I am right, I swear I'm right
As I've said and written before, he's not much different than the guy before him and certainly not that different from his main opponent, Sen. McCain.
And it's been said before: The new boss is beginning to look a lot like the old boss. Take a minute to read
posted by Patrick Copeland @ 5:14 PM
4 Comments
4 Comments:
Oh, come now, P. Cope. That's a bit of an overstatement. After all, the right wing of America is making a living at the moment by pointing out how different Obama is from Bush through their tea parties and what not. The article itself is a bit of an overstatement as well. He's absolutely right about the military tribunals, and I don't like them any more under Obama any more than I did under Bush.
But a slow Iraq withdrawal is still a withdrawal. In all of the pre-election debates, Obama championed the need to send more troops to Afghanistan. The fact that congress has put the kiebash on the closing of Guantanamo is certainly not Obama's fault, and members of congress are already changing their tune. That is to say, Guantanamo is not "looking pretty good."
In the broad sense, foreign policy is but one part of being President, and the war on terror/detainee justice - which is exclusively what this article deals with - is but one part of foreign policy. Everyone knew that change was going to be slow to come, and no one wanted Obama to rule as much like a leftist idealogue as Bush was a right-wing idealogue. It's still a vast overstatement to say that Obama is "not that different" from Bush.
I guess it should be clarified, that it's actually not really Obama that is much like Bush. And that I'm actually rooting for the guy. I think his campaign was one of the best I've witnessed and can only hope that his lofty promises can be fulfilled.
The issue that I struggle with most is that a lot of the policies that are not going to change are not really up to Obama. It's the system that is larger than Barack that is keeping things the way they are.
I think now it's just showing up that Obama is only a small agent for change (although I wish that weren't true), but that he can only push his good agenda so far because of Big Government.
Thanks for the comment. I love it when this can bring about a conversation. Even if someone disagrees with me (which, honestly is quite often. Should that say something about me?).
Recently, somewhere out there in TV land, I heard someone commenting about this sequence of events - Guantanamo, military tribunals, etc. - and the excuse/reason was put out there that there is a stark difference between a Presidential candidate's knowledge of these situations and a Presidents.
I never really liked Bush. I don't really trust politicians on a whole. However, they do know more than me about these things. I am willing to go along with some of these breaks from Obama's campaign because I simply don't know the real answers and now, more than ever, he does.
Ultimately, Obama is putting a much better face on the same old problems and I feel like we're a long way from permanently turning things around, at least from a morality and ethics perspective.
That's totally the case, AQ. The day that Obama had his Oval Office briefing of "Confidential Gov't Files" I knew he was in for a shock. And, like I told Austin, I am rooting for the guy, but I don't think there's a ton of truly critical issues that he's going to be able to change because of the jacked up system. He had such a fight for closing G.B., but then Congress slammed in the votes.
Even the Commander in Chief can't get good things past a broken system and that's why I think a lot of things might stick the way they were with the old guy...oh....what's his name?
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