They can hardly do worse than Dirty Hank and the downhill gang.
I really like his foreign policy team. Retired USMC General James Jones is an excellent selection for National Security Advisor. I was so sure he'd pick some lefty civilian pointy head for that job. And Hillary heading up state. If you were Putin, Chavez or even our friend Merkel, how would you like staring that woman down? Scary thought, isn't it? Plus, her foreign policy has never been liberal; it has tended towards cold-eyed realism, and we need more of that.
My argument with the so-called neocons has nothing to do with the left-wing wackadoo charges of nefarious oil-stealing plots and other international buggery. It's simply that they base their trigger-happy foreign policy on pie-in-the-sky fantasies: No, you can't turn a 6th century society with poor toilet habits into a 21st century democracy overnight. And foisting the trappings of liberal democracy upon them is just asserting the conclusion. The neocons have worthy goals, but you can't just ram them through; it takes baby steps.
Speaking of neocons, Bill Kristol and Robert Kagan in particular, I'm always suspicious of anyone who has never served in the military but is hot to use military force. We need more speaking softly and less big stick brandishing. I think General Jones will be an advocate of that. Before you dismiss this as squishy pacifist talk, Special Ops advocates have been saying essentially the same thing for years, criticizing our huge troop presence in the CENTCOM AOR as not much more than turning food into excrement.
Robert Kaplan wrote an article last year detailing our many unheralded successes in places like the Phillipines and Colombia. Small, quiet operations are the wave of the future. As someone who has turned food into excrement in the highly kinetic Middle East as well as performed low-key military assistance missions in Latin America, I say the time is ripe.
So to all my conservative friends, I'm asking you to consider keeping your powder dry. This is not a liberal foreign policy team. We should cheer President-elect Obama's picks. Don't worry, there'll be plenty to criticize soon enough.
http://articles.latimes.com/2007/nov/25/opinion/op-kaplan25
15 comments:
i agree that his picks so far have not been as lefty as i thought they would be. it's a bit unusual to masquerade as a radical leftist/socialist/communist for most of ones public life, only to swing towards the center/right after WINNING an election.
...only time will tell if he's really going to govern from the center. i have a hard time believing he will. for instance, on judges, i highly doubt we'll see anyone resembling roberts, scalia, thomas or alito in the next 4 years. gw did a few things right during his 8 years. his most lasting legacy will probably be roberts and alito.
i never thought mccain would have done much good...i just figured he would be less horrible then the post turtle. the 2 are similar in some regards, so i acknowledge i could be wrong on that.
Russel: I agree that this is very unusual.
I also agree with you on the judges. I think he must be running right on foreign policy and finance so he can really go left on the social issues. That is the ACORN model: don't tear down the system, milk it for all it's worth.
Why are they good supreme court judges?
Also, saying that Obama isn't as leftists (used synonomously with wrong/bad) as I thought is not really a compliment.
Also, why are those two supreme court judges s good? It would seem that allowing a ferverous private religious faith creep into your duties to the public would be a bad thing.
http://reaching-oblivion.blogspot.com/
I disagree with the leftist perspective, so it is natural I would use leftist in the pejorative sense.
This is a sincere compliment to Mr. Obama. I like the people he has picked so far.
I like Robers and Alito not because of their religion, but because of their adherence to the constitution as it stands.
Why should they adhere to the constitution as it stands? Isn't that document meant to be changed or at least altered every once in a while? Don't times change? or is the constitution timeless in your opinion?
And it seems utterly comical to name your blog "Nietzsche is Dead" when obviously you have read almost nothing of him, and furhtermore have no understanding of the significance of following the truth regardless of where it leads you. Which ironically is one of Nietzsches' suggestions!
What if it leads you away from God/Christ? If you're sure it won't, what is that assured attitude based on?
To actually put your political views in such a way that suggests they cannot be changed is ludacris. Even politicians, every once in a while change parties, or go independent. Politics isn't about hard-cold facts, it's about informed opinions, and educated guesses. That you don't think your opinion of guns and god will ever change is just one of many windows into your intellectual immaturity.
Its interesting how people who claim to be non religious are the ones most unswayable in their opinions...ie..darwinism and abortion. They come to my door and i'll just smile and take their pamplets like i would any other devout fundamentalist.
As for Obama. I think his national security briefings scared the shit out of him.
Anon hit the nail on the head. The briefings were a bucket of cold water.
Relentless: "Nietzsche is Dead" is, of course, the riposte to Nietzsche's famously declaring God is Dead. I know, it is actually much deeper than that...
I confidently follow the truth, and I have plumbed the depths of my religion. My praise for Obama is following the truth. I did not vote for him, but I can analyze each action independently of my overall assessment of the man.
Further, if he turned out to be a middle of the road president who improved the economy and kept us safe without letting the socialists take over our domestic agenda, I could vote for him in 4 years.
I am an ideological conservative American, not a Republican. I will vote for whoever, in my opinion, advances the interests of the country.
The constitution is carved in stone. Reading the Federalist Papers and other writings shines a light on the authors' original intent only bolsters that view.
Dostoevsky said, through Ivan Karamazov, that if God is dead all things are permissible. Well, if the constitution is subject to interpretation and "updating" violating inalienable rights becomes permissible. Your rights don't come from the constitution or any government. The constitution states that God has given you inalienable rights that cannot be violated by any government. Do you really want Judges (our own black robed mullahs) messing with that?
I'm actually pro-life, at least after the first trimester, and as for evolution vs. creationism, that's as much of an issue as Bin Laden behind 9/11 vs. Bush behind 9/11.
It really gives the issue too much credence to even discuss it seriously. It's like debating with neo-nazis or the KKK.
Also, I can't speak for all non-religious people, only myself. I'm not going to ask you to explain the crusades either. You only have to answer for your own personal religious views and how much they affect your politics.
Silverfiddle:
The constitution only speaks to basic human rights??? If that's true I wouldn't change it either.
All I would say is that people can do good unto eachother and act civilized towards eachother without religion. That there is a universal mandate to do so is only as true as it is effective.
If people believe in God and still kill innocent people than the religious foundation by which the constitution is founded on is not as strong as you think it is.
In England it used to be, and I think still is taught that the royal family was mandated by God to rule over England. If people believe that, it's good because having a monarchy isn't the worst possible system of government, but if they can't, then they'll want to revolt, and the constitution will have to be changed to stop that.
What I think you see in America is people tired of Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell picking their presidents (even among religious folks) and if government doesn't become as secular as people think it should be, there could be trouble.
There are too many muscle cars, porn websites, and shopping malls for me to believe that Americans are really all that religious.
Jerry Fallwell is dead and Pat Robertson got something like 5 votes when he jumped into the GOP primary a few years back. I think you overestimate their influence.
My point is not to defend religion, it is to defend the constitution as written. Because of that constitution I don't have to explain my religion and somebody else doesn't have to explain their irreligion.
Judeo-Christianity has formed the moral ethics of Western Civilization, for better or for worse.
If God has not given us our rights, then it is simply rule of the strongest. I think Herr Friedrich had a thing or two to say about that.
Thrasymachus had something to say about that, not Nietzsche. Nietzsche was not a political philosopher in any respect.
The foundation of human rights (I won't speak for the entire constitution) is that people can agree that it is fair not to needlessly torture, kill or treat people inhumanely in any other way. It's not about Judeo-Christianity. It's about people agreeing that fair is fair. Just because you have gained power doesn't mean you can rape little children (something Herr Ratzinger might know a thing or two about).
You can read Christianity into it as much as you like, but it doesn't make it so.
Well, it doesn't really matter. You're obviously more qualified than I in these matters.
My main point still stands: The constitution is not a living, breathing document, and the founders specifically stated that our rights come from God.
We have departed from the constitutional principles and that is why we're in the mess we're in. The very idea of a private company begging to congress for a handout would be unfathomable to our founders, as would huckster politicians handing out money from the national treasury. But here we are.
The constitution was founded by religious and non-religious people. If religion was what made people agree to act civily towards others at the time, then they'll invoke the name of God.
The word "God" in the constitution is really quite arbitrary. They could have just as easily invoked many Gods, Allah, Nature, etc... The only reason God was used was because he was a popular law giver at the time. Do you think that if they used the words "concensus", or "fairness" and people agreed and said the rules were fair the whole thing wouldn't have worked?
God just happened to be a strong superstition at the time. Nietzsche's point when he writes that "God is dead" is that even amongst those who call themselves theists, their religious devotion is weak and not evident in their actions. God is dead because you have a gun, or you have a fast car, etc...
I don't like the bailouts either; no one does, but even McCain was/is in support of all of them.
Did you want Ron Paul? He's problably the least religious of all of them. His ideas aren't Christian at all, they're egoistic.
Take care of yourself, the gov't doesn't owe you anything... etc. You support that rhetoric and you're a Christian? explain.
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