Thursday, November 20, 2008

Obama's Hawkish Foreign Policy? (Continued)

Ross Douthat outlines my growing concerns about what will become of Obama's foreign policy. Namely, I worry that Obama won't change course all that much from the Bush Administration as he focuses most of his energy on his domestic agenda.

The problem with giving Lieberman a get-out-of-jail-free card is not that Obama and the Democrats are wimping out and not satisfying my desire for revenge; the real problem with leaving him on as Chairman of the Homeland Security Committee is that Lieberman is arguably more hawkish than Bush on foreign policy and is a dangerous person to leave in any position of power.

I don't blame Obama for focusing much of his transformational energies on domestic policy. After all, domestic policy is the Democratic Party's bread-and-butter, and the economy is the epicenter of the immediate crisis. But putting foreign policy on auto-pilot by closely following the hawkish beltway-consensus may end up biting him in the ass. It's hard to revive an economy if you are burning money in Afghanistan and the price of oil spikes because you are talking tough with Iran.

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