The situation in iran is a potential watershed moment in the way America handles the growth of Democracy and freedom on the world stage. An examination of the situation clearly reveals that the right path and correct attitude is the one currently on display by President Obama. American adventures in democratic intervention do not have a strong history of success. The reason for this is that our actions often end up undermining the legitimacy of the people we want to support out of a misplaced sense of superiority and paternalism. We must avoid such displays at this moment in history.
One of the chief flaws in the traditional attitude of America on the world stage is the belief that every internal or domestic matter of other countries necessitates our involvement or pertains to strategic American interests. These beliefs have lead a mindset that requires action. In the minds of some in the US like Bill Kristol, if we arent acting in some way we arent doing the right thing. Take his position on this Iran situation,
And where is the American president? Silent.
Some argue that the brave Iranians demonstrating for freedom and democracy would be better off if the American president somehow stayed out of the fight. Really? But Barack Obama is president. His statement wouldn’t be crafted by those dreaded neocons who vulgarly thought all people would like a chance to govern themselves and deserved some modicum of U.S. support in that endeavor. It would be written by subtle liberal internationalists, who would get the pitch and tone just right. And the statement wouldn’t be delivered by the notorious George Bush (who did, however, weigh in usefully in somewhat similar situations in Ukraine and Lebanon). It would be delivered by the popular and credible speaker-to-the-Muslim-world, Barack Obama. Does anyone really think that a strong Obama statement of solidarity with the Iranian people, and a strong rebuke to those who steal elections and shoot demonstrators, wouldn’t help the dissidents in Iran?
I don’t believe it. I don’t believe Barack Obama believes it. As he put it in The Audacity of Hope: “We can inspire and invite other people to assert their freedoms;...we can speak out on behalf of local leaders whose rights are violated; and we can apply economic and diplomatic pressure to those who repeatedly violate the rights of their own people.”
Kristol makes a huge mistake in either failing or refusing to understand the dynamics of out history with Iran. President Obama was only just recently able to acknowledge our role in the overthrow of mossadegh.
The crushing of Iran's first democratic government ushered in more than two decades of dictatorship under the Shah, who relied heavily on US aid and arms. The anti-American backlash that toppled the Shah in 1979 shook the whole region and helped spread Islamic militancy.
After the 1979 revolution president Jimmy Carter allowed the deposed Shah into the U.S. Fearing the Shah would be sent back to take over Iran as he had been in 1953, Iranian militants took over the U.S. embassy - where the 1953 coup was staged - and held hundreds hostage.
If there is anywhere in the world that American interference or support for one domestic group or another is counterproductive it is Iran. Kristol seems shocked that merely expressing support for the anti-ahmadenijad crowd will cause problems. He shouldnt be. Hilzoy passes this on,
"When my student bemoaned the cautiousness of Obama administration's statements, his brother confirmed one aspect of Spencer Ackerman's account of the administration's behavior, saying that government forces are already accusing protesters of collaborating with the U.S., and that protesters are actually worried that Obama will make an explicit show of support, as that would restore some credibility to what the government has said about the election and, more importantly, could undermine a reform coalition in which some factions are none-too-fond of America."
This is an Iranian domestic matter. If we want the reform movement to succeed it must maintain credibility. It will not have any credibility if the hardliners manage to portray it as a repeat of the mossadegh coup in 53. Instead of barging into a delicate domestic situation where even our words can cause damage we should refrain and instead we should listen and let the Iranian people take the lead.
Letting the domestic populace choose their own path and destiny instead of forcing one on them is the surest way to establishing an effective relationship with Iran. Only when the Iranian people make their wishes clear in regards to our actions should the US act at all. If the Iranian people need something from us they can ask. It is a sign of respect to allow a country to work out its own problems without believing you can solve it better than they can. It is -- after all -- their country.
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Matt Yglesias has a post up on the Obama foreign policy shift from hard power, ie military, to soft power, ie cultural and economic. As he notes the US is more than overdue for a refocus on the cultural and economic capabilities we posses when addressing crisis and conflict on the world stage. He has a further problem though revolving around the terminology and the perceived framing of the term "soft power". Yglesias writes,
Jim Arkedis suggests “civilian power” as an alternative term to the much-derided “soft power.” I think this suggestion actually shows that we don’t need one term to replace soft power, but rather that the underlying concept can probably be split into a few different ideas. One thing, that seems to be well-described as “civilian power” is the idea that the government needs to mobilize more of the non-military instruments available to us — things like diplomatic resources, technical assistance, development aid, etc. There are a lot of problems on the planet and not all of them can be solved primarily by blowing things up. But right now our budget is heavily tilted toward the “blowing things up” side of the ledger. We would do well to balance better.
But there’s also something else that, as I said before, I don’t think is well-captured by the term “power” at all. Maybe it’s easier to think about it in terms of another country. One thing that’s good about the United States is that we have a brand that, when we’re at our best, is very broadly appealing across ethnic and religious lines. By contrast, Iran can have strong appeal in southern Lebanon or in Iraq, but theocracy based on Shiite Islam is an inherently tough sell. Similarly, Putin-style Russian nationalism is a potent force in Russia, but hardly an ideology that’s ready to travel the globe. But insofar as the United States comes to be identified with torture, bullying, and aggressive warfare rather than with humane liberal values we lose that brand advantage.
As derided as it is, the terminology difference has never been a major deal to me. The context of the discussion has always been, "how do we move country x to position y?" We then divide it into two broad categories, the hard sell and the soft sell. The hard sell is aggressive, belligerent and threatening. The soft sell is more subtle, a carrot as opposed to a stick that leads people where they wanted to go anyway. I never bought the argument that using the term soft power versus hard power carried with it the implication that soft power was any weaker or less effective.
Yglesias though takes the route of attacking the term "power" itself. I think his point fails to connect. "Power" is simply the ability to move something from one position to another. Insofar as the ideology and cultural values of our country resonate with the average person around the globe they do have a "power". Our cultural and political system gives (or gave depending on your view) the US a greater ability to move countries' foreign and domestic policy. Power is simply a synonym for influence and because of this any word that carries similar meaning can serve instead of "Power".
The title of this post uses the word "inducement" and i think this serves equally with the term "power". We have civil means, diplomatic resources, technical assistance, development aid, as well as cultural features, that induce a country to comply with our wishes. Similarly we have military inducements, bombs, tanks, marines. I don't have confidence that one framing is all that much better than the other but if Yglesias is unhappy with the term "power" he certainly has the platform to work towards a change.
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There has been a great number of blog posts around the net expressing opinions on what Obama is doing with his national security and foriegn policy team. Keeping Gates at defense, bringing in Clinton to State, Jones as National Security Adviser with Tom Donilon as his Deputy and Susan Rice as the UN ambassador, Biden as VP. Instead of simply bitching about these people and whether they are new enough or left enough i want to get a little deeper into the weeds and see if we can sort out exactly what Obama wants to achieve with this group.
A lot of the critique of this group centers around the idea that Obama is selling out his positions that he staked out during the primaries. Many if not most of the aforementioned group were not strong backers of his exact positions across the board so questions about Obama's intent are more than ok, they are necessary. As the flotation of the Brennan nomination showed, making a strong case against someone can have an effect. Dissent is not a bad thing as long as it is reasoned. What appears to be driving the Obama picks is what appears to drive the Obama agenda in general, a broad consensus about what needs to be done,
What is interesting in my view is that what you now see forming is a broad consensus among liberals, liberal hawks and realists. There is relatively universal agreement among these groups that we need to begin withdrawing from Iraq, focus more on Afghanistan, opt for direct diplomacy with Iran, reengage with the world, improve our image, strengthen our alliances, close Guantanamo and deal with global warming and energy security.
That is a pretty broad consensus and it's one that politically was first pushed hardest by the left. On the traditional right-left spectrum, you would have to call this a solidly left of center consensus that has in fact been Obama's foreign policy platform for the last two years
It is reflected in Obama's ability to pick realists, liberals, and liberal hawks to build a coalition foreign policy team. It's unfair to typify any of Obama's picks as absolutely from one school but roughly speaking Obama campaign advisors and folks such as Susan Rice are more representative of liberals. Jim Jones and Bob Gates are more representative of the realists, and Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden are more representative of the liberal hawks. Although, again, none of these labels really fit perfectly.
Whats missing in that set of broad consensus but is still a critical part of Obama's ideas on foriegn policy is a focus less on the national level and more on the transnational and the subnational. Obama favors a shift to a soft power strategy that knows no boarders. Its a radical change but one that has the potential to deal with a number of our serious challenges. Back in March Salon had a piece entitled The Obama Doctrine. The central premise of this article is that Obama is centered on rettoling American foreign policy to target and fight against the potential terrorist and transnational groups. The label given to the soft power side of this is "Dignity Promotion"
This ability to see the world from different perspectives informs what the Obama team hopes will replace the Iraq War mind-set: something they call dignity promotion. "I don't think anyone in the foreign-policy community has as much an appreciation of the value of dignity as Obama does," says Samantha Power, a former key aide and author of the groundbreaking study of U.S. foreign policy and genocide, A Problem From Hell. "Dignity is a way to unite a lot of different strands [of foreign-policy thinking]," she says. "If you start with that, it explains why it's not enough to spend $3 billion on refugee camps in Darfur, because the way those people are living is not the way they want to live. It's not a human way to live. It's graceless -- an affront to your sense of dignity."
During Bush's second term, a strange disconnect has arisen in liberal foreign-policy circles in response to the president's so-called "freedom agenda." Some liberals, like Matthew Yglesias in his book Heads In The Sand, note the insincerity of the administration's stated goal of exporting democracy. Bush, they observe, only targets for democratization countries that challenge American hegemony. Other liberal foreign-policy types, such as Thomas Carothers and Marina Ottaway of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, insist the administration is sincere but too focused on elections without supporting the civil-society institutions that sustain democracy. Still others, like Kenneth Roth of Human Rights Watch, contend that a focus on democracy in the developing world without privileging the protection of civil and political rights is a recipe for a dangerous illiberalism.
What's typically neglected in these arguments is the simple insight that democracy does not fill stomachs, alleviate malaria, or protect neighborhoods from marauding bands of militiamen. Democracy, in other words, is valuable to people insofar as it allows them first to meet their basic needs. It is much harder to provide that sense of dignity than to hold an election in Baghdad or Gaza and declare oneself shocked when illiberal forces triumph. "Look at why the baddies win these elections," Power says. "It's because [populations are] living in climates of fear." U.S. policy, she continues, should be "about meeting people where they're at. Their fears of going hungry, or of the thug on the street. That's the swamp that needs draining. If we're to compete with extremism, we have to be able to provide these things that we're not [providing]."
This is why, Obama's advisers argue, national security depends in large part on dignity promotion. Without it, the U.S. will never be able to destroy al-Qaeda. Extremists will forever be able to demagogue conditions of misery, making continued U.S. involvement in asymmetric warfare an increasingly counterproductive exercise -- because killing one terrorist creates five more in his place. "It's about attacking pools of potential terrorism around the globe," Gration says. "Look at Africa, with 900 million people, half of whom are under 18. I'm concerned that unless you start creating jobs and livelihoods we will have real big problems on our hands in ten to fifteen years."
The focus on an actual shift to ways of fighting counter insurgency instead of paying lip service to fighting counter insurgents would be a major step in the right direction. However the transition requires more than a shift in the civilian side of things it requires a shift in the military side too. This is where keeping Gates at defense comes in according to Slate's Fred Kaplan and promoted by Steve Benen,
In his nearly two years at the helm of the Pentagon, Gates has delivered a series of speeches on the future direction of military policy. He has urged officers to recognize the shift in the face of warfare from the World War II legacy of titanic armored battles between comparably mighty foes to the modern reality of small shadow wars against terrorists and insurgents.
More than that, he has called for systematic adjustments to this new reality: canceling weapons systems that aren't suited to these kinds of wars and building more weapons that are; reforming the promotion boards to reward and advance the creative officers who have proved most adept at this style of warfare; rethinking the roles and missions of the individual branches of the armed services; siphoning some of the military's missions, especially those dealing with "nation building," to civilian agencies.
From the start, he knew that he wouldn't have time to make a lot of headway in these campaigns -- which, within the military, represent fairly radical ideas. His intent was to spell out an agenda, and lay the groundwork, for the next administration.
Now it seems he's going to be in the next administration. And it's a good bet that President Barack Obama will be more receptive to Gates' agenda than President George W. Bush ever was. First, Obama is open to new ideas generally. Second, at his Nov. 25 press conference, Obama said he would direct his new budget director to go over every program, every line item, with an eye toward eliminating those that don't work or aren't needed -- and he pointedly included the Department of Defense among the agencies to be audited.
In short, Gates might be able to do many of the things that until now he has managed only to advocate.
So whatever Gates other thoughts this idea of shifting is in line with Obama's thoughts. As Kaplan and Benen note the advantage of keeping Gates on to carry out this shift is that he is already familiar with the shifts that need to be made and has the street cred to carry them out with Obama's backing. A new face with the same idea's would take time getting up to speed and Obama has made clear that he plans to waste no time when he can avoid it.
Assuming Obama's chief goal is actually to fight terrorists it explains one of the reasons that he has been so close to the Brent Snowcroft school of foreign policy as Josh Marshall explains in this video.
Snowcrofts WSJ piece was premised on the idea that attacking Iraq would derail our counter terrorism efforts,
But the central point is that any campaign against Iraq, whatever the strategy, cost and risks, is certain to divert us for some indefinite period from our war on terrorism. Worse, there is a virtual consensus in the world against an attack on Iraq at this time. So long as that sentiment persists, it would require the U.S. to pursue a virtual go-it-alone strategy against Iraq, making any military operations correspondingly more difficult and expensive. The most serious cost, however, would be to the war on terrorism. Ignoring that clear sentiment would result in a serious degradation in international cooperation with us against terrorism. And make no mistake, we simply cannot win that war without enthusiastic international cooperation, especially on intelligence.
Scowcroft's thoughts do tend to go very well with what Obama has put forth. That segment of the foriegn policy establishment has been outspoken about the need to engage our enemies and stop the policy of ignoring people we dont like just as obama has. If were going to talk to people more we might want to go back to respecting the UN as an institution.
If Obama hopes to make major shifts in the way america works on the world stage he needs someone competent and important to head the UN. Susan Rice is that person. Susan Rice is someone who was with Obama during the primaries and was also a veteran of the Clinton white house. Her primary focus seems to be on Africa and she has been noted for her involvement in the lack of intervention in Rwanda. She is for intervention in Darfur. Her close ties to Obama may be taken as a signal that the US is giving that institution more respect. Obama is a big fan of multilateralism when available and if he hopes to make a major shift in the way the US combats terror world wide using the UN as an institutional vehicle is going to be very important. Obama has a history of being in the forefront of those dealing with Africa and the multitude of genocidal wars going on there and the UN spends a lot of time dealing with Africa so Susan rice seems like a good fit there.
Not much is known about General James Jones views on general foreign policy. His views on energy are one of the best understood because of his Sept 30th speech at Fort Collins Co where he came out for increased off shore drilling and increases in nuclear power. He views energy security as an important part of national security and advocated a policy of fixing our energy infrastructure that rachel maddow would be proud of. We also know that he views afghanistan/pakistan as an essential fight in defeating terrorism and is committed to a long term presence there. He shares that with obama. Jones' white paper on afghanistan is available in pdf form here.
The key to success - as in any counter-insurgency - rests on the Afghans. If enabled with effective security forces, the promise of a growing economy and legitimate institutions of government including the legal and judicial system, Afghanistan can become a functioning and secure country. This will take a great deal of time. Hence, nato and the international community must reaffirm its commitment for the long haul that will be measured in years and perhaps decades, though the form and substance of assistance will change as that nation progresses towards peace, stability and democracy.
But, if nato and the international community, together with the Karzai government, cannot put forward a coordinated and comprehensive effort that is sustainable and adequately resourced for this long-term, Afghanistan will experience only the worst of possible outcomes, and nato itself could be on the path towards irrelevancy. This need not be the case and it is still not too late to act decisively as the main foundations for solution are essentially in place. The first step is to understand that the situation in Afghanistan is grave and that immediate action and attention are needed by the United States and the international community in order to prevent a setback to regional and global security. Urgency is the watchword. The international community must act, and it must act now.
Jones and Obama clearly align on their views of what needs to be done regarding Afghanistan/Pakistan and the role they will play in combating transnational terrorist actors. Jones also has a healthy appreciation for the fact that military power alone is not close to strong enough to deal with the problems that plague Afghanistan. the paper devotes a great deal to the creation of a corruption free afghan judicial system. That is something that strikes me as an important step in fighting any group that thrives on the illegitimacy of the government. If we cannot establish the basic rule of law in that country how can we ever hope to have a people who meet the type of dignity level that obama clearly believes is important?
so far there are obvious areas of alignment between Obama's picks and his announced foreign policy ideas. Obama has always been an advocate of a strong interventionist and activist foriegn policy that places america in a firm and central role. Obama was very clear on his desire to engage John McCain on a debate about US foriegn policy during the election. It is an area he feels comfortable with despite his lack of hands on experience. The people he has picked reflect that. The only one who seems to be incongruous is Hillary Clinton.
I’ve been out of the country and not able to follow the Clinton for Secretary of State gossip in all the level of detail I would have liked. But surely I wouldn’t be the first to observe that this would seem like an odd pairing. Clinton and Obama are both formidable political leaders and, as we saw during the primaries, they have very similar ideas about the vast majority of public policy areas. But Obama thinks Clinton’s support for invading Iraq in 2002-2003 showed bad judgment and Clinton thinks Obama’s stated willingness to hold direct, high-level talks with Iran without preconditions is “naive and irresponsible.”
That’s not to say it’s a bad idea — what matters is ideas moving forward, not things that have been said in the past. But the specific policy area at issue seems to be one in which the two of them aren’t all that well-aligned.
On the other hand people like steve benen think it is a fine pick,
Between her Senate work and time as First Lady, Clinton has established international respect and credibility, and she's on a first-name basis with leaders around the world. She's arguably more hawkish than the President-elect, but when it comes to global diplomacy, there's no reason to think Clinton and Obama aren't on the same page.
The other worry is exactly how well she will run the agency and the overall look that the agency will take under Clinton. Clinton did not run a great campaign and the drama could be considered quite epic. Spencer Ackerman laid out the big questions,
The dispute is only partly ideological in nature. While the coterie of foreign-policy thinkers around Obama have been more liberal, in an aggregate sense — on issues like Iraq and negotiations with America’s adversaries — the Obama loyalists question the boldness of the Clintonites. They fear that Obama’s apparent embrace of Clinton represents an acquiescence to the conventional Democratic foreign-policy approaches that they once derided as courting disaster. Some wonder whether a Clinton-run State Dept. will hire progressive Obama partisans after an acrimonious primary.
In addition, some Obama loyalists wonder whether the same people who attacked Obama on foreign policy during the primaries can implement Obama’s agenda from State Dept. perches. “Look, Clinton and Obama are both smart people,” said one Democratic official who would not speak for the record, “and I’m sure their one-on-one relationship would be OK. But when you hire a Clinton, you hire more than just that one person, you get the entire package.” If Clinton becomes secretary of state, it’s possible that the fissures between her loyalists and Obama’s would be a significant undercurrent of the administration’s foreign-policy decision-making.
No one would comment for the record for this story from either the Clinton or the Obama camps. Several people were reluctant to speak even on background, whether out of an exhaustion with a dispute that has lasted for more than 18 months within the party or out of reluctance to jeopardize their own prospects for jobs with the Obama administration.
Some in the Democratic foreign-policy community worry about the implications for a cohesive diplomatic message, given the differences in substance and tone between the supporters of the two Democratic giants.
“Foreign policy is probably where Clinton and Obama differ the most,” said the Democratic official. “They just have fundamentally different instincts. On the big decisions, Obama can and will certainly call the shots, but the consistency of follow-through could really be a problem. And the instincts on the smaller decisions will be very different. Cohesion of our foreign policy could suffer.”
So Clinton seems political in nature to me. Maybe she plays bad cop to Obama's good cop or maybe she was promised something during the election season. Whatever the reason i really dont see that she was the best choice, the most logical choice for the position. Because of this i have a hard time anticipating exactly how Clinton is going to work out. That is an appointment that only time can sort out.
Generally speaking the choices for Obama's foriegn policy team represent the broad non-neocon consensus about what america needs to do in foriegn policy. When Obama speaks about ending the mindset that got us into the iraq war i think he is not talking about a huge reevaluation about the role of america's primacy on the world stage but instead a shift away from great power state level dealings to a more transnational approach.
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February 7 1962, President Kennedy orders his Press Secretary and close friend Pierre Salinger to go out and to purchase him Cuban Petit Upmann cigars. Salinger managed to acquire 1200 of the cigars. The next day Kennedy signed into law a ban on all trade with Cuba, except for non-subsidized sale of foods and medicines. This story is both legendary and true. People like to credit Kennedy with initiating the ban but his was only an expansion of earlier legislation from the Eisenhower administration. Regardless of who exactly started it the isolation of Cuba has been one of the biggest and most glaring policy failures in US history.
Numerous polls have been conducted on the questions of ending the ban and reestablishing diplomatic relations with Cuba. Typically 60%+ would support reestablishing diplomatic ties. The public splits 40-40 on whether the embargo should end or continue. However people think American should be allowed to travel to Cuba based on responses to questions involving interest.
The point in bringing up Cuba is that it could be a potent electoral topic. It is a prime example of the failure of isolation and so has relevance to the current US foriegn policy debate.
Last night in the debate there was a section on the idea of preconditions. Obama came out in favor of meetings without preconditions and McCain continues to demand that we make people give up something before we condescend to talk to them. Here is the video its about 5 minutes long.
Obama focuses mostly on N Korea and on Iran. The debate deals with primarily with the possible meeting with mahmoud ahmadinejad. What is missing here is the use of Cuba as an example of what happens under McCain's foreign policy. Cuba has sat there and its people have suffered for 46 years now as we have isolated it. What has avoiding talks with Cuba produced? Nothing.
I use Cuba as an illustrative point because a change in policy is widely supported at least to the extent of reestablishing diplomatic relations. i suspect not to many people would be upset if we ended the embargo. The polls do not include a very important question that lets us understand how strongly people hold their views, "how upset would you feel if the opposite of your views happened? Very, some what or not at all upset".
People view Kennedy as the father of the embargo but fail to realize that it was actually Reagan who should be credited with the embargo in its current form. After being elected Reagan reestablished the travel ban -- it had been removed under Carter -- and prohibited U.S. citizens from spending money in Cuba, and allowed the 1977 fishing accord to lapse. He made sure to ban travel to the U.S. by Cuban government or Communist Party officials or their representatives and most students, scholars, and artists.
Many people believe that discussing this would be impossible because of the electoral implications in Florida. However the landscape has changed their as well. The changes were evident in the ex-pat communities response to the Elian Gonzalez incident of 2001.
In its aftermath, the Cuban American rightwing splintered. Its more hard-line members formed what is known as the Cuba Liberty Council (CLC) who are behind the Bush administration policy on Cuba - while the CANF has now become an advocate of a somewhat softer line. This split in the leadership of the Cuban American Florida community reflects the demographic change that is now directly affecting the presidential race...
...More significantly, within the Miami Dade Cuban community, the figures show a majority now supporting a re-establishment of diplomatic relations. A Florida International University poll of Miami Dade County residents conducted in February 2007 found that 57.2 per cent supported a restoration of diplomatic relations. 65 per cent of respondents said they would support a dialogue with Cuban government, (this compared with 55.6% in a similar poll in 2004). Although a majority of 57.5 per cent said they still support the embargo this figure had dropped from 66 per cent in 2004. Most importantly however, 64 per cent said they support a return to the policies governing travel and remittances that pertained in 2003 before the Bush administration tightened them.
With a majority in Miami Dade wanting a return to the travel policies of 2003, this has become a key element in the current election race because the Democrats have chosen to fight the current Congressional election on this issue (see, for example, Southern Political Report, 'Florida's Three Cuban Representatives Face Challenges' February 25, 2008). Two prominent Cuban Americans, the former head of the Cuban National Foundation and former head of the local Democratic Party, Joe García and the former Mayor of Hialeah, Raúl Martínez, are running against rightwing Cuban-American Republicans Lincoln and Mario Díaz-Balart respectively. A Colombian American Democrat, Annette Taddeo, is opposing Ileana Ros-Lehtinen. Speaking on BBC News 24 on February 19th about Fidel Castro's retirement, García said it was time for "a more pragmatic policy towards Cuba." This contest has now spilled over into the presidential race, making this the first election since the Cold War that the candidates will have contested over Cuba policy.
Obama has already started down the path of softening the US policy towards Cuba. He has made it clear that he intends to allow for increased travel for the Cuban-Americans to Cuba.
"There are no better ambassadors for freedom than Cuban Americans. That's why I will immediately allow unlimited family travel and remittances to the island. It's time to let Cuban Americans see their mothers and fathers, their sisters and brothers. It's time to let Cuban American money make their families less dependent upon the Castro regime."
McCain of course is totally committed to keeping the same decades old line in place with regards to Cuba. It just so happens that this is an issue where he is on the wrong side of the american people. People do not view Cuba as a threat. The American people see that we trade with China and Russia and Iran. We deal with plenty of people who are not our allys and yet we are hostile to a tiny island that represents the last vestiges of a failed ideology.
Cuba is a perfect case study for Obama to use in his argument that isolation is a failure. Our policy towards Cuba is one out of place in the world we currently live in. Obama has staked his campaign on the idea that the American people are not stupid. America is ready for a change regarding its cuba policy and it can be a home run for Obama.
For More information on the potential benefits of a relaxed US Cuba policy read this pdf , “The necessity of ending the economic, commercial and financial blockade imposed by the United States of America against Cuba”
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People have been talking about the lack of eye contact and acknowledgment John McCain gave to Barack Obama during the debate. I think this had a big impact on people who watched it. McCain's lack of direct dealing with Obama revealed him to be inflexible and made him look less confident and defensive during most of the debate.
McCain's inability to actually interact with Obama made it look like he had less confidence in his positions versus Obama. It looks like he was trying to run from Obama. McCain spent all of his time talking away from Obama in a way that made him look weaker than Obama as if he was appealing to people outside the debate instead of actually debating Obama. Obama was debating McCain and engaging him directly, putting his positions and his answers under fire. Instead of facing up to Obama he was turned away from him at all times.
It made it look like mccain was less confident because of his inflexibility. In the way he gave his answers he look rigid. He could not face Obama with his canned and fairly unoriginal answers. McCain would not be able to deviate from the preplanned script. Obama in contrast looked natural and more in command of the material. He was able to engage McCain directly and his answers had more weight behind them because they were addressed right to mccain. He put the pressure onto McCain and McCain did not handle it well.
McCain's repeated repetition that Obama was naive or lacked judgment were likely the talking points his campaign picked out for him. Instead of looking strong though it looked like McCain was a little desperate in trying to convince people that what Obama was saying was wrong. If he had adressed Obama directly looked him into the eyes and told him he did not get it the results would have been far different.
When i watch two people vying for leadership debate something i want to see that they can face the person and attack their arguments head on. McCains refusal to face up to obama made him look like the weaker of the two candidates. Many people have taken his refusal to face obama as contempt but i took it as fear. McCain knows he is floundering and he wa trying to run from that tonight and he failed.
I follow politics and i have a degree in political science and a minor in history. Someday i will have a law degree. I am a member of the millennial generation and take pride in that.
I started blogging because i had the desire to discuss and debate political issues with other people and because i thought i might, on rare occasions, have good insight.
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