Almost every [international] government understands that if Al Gore had gotten those 537 votes in Florida in 2000, we wouldn’t be in this situation. No one begrudged us the invasion of Afghanistan. Imagine the payoff in prestige if Bush had brought into the international community a pariah country that had defeated two previous imperial powers — Britain and Russia — in the last two centuries. Contrary to what you might hear, this was possible...What an exercise in the judicious use of our great power that would have been, and what a trophy to place on the shelf after Germany and Japan following World War II! Instead we made up a new war.-Michael Hirsch, in a lengthy - but well worth reading - essay in the new issue of Washington Monthly.
The essay is actually focused on the growing understanding of foreign affairs by Sen. Barack Obama (Democrat-IL) as he runs for his party's presidential nomination. Many - including myself - have often wondered if he's too green for the day and age in which we currently live.
Anthony Lake, the National Security Adviser to President Clinton in his first term, and Samanta Power, a foreign policy scholar now teaching at Harvard, believe Obama has actually done his homework (as opposed to a certain son of a certain ex-president who hadn't when he ran). Money quote:
For all his openness to rethinking first principles, there’s reason to believe that this is something Obama understands better than any other leading candidate. "I don’t oppose all wars," he declared in 2002, while Hillary Clinton and John Edwards were triangulating their way toward authorizing the Iraq invasion. "What I am opposed to is a dumb war." Perhaps, ultimately, this is his real value right now...Who could better reassure a jittery and suspicious world that America is ready to resume global leadership than a new young president who is the son of a black African father and a white Kansan mother, with a Muslim middle name who grew up in Asia? Rather, Obama’s value is as someone with the courage, independence, and basic common sense to declare, without equivocation, that America’s loss of global leadership is a result not of the inevitable breakdown of the existing structure, but of the Bush administration’s radical and disastrous policy decisions.After eight years of arrogant dumbness (yes...I just called the President dumb...because he is) someone with Sen. Obama's fresh - or RE-freshing - take on America's place on the globe would be...well...a much needed breath of fresh air.
My doubts haven't disappeared, but the Hirsh essay has calmed them quite a bit and I'm ready to listen to what Obama has to say as the debate continues.
