I've been meaning to write about the primaries and caucus season for a while now. I'm finally putting finger to keyboard while coverage of Super Tuesday results coming in plays in the background in my hotel room.
Focus internationally has been on the foreign policy planks of the various candidates. Obviously, this matters. The US sets the agenda for international relations, and as we have seen over the last few years, if this is wrong, it will lead to disasterous results. US Presidents spend a lot of time on foreign policy, not least because of the restrictive conditions they work on when it comes to domestic issues like health and eduction (by contrast, our prime minister has a full hand to play on these fields, so quite what excuse Tony Blair had for the amount of time he spent abroad is for him to answer).
A lot of comparisons have been made between the electoral process in the US compared with ours. This usually focuses in on the romanticism of the system with Iowa et al (I’m not sure it’s that great – it did turn out George W Bush after all). For me though, despite the stereotype of all parties in the US being more or less the same, the candidates have represented a breadth of opinion.
By now, some of these have bowed out. On the Democrat side, arguably the only one that took a very progressive stance on foreign policy was Dennis Kucinich. His forthright views were matched by one other – Ron Paul – who despite all caricatures of the party, is a Republican.
When looking at his policy platform further, my flabber was gasted when I read his opposition to the fractional reserve and belief that currency should be asset backed - not something you hear talked about very often. But on foreign policy, Paul held a press conference with former head of CIA’s Bin Laden unit Michael Scheuer, laying out fully his views on the al-Qaeda terror phenomenon. This was after Paul was denounced for saying that US foreign policy was a “contributing factor” in creating terrorism.
This should be a key determinant on who is selected. It’s not an issue the candidates can be indifferent on. Either they are war mongering or they are not. If they do not recognise that Iraq is a major factor in the terrorism threat, then the likelihood of them committing that mistake is there to be repeated again. Hillary voted for Iraq, and anyone with judgement that bad should be discounted for this office. Bill Clinton in fact set up this problem during the 1990s, and my guess is that despite how we like to caricature Bush and the neocons that succeeded him, I do wonder how much would have been different if Bill had still been in office.
Anyway, the fact it was Republicans that did it has given the Democrats the opportunity for renewal, and there is no doubting the sense of purpose flowing through their ranks. I watched my first Obama speech the night of arriving here on C-Span. I’ve got to admit that while I’d heard a lot of scepticism of how progressive he was, I was genuinely impressed.
He was to the left of anything you hear in London. He talked openly about taxing the rich, and reducing the burden on people earning less. He spoke against the $11bn a quarter profits of Exxon Mobil. He talked of sitting down with car manufacturers to enforce new cars being built to perform at 40mpg. He said Guantanamo should be closed. This man could be in the White House in November.
I like Obama, there's something about him that reminds me of a moderate Malcolm X. But in regards to foreign policy there are some things that would please even the neo-con hawks. He said he would support US air strikes into Pakistani territory against militants based there, who have just forced the army into a truce, without Islamabad's permission and he said that the USA should not be deterred by the UN from unilateral intervention in certain places and the that US should keep the role of "sheriff of the free world" against Russia and China.
Posted by: Umar | 07 February 2008 at 04:28 PM