Good for him if he wants out of Afghanistan. Here's to the appointment of a Secretary of State in the same vein, and then it might actually happen.
He is a Warren Christopher protégé, so he holds out some hope of a return to a more realistic American foreign policy than has obtained continuously since the appointment of Mad Madge Albright to the State Department way back when. But, as I say, Albright's preferred Presidential candidate would have to be replaced at State for that to happen. Clinton's blatant positioning for a 2012 challenge fully deserves to get her fired, but it won't.
Ultimately, this appointment is a missed opportunity. The neocons never delivered, nor will the Tea Party ever deliver, a paleocon (Philip Giraldi?) in a senior foreign policy position, just as the neocons never delivered, nor will the Tea Party ever deliver, a white Evangelical on the Supreme Court. Obama has now missed both tricks, the second one twice. He may not get another chance on either score.
Yet those constituencies, one of them deeply disaffected with the GOP for at least 10 years now, the other increasingly so (the Tea Party has terrible trouble reaching Evangelicals), could have been, if not his exactly, then at least willing to hold their noses for him, or to stay at home rather than turn out and vote against him, or to back third party or Independent candidates of their own in the knowledge that that would aid his victory over some neocon and Tea Party Republican.
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If the stories are true, Obama's biggest challenges in shaping Afghan policy will come from the military, which is disappointing.
ReplyDeleteI thought the generals were more realistic than the civilian leadership, but generals like Petraeus have invested so much in the success of counterinsurgency doctrine that I am afraid they will lobby to stay in Afghanistan for a very long time. Still, the Donilon appointment is some good news.