Many on the left seem to think that there is no difference between Bush and Obama in foreign policy – the idea being that since neither regarded sovereignty as inviolable, and both sought to decrease the number of regimes in the world unfriendly to US interests, the two were following identical foreign policies. There is a key difference, however, between current policy and the Neoconservative philosophy that I think can be summarized by the sound advice – Make hay while the sun shines. A reasonable foreign policy does just that – reacts to situations and opportunities as they arise, using circumstances to its advantage. A Neoconservative position, on the other hand, makes hay and demands that the sun shine. It’s a position of extreme arrogance, and is highly ineffective. The difference between policies is clear observing how Bush and Obama handled the revolutions taking place during their respective terms.

You see, Bush had his own set of opportunities in the form of the Color Revolutions in the former Soviet Republics. However, his administration did next to nothing to react to them, because they had already set the agenda – bring down the axis of evil, spread democracy in the middle east, and, most importantly, win re-election as a war time president. The US welcomed those new leaders in Georgia and Ukraine, but the priorities were already established and little was done to integrate those countries economically or politically into the ‘West’. As a result, they were vulnerable to economic manipulation and upheaval. Moreover, somehow Georgia came under the impression that they had a free hand to act aggressively against Russia, and the US and NATO failed to back them up, even as Georgian troops were fighting alongside NATO ones in Afghanistan. This can only be attributed to a failure in communication with Shaakashvili’s administration, compounded by a squandering of resources in Iraq and Afghanistan that left NATO and the US embarrassingly powerless.

The gravest failing of the previous administration, however, was to fail to react to the Andijan massacre in Uzbekistan. Rather than adjust their worldview to take into account the changing situation and to distance themselves from a regime that was demonstrating its brutality, as Obama did with Egypt and Yemen, the administration closed its eyes and pretended that what was happening fit their worldview – terrorists were causing trouble with a secular government. That the reality was of course different was obvious to everyone besides the US, China, and Russia, and a clear message was sent – our embrace of democracy coming to Christian former SSRs did not extend to the Muslim ones, and we are willing to accept ‘fighting terrorism’ as an excuse for any abuse (a fact Egypt, Israel, China, Russia, Colombia, and India, among others, noted with glee). The Andijan massacre was not an ideal situation to get tough on terrorism or stand by secularism in the Muslim world, but that was the hay the administration wanted to make, and they didn’t care one whit whether the sun was shining.

Obama’s treatment of the Arab spring? I’ve been over it too much already, but he has much more effectively taken opportunities when and to (only) the extent that they present themselves (Libya, Syria, Iran), cut losses where necessary (Egypt, Tunisia, and Yemen), and kept his nose clean where the result was inevitable (Bahrain).

I know I’ve written far too much, but the evidence is copious and deserves to be heard. You needn’t agree with Obama’s policies to see a clear difference in their execution, compared to those of the previous president. It’s also difficult, having seen the results of both, to deny the superiority of our current administration to that which preceded it, and to any of its likely replacements.

I don’t write a lot about foreign policy, simply because I think there are far more intelligent and knowledgeable people out there writing much more cogent analysis, but it’s hard to ignore the reflexive criticism of all things Obama that comes from certain elements of the principled left.

Although I’m no longer surprised that some Americans seem to have a better grasp of events in Libya than reporters, government officials, those with access to military satellites and other international observers on the ground in Libya, it might make their case against WESTERN IMPERIALISM a bit stronger if they could back their assertion that the situation was “trumped up” by the US government.

I think it’s fair to say that Obama overstated the danger–but I’d suggest that was more the result of a lack of clarity about the situation than some grand, Western plot to rule the world. It turns out that moral clarity and perfect vision are much easier in hindsight.

It’s also pretty clear if Obama and NATO had not intervened, the same “principled left” would be accusing the West of discrimination in its disregard for Africa. The truth is that we waited too long in the Balkans and failed to intervene at all in Rwanda—two other situations in which early, decisive intervention would have made the difference. Obama didn’t wait, and as a result, prevented worse harm befalling the Libyan people.

And it was going to be bad, as Human Rights Watch’s Tom Malinowski notes:

[W]e should acknowledge what could be happening in eastern Libya right now had Qaddafi’s forces continued their march. The dozens of burned out tanks, rocket launchers, and missiles bombed at the eleventh hour on the road to Benghazi would have devastated the rebel stronghold if Qaddafi’s forces had been able to unleash them indiscriminately, as they did in other, smaller rebel-held towns, like Zawiyah, Misrata, and Adjabiya. Qaddafi’s long track-record of arresting, torturing, disappearing, and killing his political opponents to maintain control suggests that had he recaptured the east, a similar fate would have awaited those who supported the opposition there.

I don’t celebrate the death of anyone, but it’s hard to feel terribly sad about the fact that the Colonel is no longer in a position which allows him to torture and kill indiscriminately. Eventually, people rise up to  take down despots. It’s often ugly, even brutal, but it will happen—and I’d prefer a national security policy which works to prevent those people from being slaughtered.

In the end, the US and NATO did an admirable job. They used a relatively inexpensive mission which gave the rebels breathing room in which they could defend themselves against a despot. And then the people of Libya did the rest. We can’t know what kind of government or future Libya will have, but I think we can be sure that it will be better than the past two generations.

Following eight years of disastrous foreign policy, this was another sign that the Obama administration is simply far more competent when it comes to national security and military issues than the previous administration. In less than three years, he’s overseen the elimination of Osama bin Laden, led the effort towards killing of some of his chief deputies, drawn up firm plans to finally end Bush’s destructive war in Iraq, and done his best to navigate the complex issues of the Arab spring and its aftermath.

Certainly, Obama has made some mistakes and done some things that I absolutely oppose, but it’s hard not to see that his administration moving the US back towards rational national security policy based on both humanitarian need and national interest.

I don’t want to sound like a conspiracy theorist here, because there are plenty of better ones on the blogosphere. But I would like to name some events and facts over the last couple of years that suggest deeper problems in Pakistan than we are ready to deal with.

First – remember Raymond Davis? The American CIA agent who killed two Pakistanis in Lahore? Almost certainly those men were agents of or employed by the Pakistani ISI, roughly equivalent the the US CIA.

Davis was reportedly being intimidated because he was ‘crossing a line’. That intimidation ended bloodily, and the US went to great lengths to get him out of Pakistan.

Now we have wikileaks helpfully informing us that the ISI had been sabotaging efforts to find bin Laden for some time now, hence why they were being circumvented by people like Raymond Davis and why Pakistan was given no warning of the final raid on bin Laden’s compound.

What are the implications of this?

1. It makes me believe there was in fact a high-value target inside Pakistan who was killed on May 2. The tension between intelligence agencies makes it seem as though the CIA had finally had enough of the obfuscating;
2. It makes ISI involvement in the Mumbai terror attacks seem far more likely;
3. It means that Afghanistan and its people will not be safe from the Taliban until the ISI undergoes extreme change. That means the Pakistani government has to be serious about addressing it, and has to feel like it no longer is so threatened that it needs the ISI in its current form. That means that if we really want peace in Afghanistan and Pakistan, we need to address the situation between Pakistan and India.

In moments when I feel like the schism between the far right and reality is not as pronounced as I fear, I only need to visit conservative blogs and their comments to have my cynicism and pessimism restored.

A quick tour of sites like Red State, Michelle Malkin, and Free Republic reveals these “arguments,” presented less than 24 hours after the announcement of the death of the person responsible for the 9/11 attacks and many more crimes against the world:

• Never mind the fact that intel showed they knew where he was since last November.
  It must have been quite a struggle for Urkel to have his mind made up for him.
• Every anti military loon voted for this cut the military President, and now all of the peace now, cut and run lefties are all celebrating a military success and rushing to give their anti military candidate credit for sitting behind a desk.
• They are treating his body in Islamic tradition!
  WHEN OH WHEN WILL WE GET A GOVERNMENT THAT WILL HATE THE FREAKING ENEMY AND TRY TO HURT THEM!?!?!
  Oh, when our government is no longer allied with the enemy, I guess
• You do have a point. OR, Osama maybe died long ago and we now have confirmed the fact and decided to use it politically. That sounds more like this Thug-In-Chief’s tactics.
• This monster was a mass-murderer of almost 3000 innocent civilians. Instead of burial at sea, we should have marinated him in pig fat and strung his carcass up on a pole at the WTC site.But, I guess we don’t want to offend anyone, now do we…
• OBL has not been seen for years and yet all of a sudden were are supposed to believe he carelessly exposed himself in a high profile mansion/compound and then is hastily buried at sea?
• Is there any doubt why he released his birth certificate when he did. Now no will be able to question it.

Unfortunately, that kind of response isn’t just anonymous commenters online, but comes from Montanans as well. Jennifer Olson, the other person in her father’s Montana Shrugged Tea Party Patriots, had to attack the President as well:

Is it too much to ask that Americans all take this moment to congratulate our military and intelligence services for their efforts and thank them for the risks they’ve taken? To reflect seriously about what this means for the future of the “war on terror”? Wouldn’t those be the actions of a patriot?

Now, of course, a few isolated comments online can perhaps be taken with a grain of salt, but it’s important to remember that the Republican Party has been hijacked by this kind of extremist, the kind who will not believe that Osama bin Laden has been killed until they see the long-form death certificate. The majority of Republicans may not hold these views, but when 45% of Republicans believe that Obama was not born in the United States, the GOP has become a party dominated by a conspiracy theorists and ideologues.

Apparently that’s where we are keeping all our options currently. There is talk of a no-fly zone, because it is known that Gaddafi has bombed the opposition and will probably do so increasingly as things become more dire for him. The US has moved assets into the area, but it’s unknown whether we’ll have to use them.

I can see both sides – on the one hand, we certainly don’t want foreign intervention to undermine the populism of the revolt and taint any future regime with the scent of imperialism.

However, the West has clearly thrown their collective hats in with the opposition. If they are crushed, there is no reconciliation possible with Libya for years, probably decades. Moreover, Libya is neither Egypt nor Tunisia – the forces arrayed against the opposition are not an army of the people but a network of secret forces and mercenaries. More people have already died in Libya than in Tunisia and Egypt combined. What would it say about our commitment to Democracy if we watch from our aircraft carriers, loaded up with jet planes, as pro-Democracy forces are bombed and massacred?

I’m curious what everyone thinks. I certainly don’t have the answer.

Before I even touch this subject that I’ve been discussing with the folks at 4&20 blackbirds, I feel the need to give a disclaimer: This is my opinion. I’m almost certain Pogie’s opinion is more liberal than mine, and I’m curious to hear exactly what it is.

The question I propose is this – ought the United States be an empire? I propose that although we have made truly enormous mistakes as an imperial power, the alternative of further isolationism is worse.

As evidence, I offer the last period of American isolationism – the period between the world wars. The United States did not enter the war against Germany until Dec 11, which is two days from today. By that point -

A quarter million Chinese were massacred in Nanjing; a substantial portion of the 20 million Chinese who perished at Japanese hands between 1937 and 1945 were already dead.

A half million Ethiopian civilians were killed in the Italian invasion of the country, which the impotent and US-less League of Nations ineffectively opposed.

200,000 Polish Catholic civilians had died in the German invasion of Poland. Polish Jews were already in ghettos and camps, and the first gas chambers were being tested.

Much of the Soviet Union was already occupied; tens of thousands of Jews and other Soviet civilians had already been executed.

There were dozens more democides throughout those few decades. Many of them could have been avoided simply by the US participating actively in the League of Nations. The rest could have been solved with aggressive US intervention from the beginning, rather than waiting to get hurt under the mistaken impression that we would be safe as long as we didn’t deal with the rest of the world. I know what you’re thinking: “But PW, that was an unusually violent decade.” First of all – You’ll find the decades before were also atrocious, and the US was also fairly isolated post-Roosevelt and pre-1918. But more importantly, that’s the point. After WWI, the British were timid and unable to assert their authority, and the US, which should have been the natural inheritors of the British imperial torch, instead chose to close its eyes to the chaos around it, chose for many years not to ‘hold up half the earth’. The result was that many of the worst atrocities of the century either occurred before we were willing to do anything or were already unpreventable by the time we joined the war.

Conclusion? Yes, the ‘American Empire’ has done terrible things, and our jingoistic adventurism will inevitably weaken us if we continue making bad choices. However, broader arguments that the basic position of the US as a globally involved power should be more limited will improve neither American security nor global living conditions.

Democracy and a Piece of Clothing – The Washington Post

A Muslim immigrant from Morocco was trying to attain citizenship in France. She wore a burqa. Her wearing of the burqa was not the issue though, officials say. It was her unwillingness to comply with any of the exceptions that the French government was trying to give her. 

The officials asked her to show her face so they could identify her. She told them that her religion did not allow her to do this. The officials offered to have a female officer check her passport and face and that all men would have to leave the room. Faiza M. declined again. The officials might have settled on fingerprints as a means of identification, but it is obvious that a state will need to identify a new citizen. How to issue a passport without a photograph of a face? Faiza M. declared that she was not interested in her political rights and that she would not want to vote. Clearly, it is the right of a citizen not to vote. But her reasoning raised eyebrows. She told the officials that only men should have the right to vote. The court, in the end, was not sure whether it was her own free will to sue the government – or her husband’s. On all occasions Faiza M. showed up with her husband. She declared that she had not been wearing the burqa in Morocco, but has been doing so at the suggestion of her French husband. She said she did not know what the words “laicism” and “democracy” meant.

I mean, I agree that it is her right to practice her religion. But I guess I am just confused because even when the government is trying to comply to her religious standards (like having a female officer check her passport) she declined. Why is that? The French government is trying hard to humor her, but she doesn’t really seem very grateful for all of their efforts. Therefore, I do think that it is right for them to deny her citizenship. She is not above the law – no one is. They tried making it easier for her, but she refused. Any thoughts on this?

One can hope. At least they ought to limit their travel to Air Kissinger, lest they be charged in a foreign country:

…he is already assembling a case, and is focused on American policymakers. I read these remarks and they seemed very familiar to me. In the past two years, I have spoken with two investigating magistrates in two different European nations, both pro-Iraq war NATO allies. Both were assembling war crimes charges against a small group of Bush administration officials. "You can rest assured that no charges will be brought before January 20, 2009," one told me. And after that? "It depends. We don’t expect extradition. But if one of the targets lands on our territory or on the territory of one of our cooperating jurisdictions, then we’ll be prepared to act."

For international law to have any moral force in cases like Slobodan Milošević, Augusto Pinochet, or even Saddam Hussein, the law has to apply to powerful countries as well as weak ones. Given that the architects of the Bush policy of detention and torture are unlikely to be prosecuted here, one only hopes that the international community will act.

Peggy Noonan simultaneously offers a reasonable position on politics and the war and imagines that we have another President, one capable of admitting that he has made mistakes:

It’s been an era of soft thinking and hard words. Those who opposed the war were weak and craven; those who supported it were dupes and bullies; those who came to oppose the war were cowards bowing to polls; those who continue to support it love all war all the time. Some of this was inevitable–the stakes could barely be higher; passions flare. But it’s not getting us anywhere. And it’s limiting debate. It’s making people fearful.

It is time for a kind of verbal amnesty in which thoughts are considered before motives are judged. An admission that the White House is as responsible for this situation as everyone else would help clear the air–and just might prompt some soul-searching in members of the audience. An honest plea here could break through the cement that has hardened over the debate. Who could answer harshly when a president who loves his country admitted the problem and pleaded for change? That’s what might really hit reset.

It’s a fair point. One of the unfortunate results of a closely-divided nation at war has been an almost complete absence of actual debate about the war. Both sides, though I am not willing to admit equally, have been content to sling ad hominem attacks and sound bites rather than substantive discussion as the war drags on. There are any number of reasons–the past six years of Republican ascendancy and Democratic anger, craven opponents of the war, unwilling to stand for their principles, shameless faux patriots calling opponents traitors for holding different views, to name a few.

There’s a lot of talk on both sides of the Iraq issue about what’s best for American soldiers. Naturally, each side hopes to present itself as the advocate for the troops. I suspect, however, that our troops would rather have thoughtful discussion than cheerleading and specious claims to represent their interests. It’s time for a national dialogue, meaningful debate and discussion about the war, about the vision for our nation’s foreign policy.

Divided government may be our best, last hope for the kind of discussion that needs to take place. Let’s hope our President–and his opponents–take this opportunity to engage each other in ideas, make concessions, and devise a plan that makes more sense than its TV news sound bite impact. If they don’t, perhaps words like “coward” and “traitor” aren’t hard enough.

Obviously, I don’t think that we should keep holding Japan’s role in WWII against them. However, I do think that we should maybe think long and hard before we add them to the Security council. I don’t know how popular this will be as a proposition to the US, and I don’t even know what to think about it. But I do think it’s a big deal, if we go expanding the security council. If, as expected, Toyota is the #1 auto maker for 2007, and the Japan gets into our club, I expect a bit of resentment from some Americans. I also would think that as long as we are expanding the S.C., India and Germany might want on too. And frankly, we can’t have too many countries holding the veto, it might make the UN slow to act and overly bureaucratic. Oh wait…