Tam Hunt: The Bush-Lite Foreign Policy Agenda

» Earl Meyers on 12.10.09 @ 08:53 AM

Talk about a Leftist Agenda!  Here it is laid out for all to see.  Light up a joint and enjoy.

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» Angela on 12.10.09 @ 09:44 AM

Do you think that Obama is just another in a long line of puppets placed in the President’s shoes? I, for one, have to wonder because when he was campaigning he sure seemed genuine. But now, he seems to be walking on eggshells and limited severely in what he can and can’t do.

I pushed hard to help get him elected because I believed that he would bring real change. Now, a year later, I’m almost embarrassed of that.

On a side note: Prohibition needs to end. It does nothing but waste taxpayer money and ruin the lives of millions of people each year while greatly enhancing the financial bottom line of drug cartels and law enforcement. If anything, there should be prohibition of greed and abuse of power.

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» Publius on 12.10.09 @ 02:09 PM

Hunt makes some good points. Obviously a bright and thoughtful guy.

Of course, when Hunt was in the military, eons ago, he always had sergeants and
officers who told him exactly what to do (right or wrong) in EVERY circumstance.

Hunt never had to think or decide for himself. There always was that magical
chain-of-command. If he tried, chances are, he’d get reamed out for his trouble.

When Obama took the oath, he not only inherited two “hot” wars, an empty cupboard, two anti-American tyrannies rapidly developing nuclear capabilities, but he also took on the mantles of Commander in Chief, and Head of State.

Unlike Hunt, Truman’s “buck” on every issue stops with Obama, on everything.

What a candidates says, or thinks, on the stump, or as one of 100 senators, is way
different from what a serving president has to do. Hunt should know that.

Moreover, changing inherited situations is like turning a big ocean liner out at sea.

After you try to set a new course, you shout the command, and it has to buck its way down through every level of government, in D.C., in the nation, overseas, and
on the fields of battle, through every department, top to bottom.

As Hunt knows, some bureaucrats try to comply immediately, others delay as long
as possible. Some actively try to undermine change. That’s true for every new
administration, regardless of party or philosophy.

So, when you’re a constitutional law professor who is replacing eight years of scoff-
laws in the Rove-Cheney-Libby-Rumsfeld-Woo-Bush administration, and you’re at war, your country is impoverished and demoralized, most of your agencies have been systematically under-funded for years, and your most senior military, civilian and cabinet advisors are giving you conflicting (sometimes interest-driven) advice, how fast can you actually create a “new” foreign or domestic policy?

Any new president’s first six months in office is a time when EVERYTHING is under
review.

Its also a time when you’re just trying to fill the hundreds and hundreds of executive and sub-cabinet appointments, so you have good folks on board to carry out your new orders, if and when you’re ready to issue them.

The school is still out on Obama.

A fairer measure will be whether the economy begins to fully recover from the
damage that all those Greenspan-Bush years of voodoo economics caused. Will
jobs revive? Will GM survive, to go “private” again? Will TARP really be repaid?

Will green energy and R&D actually be incentivized? Will we come back from the Copenhagen conference, and start to seriously change our climate priorities?

Will Guantanamo’s prison complex finally close? Will torture of prisoners finally stop?

Will attempted “engagement” with Tehran, Pyongyang, Damascus, Yangon bear any fruit?

Will some kind of health reform actually pass, that improves the broader system?

Will some public schools start to improve based on federal targets? Will some part
of national diet & nutrition begin to improve, to turn the tide on the obesity plague?

Will we actually be able to draw down in Iraq without having the place collapse like
a house of cards?

Will we actually be able to get Karzai to shape up, and put honest folks in charge of various Afghan programs, and keep them from getting murdered while they try to close the porous Tora Borah borderlands with Waziristan?

Those are just a few of the things that Bush left, undone, on the table and in the
president’s desk drawer, when Obama was sworn in.

So it’s easy for lawyer Hunt to write a brief against Obama. But if soldier Hunt was
again in uniform, actually deployed somewhere overseas, in the field, his hopes for
a successful Obama administration doing it right might be a bit different than
lawyer Hunt’s carping.

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» Bruce Holms on 12.10.09 @ 11:29 PM

Once again GOP conservatives have selective memory.

The only hoodwinking that’s occurred in the last 8 years has been the 2nd Iraq war delivered via actual lies from the Cheney-Bush Regime. “Make the lie big, make it simple, keep saying it, and eventually they will believe it. ~Adolph Hitler”

Now that American blood has spilled into Afghanistan, and the previous Regime is out of power, the usual suspects (Bush supporters) pretend that it all happened when Obama was elected.

Yet, the US gave a resounding election win to Obama and the Democrats saying “NO” to the kind of politics that created one of the most expensive American invasions in history.

Now the selective-memory Republicans continue to blame a president, in office for less than a year on all of the results of war. The most obvious result - the debt created to pay for it.

Amazing!

“So much for CHANGE” says that Democrats will promise everything and deliver nothing. Hiding behind his cute “name” like many of the “selective-memory Republicans” do, he/she doesn’t want to expose his/her identity - meanwhile Americans “hoodwinked” into the war in the first place.

So what did Obama actually promise? Here are a few FACTUAL QUOTES from his INAUGURAL ADDRESS, “So much for CHANGE”:

“In a clear repudiation of the past eight years, he said that he would not abandon the principles of America’s founding fathers for expedience’s sake. “We reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals.”

Mr. Obama promised to rebuild alliances and said that Americans must recognize their duties “to ourselves, our nation and the world”. He said that the military might of America did not entitle the US “to do as we please”.

He described a nation at war, an economy badly weakened, a collective failure to make hard choices. And while the new President promised to face these difficulties, he was extremely careful not to promise to eliminate them.

On foreign policy, too, his message was one of restraint. ...he said that earlier generations “knew that our power grows through its prudent use” and that security emanates from “the tempering qualities of humility and restraint”.

Mr Obama warned terrorists that the US would pursue and defeat them, and he promised to disengage from Iraq and achieve victory in Afghanistan.

Yes, “So much for CHANGE”, there has actually been quite a bit of CHANGE in only 11 months - and ALL of it without the help of you and the “selective-memory Republicans”.

Having you and your allies out of the political arena has been the “saving grace” for the whole world - that’s why they have bestowed the NOBEL PEACE PRIZE on Obama - he has actually delivered CHANGE!

Thank you for your selective memory.

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