A DEFENSE OF OBAMA'S FOREIGN POLICY

JUSTIN RAIMONDO, ANTI-WAR - "We've had enough of a misguided war in Iraq that never should have been fought - a war that needs to end."

Barack Obama said that in a Des Moines speech back in October, but he's been repeating it - with added emphasis - as his campaign has taken off. It's that last line that always gets the loudest, most prolonged applause: the audience goes wild, people stand and cheer - as well they should. We are told that the ideological differences between Obama and the Clintons aren't all that great, that in fact they barely exist, which I think is a highly dubious proposition, but, in any case, on this issue - the vital question of war and peace - the gulf between them could not be wider, or deeper.

She, after all, voted for the war, and she's been saber-rattling over Iran - much to AIPAC's delight. Obama, on the other hand, has taken a clear and consistent antiwar position on the Iraq war. . .

This is the real source of Obama's streak of solid victories, aside from the hypnotic effects of his oratory: contra the conventional wisdom, it isn't all about style with him, or "platitudes," as John McCain puts it. It's all about his opposition to the Iraq war. . .

Obama has emerged as the antiwar candidate, constantly driving home the point that he - unlike the Senator from New York - had the judgment to doubt the veracity of the President's case for war from the get-go.

The Clintons are desperately trying to spin this away, with President Priapus denouncing Obama's antiwar record as "a fairy tale" and The New Republic rather more subtly suggesting "Obama himself may understand that the issue is more complicated than his condemnations of Hillary Clinton's judgment."

It is a piece that starts out by chronicling Obama's memorable performance at a 2002 antiwar rally in Chicago - when very few mainstream politicians were showing up at antiwar events - and charts his subsequent equivocations, wobbles, and doubts, slyly implying that he's not really all that far away from being a calculating Clintonian himself. . .

It's odd that Crowley opens his piece with the scene from that rally, but somehow neglects to report what Obama said:

"What I am opposed to is a dumb war. What I am opposed to is a rash war. What I am opposed to is the cynical attempt by Richard Perle and Paul Wolfowitz and other armchair, weekend warriors in this administration to shove their own ideological agendas down our throats, irrespective of the costs in lives lost and in hardships borne....

"I suffer no illusions about Saddam Hussein. He is a brutal man. A ruthless man. A man who butchers his own people to secure his own power. He has repeatedly defied UN resolutions, thwarted UN inspection teams, developed chemical and biological weapons, and coveted nuclear capacity. He's a bad guy. The world, and the Iraqi people, would be better off without him.

"But I also know that Saddam poses no imminent and direct threat to the United States, or to his neighbors, that the Iraqi economy is in shambles, that the Iraqi military a fraction of its former strength, and that in concert with the international community he can be contained until, in the way of all petty dictators, he falls away into the dustbin of history. I know that even a successful war against Iraq will require a US occupation of undetermined length, at undetermined cost, with undetermined consequences. I know that an invasion of Iraq without a clear rationale and without strong international support will only fan the flames of the Middle East, and encourage the worst, rather than best, impulses of the Arab world, and strengthen the recruitment arm of al-Qaeda. I am not opposed to all wars. I'm opposed to dumb wars.". . .

In the face of this nationwide upsurge of Obama-mania, the War Party is making threatening noises, such as in this piece in the Jerusalem Post reporting Malcolm Hoenlein's visit to Israel, where he announced that Obama's candidacy may represent a threat:

"All the talk about change, but without defining what that change should be is an opening for all kind of mischief. Of course Obama has plenty of Jewish supporters and there are many Jews around him. But there is a legitimate concern over the zeitgeist around the campaign.". . .

The evidence is all around us, including a recently uncovered internal memo written by an official of the American Jewish Committee that betrays "a quiet unease" over Obama's Middle East policy positions, as The Forward reports . . .

Another accusation to be hurled at Obama: his chief foreign policy advisor, Zbigniew Brzezinksi, has praised The Israel Lobby and US Foreign Policy, a book by John J. Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt that exposes the all-pervasive role of the pro-Israel lobby in this country and its distorting effect on American foreign policy. The Lobby will fight tooth and nail before they'll let Obama - and Brzezinksi - anywhere near the White House.

Noah Pollak, over at Commentary, is singling out Samantha Power, a foreign policy advisor to Obama, who has dared agree with Brzezinski that the Lobby's veto power over US policy in the Middle East needs to be abolished before we can move forward. . .