Political Wrinkles - View Single Post - Cast of hundreds advises Obama on foreign policy

cnredd · #4 (**permalink**) 07-18-2008, 08:44 PM

Excellent commentary I found on this while surfing...

Quote:

Barack Obama has 300 advisors on foreign policy. What?? That includes the Winnie-the Pooh fellow and 299 other “experts” who, we are led to believe, didn’t catch Obama’s “syntax” error on “undivided Jerusalem.” Did not one of the 300 know about the history of presidential summitry? And none of them thought it might have saved a heap of trouble for Obama if once during his primary campaign he had a briefing with General Petraeus or trip to Iraq?

One of several things is going on. One possibility: this unwieldy and bloated operation is utterly ineffective and doesn’t prevent or catch errors. There are lots of them, but they aren’t very good, even according to other Democrats. Or: they are there for window dressing to provide the patina of national security expertise when, in fact, the major foreign policy objectives are really driven by domestic ideology (e.g. we can’t admit Iraq has anything to do with Al Qaeda or the netroot will go nuts).

Most troubling is the possibility that the performance of the campaign’s foreign policy apparatus is a preview of the Obama administration’s foreign policy apparatus. There are apparently hundreds (if not thousands) of folks waiting to join the State and Defense Departments who hold beliefs that defy evidence and logic. They honestly believe that Iraq is unimportant, unconditional direct talks with Iran will unlock the promise of world peace, we can talk up protectionism at home without scaring our trading partners, and the less input from military commanders in war zones the better.

Take your pick as to which theory makes the most sense. But 300? I guess it takes a lot of people to script a foreign trip so tightly that there is no room for a gaffe.