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The Spectacle Blog
In today’s New York Times, Ross Douthat argues that the overlap in foreign policies between George W. Bush and Barack Obama is substantial. It’s a point that can’t be repeated too often:
Imagine, for a moment, that these were George W. Bush’s policies at work. A quest for regime change in Libya, conducted without even a pro forma request for Congressional approval. A campaign of remote-controlled airstrikes, in which collateral damage is inevitable, carried out inside a country where we are not officially at war. A policy of targeted assassination against an American citizen who has been neither charged nor convicted in any U.S. court.
Imagine the outrage, the protests, the furious op-eds about right-wing tyranny and neoconservative overreach. Imagine all that, and then look at the reality. For most Democrats, what was considered creeping fascism under Bush is just good old-fashioned common sense when the president has a “D” beside his name.
Perhaps the best example of this phenomenon is the widespread celebration of the “SEAL Team 6” that killed Osama, which Seymour Hersch labeled an “executive assassination squad” when it was associated with Dick Cheney.
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More Blog Posts by Joseph Lawler
http://spectator.org/blog/2011/05/09/bush-obama-foreign-policy
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Dan| 5.9.11 @ 12:24PM
There's a prob here.
In 2012, the GOP is going to be out there accusing Obama of all kinds of radicalism, one of which is that he has initiated a radical foreign policy, which is a sharp departure from the existing norm.
But now here you are saying, {crowing really} that Obama is continuing along the same trajectory laid out by Bush, and that as Rick Santorum has said, Obama's only successes in terms of foreign policy have happened precisely because of that continuation.
So what is it going to be?
Is he a wild-eyed radical who hasn't a clue? Or is he a cold-blooded realist continuing the policies of his Republican predecessor?
Republicans out there crowing that Obama only realized this victory because of policies laid down by Bush are only driving home the message that Obama isn't as radical as Republicans would like to portray him. And so I ask you, ------------------- is that really the message we want to convey?
I know for sure it isn't the message I'd be driving home.
Conservative Bob| 5.9.11 @ 1:11PM
The video of bowing and scraping on the apology tours plus time lines the dithering over every important decision will help clarify.
glenny| 5.9.11 @ 1:38PM
Hypocrisy, thy name is Democrat.
Dan| 5.9.11 @ 2:59PM
We're not going to win any elections pushing the theme that Dems are fond of hypocrisy. Maybe as a minor point in rebuttal, such as when accusing Gore of emitting all kinds of the very greenhouse gases that he endlessly tells us are killing and destroying.
But for the general public, all that accomplishes is a rolling of the eyeballs as nothing more than politics as usual.
Pete| 5.9.11 @ 2:12PM
The liberal whine would be deafening had this been Bush. Executing an unarmed man (when his capture and interrogation could have saved thousands of lives) without international "approval?" High crime.
SpiralArchitect| 5.9.11 @ 2:23PM
Unlikely many TAS readers disagree with your observation(s).
Please consider your health and desist these articles, consider your health, high blood pressure in the least. :)
Wayne | 5.9.11 @ 3:09PM
So Obama turns out to be a closet NEO-con, surprise, surprise. He has adopted the worse of the Bush presidency, not the best. They both also bailed out GM and Wall street.
BSDN| 5.9.11 @ 3:13PM
Anybody that's been paying attention, since the beginning of his administration, knows that current CEO's real name is Geo. W. Obama.
OK, OK, for the lamestream media, it takes a little bit longer. But really. This is news?
Where have this guy been? Incommunicado in a Tora Bora cave? Under house arrest inAbbottabad?
(Which is how come we know the BC is fake. The Hawaii Dept. of Records got it wrong, whatever Donald "Your papers, please" Trump thinks or bloviates.)