Sunday, December 03, 2006

Where do the potential presidential candidates stand on Iraq?

Follow the link above to a handy primer from Newsweek. Here are the most interesting tidbits:

-According to the article, if McCain does make a White House run, his foreign policy would be coordinated by Randy Scheunemann, an analyst at the conservative think tank Project for the New American Century who founded the bipartisan Committee for the Liberation of Iraq, an independent group that advocated for regime change.

The truth is (if I may go into a slight tangent here), when it comes to foreign policy, no one is more ridiculously hawkish than John McCain. He supported invading Iraq back in the 1990s, and now wants to send 20,000 more troops into the country (which would, as General Abizaid noted, further undermine the legitimacy of the Iraq government we're trying to make viable). He's similarly beating the war drums in regards to North Korea and Iran, apparently learning none of the lessons of the last few years. He favors the restrictions the Bush administration has put in place on American civil liberties in the name of national security, and though he came out against torture (it's sad when being against torture is all it takes to be called a "maverick Republican" these days), he capitulated to the Bush administration's demands, as he always ends up doing.

-Anyway, if you think that's bad, Mitt Romney is taking advice from Paul Bremer.

-Barack Obama, however, is apparently being advised on international affairs by Samantha Power (author of a book I highly recommend).

1 comment:

Alexander Wolfe said...

A hawk picks a hawk who was wrong about the war.

I'm sure L. Paul Bremer has learned a lot in his experience, but has he cured himself of the hubris that was the hallmark of his term as head of the CPA? To use a football analogy, picking him is like picking a guy to coach your team who was fired after a 2-14 season.