The cover story in the new American Conservative about Barack Obama's foreign policy is highly unconvincing. The main argument -- repeated in various forms no less than ten times -- is that an Obama foreign policy would essentially be a continuation or expansion of George Bush's foreign policy. To achieve this surprising conclusion, Brendan O'Neill focuses on elements of Obama's public statements about the United States' role in the world and concludes that his interest is "not to liberate Iraq but rather to liberate the interventionist project from the 'Iraqi distraction.'" O'Neill paints Obama's supporters as so mesmerized by the senator's heavenly orations that they were distracted away from the content of those speeches -- speeches, we are led to believe, that are not only unique expressions of bellicosity, but which prove "He would go farther even than President Bush in transforming the globe into America’s backyard and staffing it with spies and soldiers."
There are two main problems with the argument. First, nothing O'Neill quotes Obama as saying is particularly controversial. “Let me begin by saying that although this has been billed as an anti-war rally, I stand before you as someone who is not opposed to war in all circumstances," said Obama at his famous 2002 speech against the Iraq War. Are we supposed to believe that anything less than a total embrace of pacifism is an implicit endorsement of aggressive interventionism? Or what about this one: "There is one … place where our mistakes in Iraq have cost us dearly, and that is the loss of our government's credibility with the American people." This is supposed to imply that Obama's biggest beef with the Iraq War was that it took liberal internationalism off the table? Ah, but O'Neill then lands the second punch: "We cannot afford to be a country of isolationists right now. … We need to maintain a strong foreign policy, relentless in pursuing our enemies and hopeful in promoting our values around the world." I'm pretty sure that every serious candidate for president in the postwar era has said something about engaging the world and promoting our values abroad. That liberal internationalism ultimately led to some pretty bad foreign policy decisions does not prove Obama is going to follow in their footsteps, however.
Thus the second problem with the argument: in addition to being largely uncontroversial, few of Obama's positions are unique; every serious candidate for president says these things. This is a pretty major problem for O'Neill's argument, given that he paints Obama as the biggest warmonger currently running for president. Why is Obama more of a warmonger than, say John McCain? To be sure, Obama's foreign policy is hardly unassailable. His comments on Pakistan from last year were worrisome, yet this foreign policy specific -- like all his specifics -- are omitted from O'Neill's analysis. Nor does does it help his case to argue in one breath that Obama is an empty suit, that his rhetoric is just hot air, and in the next describe those same previously-empty words the remarks of a "wide-eyed, zealous interventionist." His case for President Obama the Warmonger is built on nothing but speculation and selective quotation. I could use the same technique to build a case for Obama the total pacifist, but it would be no less sloppy and false.
--Mori Dinauer
