"One who defines his relationship with allied nations by threatening to invade them if they vote in the wrong government sounds like he might be able to carry on the Chimp's good work though, but is it just an act?"
Obama has not threatened to invade and occupy a country that votes in the wrong government. We can see clearly here in this post from Bracknell of Tasmania the destructive effects of Cox's obfuscations for which he should in my opinion be banned from the list. Obama said that if the Pakistani government were not willing to take action aganst the non state terrorist organization of Al Qaeda crossing into Pakistan, he would authorize US troops to make strikes against these most brutal thugs. He did not say that he would overthrow a disliked government of an allied nation. He never rattled the sabers against Musharraf. One cannot even infer from his comments that he would have supported the war against the Afghani Taliban government without UN security council authorization which in retrospect Bush had obvious reasons not to seek. Obama is obviously calling for a mini Marshall plan for Afghanistan and Pakistan (a wiser and more humane investment than the occupation of Iraq) and multilateral policing against al Qaeda alone, not domestic opposition groups. Obama has also expressed skepticism about the first strike threat of nuclear bombardment before he was shouted down.
Hilary Clinton accepts the Bush doctrines of diplomatic disengagement with Iran; she has not explicitly said that the US should disband bases in Iraq; she has not expressed much interest in multilateral policing or cooperation in international bodies (as even Kerrey did).
And then on our number one "domestic" foreign policy issue Obama is the candidate supporting driving licenses for all those who work here, regardless of citizenship, and thereby refusing to outlaw those on whose labor the nation ungratefully depends. He refuses to turn blacks against and scapegoat vulnerable Mexicans. And for our other domestic foreign policy issue, he is the one who has married into America's other huge outcaste--the African American people into which he was not born.
Obviously his childhood experience which made him a foreigner to the US at age 11 has allowed him to understand foreign policy choices in ways counter to that of Hilary Clinton and John McCain. Americans needs Obama's leadership in this new global age marked by the rise of Asia. They need leaders who understand us (guaranteed by their elite's educational experience), and we need leaders who understand them.
This list has seemed not at all interested in these foreign policy differences with Clinton. Krugman's obsession over irrelevant differences in their health care plans to the exclusion of sustained interest in foreign policy is symptomatic of this deeply disturbing disinterest in the fate of the world by the (American) people who have it in their hands.
I am just astonished that people could say with a straight face that nothing important hangs on this primary or that Krugman would be fantasizing differences on health care to Clinton's advantage on the eve of primaries. It reminds me of nothing other than Barbara Ehrenreich spending time in Florida on Nader's behalf.
It's as if American leftists in their nationalist identity politics think that all that is stake is whether we first have a black or women president with all the truly sophisticated leftists of course thinking such identity politics does not matter as compared to a slightly more progressive taxation and dubiously more inclusive health care, the only issues really worth talking about. The problem is that this "debate" over what's wrong with identity politics is that it is all all within the confines of everyone accepting our inward looking American identity.
I mean are people really this out of it that the importance of the primary is not blindingly obvious? If so, let's talk about why.
Let's face facts here: From a global point of view Zbignew Brezezinski sounds more like a leftist than even famous liberals such as Krugman. The end of the Cold War is obviously still turning things upside down. The former anti Communist is now more of a leftist than American populists.
Or maybe Krugman's old protectionist theory reflected the still operative narrow moral constraints of nationalism. He seems to share those constraints with most people on the list.
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