Look, I had disagreements with the Bush administration over a number of domestic issues and some foreign policy issues. Who gets someone as president who meshes perfectly with their wishes? But in foreign policy, I at least trusted Bush to have an instinct to defend us. President Obama? Not so much.
Yet this caution has to recognize that President Obama has not been the anti-Bush in many foreign policy areas despite my fears:
Senator and then candidate Obama demagogued Bush on a variety of issues, which, as president, he simply flipped and endorsed. Remember Bush’s gulag at Guantanamo? Or how about the terror-producing Predators? Or the need for an immediate pull-out from Iraq? Or those terrible renditions and tribunals?
In case after case of national security, Obama dropped the cheap rhetorical one-upmanship, and, when invested with the responsibility of governance, simply adopted, or even trumped, the Bush protocols. General Petraeus, whose testimony Hillary once suggested required “a suspension of disbelief” and whom Obama cut off and did not allow to speak during his infamous 2007 Senate hearing, suddenly is to be Obama’s savior general.
Candidate Obama claimed the surge failed and all combat troops should be out of Bush’s Iraq war by March 2008. President Obama now calls Iraq a “remarkable chapter” as his vice president claims it as one of the administration’s “greatest achievements.” In short, almost daily, Obama is following the Bush anti-terrorism policies — the irony made worse by petulance and ingratitude in not acknowledging his debt.
Yet my worries about our foreign policy remain. Why? Because while Bush instinctively knew he was a war president and was drawn to doing what is necessary to defend our nation and protect our national interests, Obama seems like he has to reason and calculate his way to the same place. As I wrote, we are at war but President Obama just doesn't seem to feel we are at war. Hanson puts it well:
Americans would prefer to be in a foxhole with George Bush, who would swagger and announce as decider-in-chief at H-hour, “OK, pard, we’re going over the top together on this one.” They wouldn’t want to be with Obama, who would stutter and give a long-drawn out exegesis why race and class had condemned us to such an unfair predicament, whose only solution is to go into a fetal position and condemn “them” who did this awful thing to us.
Note the long, drawn-out internal debate a year ago on increasing troop strength in Afghanistan. And when the president does go on instinct, it seems amazingly counter to our interests. Note the entire Honduras crisis when we quickly sided with the Chavez stooge Zelaya and then only slowly (and quietely) backed down when the Hondurans stubbornly defended their contstitution and democracy despite our pressure.
Things may yet work out fine under the Obama presidency. He has made good and bad decisions in foreign and defense policy, but I feared much worse. And we are a strong country that can recover from the bad, I think. Yet the unease over the president's instincts remain. I do miss Bush.
I won't offer comments on the domestic side since that isn't what I do here and I don't think I can add much value to the debate. I certainly have opinions and I think I'm reasonably well read on many of the issues, but as under Bush when I stayed in my lane here, I will continue to do the same for Obama. And hope for the best as I did back then even as I focused on my foreign policies and defense priorities.
And kudos to Hanson for the Shane reference.
