There is a lot of baggage projected on to Barack Obama, by both his supporters and detractors. The projections of his right-wing detractors are transparently false and malicious. However, the projections of his supporters can also be distorted, largely, I think, due to relational perception.
Relative to Bush and McCain, Obama is a god.
Obama’s superiority to John McCain as a candidate is a non-issue with respect to the substantive criticism of Obama that follows, as the gulf that separates them is so vast that it is frankly embarrassing to our country that such a gulf actually exists and John McCain, sleazy, ignorant, lying, uninspired, corrupt old turd that he is, remains a viable candidate compared to Obama’s rock steady political judgment and acumen accented by not infrequent flashes of good will. That yawning gulf and close competition between them only speaks the fundamentally corrupt state of our society, culture, media, and political system. That gulf also forces us to "zoom out," scaling our perceptions to the gulf, but in doing so, we lose our ability to perceive Obama in greater detail. While McCain sadly stumbles over the apple-sauce avalanche on aisle 4 or gets caught using flash cards to memorize milk prices, Obama is having flowers laid at his feet by al-Maliki, sinking 3-pointers with the cheering troops, and giving soaring historical speeches as our hopefully de facto president. So, let’s take McCain out of the picture, so we can zoom in a bit on Obama.
Obama is not a netroots progressive.
Obama keeps the progressive netroots at arm’s length. He does not want to be labeled as a leftist, but keeping his distance is not simply a political calculation to avoid being smeared by the right-wing. He is serious about governing from what he perceives is the effective, utilitarian center of this country. He went to some effort to address his respect for netroots activism, but in his mind, it is not he who needs to align with us. Rather, it is we who should be aligned with him, as much as we can. This is what he is explicitly asking. He will respectfully refuse to accede to progressive demands as he deems fit, just as he will not accede to demands from other points on the compass. To my mind, he has determined what he perceives to be the centroid of satisfaction of a multi-modal distribution of demands, and he is attempting to shape the will of the nation to that centroid. This is not irrational, and in fact would seem to be the ideal of good governance, depending on how good one is at calculating the centroid. He may be wrong in his calculation, but so far he looks right. In other words, if you want to change his calculations to be more progressive, you’re going to have to move that centroid by changing the entire dialog distribution in this country first.
FISA
In his distant, yet respectful and adequate address to netroots nation, Obama alluded to the thing that cannot be, and was not explicitly named: His flip-flop on FISA, wherein he and many others retroactively made legal the current administration’s felonious behavior legal. He deserves a little credit for the allusion, I suppose. However, his mind is set. Re-hash that fight amongst yourselves, if you like. My position against him on this has also cemented. Here’s how Jack Balkin summarized his own view of Obama’s reasoning on the issue:
Congress gives the President new powers that Obama can use. Great. (This is change we can believe in). Obama doesn't have to expend any political capital to get these new powers. Also great. Finally, Obama can score points with his base by criticizing the retroactive immunity provisions, which is less important to him going forward than the new powers. Just dandy.
It should now be clear why the Obama campaign has taken the position it has taken. And given what I have just said, Obama's supporters should be pressing him less on the immunity provisions and more on the first part of the bill which completely rewrites FISA. Because, if he becomes president, he'll be the one applying and enforcing its provisions.
If you really care about civil liberties in the National Surveillance State, you have to recognize that both parties will be constructing its institutions. The next President will be a major player in its construction, as important if not more important than George W. Bush ever was. That President will want more authority to engage in surveillance, and he'll be delighted for Congress to give it to him officially.
Jack Balkin called his balls and strikes, and we know how it turned out. Here’s Obama:
This brings me to the fourth step in my strategy: I will make clear that the days of compromising our values are over.
snip
This Administration also puts forward a false choice between the liberties we cherish and the security we demand. I will provide our intelligence and law enforcement agencies with the tools they need to track and take out the terrorists without undermining our Constitution and our freedom.
That means no more illegal wire-tapping of American citizens. No more national security letters to spy on citizens who are not suspected of a crime. No more tracking citizens who do nothing more than protest a misguided war. No more ignoring the law when it is inconvenient. That is not who we are. And it is not what is necessary to defeat the terrorists. The FISA court works. The separation of powers works. Our Constitution works. We will again set an example for the world that the law is not subject to the whims of stubborn rulers, and that justice is not arbitrary.
Take that for what you will. He says one thing, but did, in fact, do another.
Save SCOTUS with Nonsense on Stilts?
If there is a decisive reason to vote Democrat this year, despite the massive corruption, betrayal, incompetence, and obstruction of justice recently served up by Democrats, it is because the Supreme Court hangs in the balance. Obama’s legal advisor, Cass Sunstein, could well be nominated. Bruce Fein, Jonathan Turley, Glenn Greenwald, and Armando broadly and contemptuously agree that Sunstein’s views on the powers of a war-time President are simply, as Bruce Fein put it, "nonsense on stilts." And seriously, what in blazes is Sunstein talking about?
If you think holding Bush accountable for his crimes is simply "criminalizing politics" because "where’s the wrongdoing?" and "we don’t have the goods on Bush," as do Cass Sunstein and Nancy Pelosi, then you will find Cass Sunstein a model Supreme Court justice. Had Sunstein been on the Supreme Court in 2006, Hamdan would have been a Bush victory. Chew on that while considering that the war on terror will be alive and well during an Obama administration. Does Obama’s FISA decision surprise you? It did me, but I’ve sobered up. I hope to god Obama does not nominate Cass Sunstein to the SCOTUS, because then the most important reason for voting Democrat this election may well be a vain conceit.
Imperial Affairs.
Judging from his own words, Obama will maintain a forward foreign posture, both diplomatically and militarily. Diplomacy is a no-brainer in a deeply interconnected world, and we are in dire need of it after the fiasco of Bush’s unilateralism. Our endemic militarism is deeply problematic for multiple practical, economic, political and ethical reasons in which we are currently, disastrously enmeshed.
Iraq.
Obama’s plan for Iraq, draw down forces over 16 month period, and probably leaving residual forces is not unreasonable, and compared to anyone else’s plan will be a damned relief for everyone to end this giant criminal enterprise that cannot be won militarily, and should never have begun in the first place. Not to mention it is draining the life-blood out of us. Obama has always seen Iraq clearly:
There is no military solution in Iraq. Only Iraq's leaders can settle the grievances at the heart of Iraq's civil war. We must apply pressure on them to act, and our best leverage is reducing our troop presence. And we must also do the hard and sustained diplomatic work in the region on behalf of peace and stability.
For the moment, I’m not second-guessing any decisions about the size and temporal duration of any "residual forces." Permanent basing strikes me as a bad idea, because IT’S NOT OUR COUNTRY.
Pakistan/Afghanistan,
Relative to his clarity on Iraq, Obama’s Afghanistan policy is somewhat unnerving. Obama has always been committed to "completing the job" begun after 9/11 against al Qaeda in Afghanistan.
Just because the President misrepresents our enemies does not mean we do not have them. The terrorists are at war with us. The threat is from violent extremists who are a small minority of the world's 1.3 billion Muslims, but the threat is real. They distort Islam. They kill man, woman and child; Christian and Hindu, Jew and Muslim. They seek to create a repressive caliphate. To defeat this enemy, we must understand who we are fighting against, and what we are fighting for.
Where to begin? Obama elsewhere admits that we helped create those extremists both by directly aiding them against the Soviets and then abandoning them after the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan. His honesty on that is refreshing, but is the policy itself any good?
Let’s start with Pat Buchanan’s editorial in today’s SF Chronicle concerning Obama’s proposed escalation of warfare in Afghanistan:
We have to be as careful getting out as we were careless getting in," says Barack Obama of the U.S. war in Iraq. Wise counsel.
But is Barack taking his own advice? For he pledges to shift two U.S. combat brigades, 10,000 troops, out of Iraq and into Afghanistan, raising American forces in that country from 33,000 to 43,000.
Why does Barack think a surge of 10,000 troops will succeed in winning a war in which we have failed to prevail after seven years of fighting? How many more troops is he prepared to commit? Is the Obama commitment open-ended?
What is victory? When is victory? What’s the exit strategy? Is it even possible? Buchanan notes that Obama is repeating Johnson’s mistake of escalating war in Vietnam.
If the old rule applies – the guerrilla wins if he does not lose – the United States, about to enter its eighth year of combat, is losing. And, using the old 10-to-one ratio of regular troops needed to defeat guerrillas, if the Taliban can recruit 1,000 new fighters, they can see Obama's two-brigade bet, and raise him. Just as Uncle Ho raised LBJ again and again.
Obama knows darn well that any success in Afghanistan, whatever and whenever and however it occurs, depends critically on Pakistan:
Above all, I will send a clear message: we will not repeat the mistake of the past, when we turned our back on Afghanistan following Soviet withdrawal. As 9/11 showed us, the security of Afghanistan and America is shared. And today, that security is most threatened by the al Qaeda and Taliban sanctuary in the tribal regions of northwest Pakistan.
Al Qaeda terrorists train, travel, and maintain global communications in this safe-haven. The Taliban pursues a hit and run strategy, striking in Afghanistan, then skulking across the border to safety.
This is the wild frontier of our globalized world. There are wind-swept deserts and cave-dotted mountains. There are tribes that see borders as nothing more than lines on a map, and governments as forces that come and go. There are blood ties deeper than alliances of convenience, and pockets of extremism that follow religion to violence. It's a tough place.
But that is no excuse. There must be no safe-haven for terrorists who threaten America. We cannot fail to act because action is hard.
As President, I would make the hundreds of millions of dollars in U.S. military aid to Pakistan conditional, and I would make our conditions clear: Pakistan must make substantial progress in closing down the training camps, evicting foreign fighters, and preventing the Taliban from using Pakistan as a staging area for attacks in Afghanistan.
I understand that President Musharraf has his own challenges. But let me make this clear. There are terrorists holed up in those mountains who murdered 3,000 Americans. They are plotting to strike again. It was a terrible mistake to fail to act when we had a chance to take out an al Qaeda leadership meeting in 2005. If we have actionable intelligence about high-value terrorist targets and President Musharraf won't act, we will.
There is an issue of Pakistani sovereignty here. You can’t just go around lobbing missiles into other nations. That’s an act of war. You’re not even supposed to make the threat. Musharraf has a right to retaliate, if he so chooses. Does Obama plan on going to the US Congress and UN Security Council first, or simply take unilateral action?
Furthermore, Musharraf, who is sitting on top of a nuclear stockpile, does indeed have his own problems both with moderates and extremists in Pakistan. He needs all the help he can get with maintaining what stability he enjoys, not least of which any that may be budding in the volatile tribal areas abutting Afghanistan.
It does little to shore up support for US-backed local governments when our military calls in air-strikes to mistakenly wipe out local troops and even wholly innocent wedding parties, and then to inflame the resentment by reinforcing that policy in words. As Juan Cole noted, the local governments in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas of Pakistan that Obama praised for recent electoral victories are the same ones that are demanding negotiations with tribal groups.
The governor of the North-West Frontier province, Owais Ghani, immediately spoke out against Obama, saying that the senator's remarks had the effect of undermining the new civilian government elected last February. Ghani warned that a U.S. incursion into the northwestern tribal areas would have "disastrous" consequences for the globe.
The governor underlined that a "war on terrorism" policy depended on popular support for it, and that such support was being leeched away by U.S. strikes on the Pakistan side of the border and by statements such as Obama's. A recent American attack mistakenly killed Pakistani troops who had been sent to fight the Pakistani Taliban at American insistence. The Pakistani public was furious. Ghani complained, "Candidate Obama gave these statements; I come out openly and say such statements undermine support, don't do it."
It may be prudent to tone down the war-like rhetoric a little, rather than repeating the bellicose tones reminiscent of Bush. Indeed, it may be prudent to re-think the entire strategy concerning Afghanistan. Juan Cole further notes the historical perils of imperial campaigns in Afghanistan:
Before he jumps into Afghanistan with both feet, Obama would be well advised to consult with another group of officers. They are the veterans of the Russian campaign in Afghanistan. Russian officers caution that Afghans cannot be conquered, as the Soviets attempted to do in the 1980s with nearly twice as many troops as NATO and the U.S. now have in the country, and with three times the number of Afghan troops as Karzai can deploy. Afghanistan never fell to the British or Russian empires at the height of the age of colonialism. Conquering the tribal forces of a vast, rugged, thinly populated country proved beyond their powers. It may also well prove beyond the powers even of the energetic and charismatic Obama. In Iraq, he is listening to what the Iraqis want. In Pakistan, he is simply dictating policy in a somewhat bellicose fashion, and ignoring the wishes of those moderate parties whose election he lauded last February.
Buchanan and Cole are not very optimistic about the prospects for a military solution in Afghanistan, and given our economic situation here at home, one has to wonder whether we will be repeating the mistake of the Soviets with a further escalation. Even Z’Big has chimed in recently with similar public warnings. Meanwhile, none of it is helping with stability in nuclear-armed Pakistan.
Somalia/AFRICOM.
There is no question whatever that Obama is no shrinking violet when it comes to the use of force, as he himself frequently reiterates, but I have no idea what Obama thinks about AFRICOM and the idea of shoe-horning our military into the Horn of Africa. Most of Africa already distrusts AFRICOM too much to allow BushCo an official foothold of even office spaces, so we are officially running AFRICOM from Germany. Currently, AFRICOM’s mission is glossed as humanitarian, but the underlying reality concerns global competition for oil and mineral resources, and maintaining friendly shipping lanes in the region. Shoe-horning has begun in Djibouti and will fan out from there, including regime change in Somalia, via assassinations, and herding and trapping the "terrorists" between hostile American-backed forces from Ethiopa and Kenya, and slaughtering them from the skies above with American gunships.
I hope that Obama will do his best to repudiate the blood-caked strategies of BushCo, and fulfill his commitment to eradicate the root causes of extremism, as he alludes to here:
When you travel to the world's trouble spots as a United States Senator, much of what you see is from a helicopter. So you look out, with the buzz of the rotor in your ear, maybe a door gunner nearby, and you see the refugee camp in Darfur, the flood near Djibouti, the bombed out block in Baghdad. You see thousands of desperate faces.
Al Qaeda's new recruits come from Africa and Asia, the Middle East and Europe. Many come from disaffected communities and disconnected corners of our interconnected world. And it makes you stop and wonder: when those faces look up at an American helicopter, do they feel hope, or do they feel hate?
I guess that depends on what those helicopters are delivering.
None of these substantive criticisms of Obama could make me vote for McCain, as indicated at the start. I am not attempting to impede his progress to the presidency, nor am I attempting to dampen anyone else’s enthusiasm or hope for change. This country has far too many deep, daunting, pressing structural problems for that kind of concern trolling. I don’t really mind that Obama is not a "netroots progressive," and I have almost completely ignored the substantial, positive vibes he gives off, but I remain concerned about his decisions on FISA, the SCOTUS, and using Afghanistan as his centerpiece of foreign policy.