Thread: All of Obama's apointees are hawks that favored the Iraq invasion

Antiwar Groups Fear Hawkish Cabinet

Posted November 20, 2008

As President-elect Barack Obama’s national security team begins to take shape, there is increasing disquiet among antiwar activists that his appointees and rumored appointees have thus-far, without exception, favored the Iraq invasion and held hawkish foreign policy positions.

The persistent reports that Obama is in talks with Secretary of Defense Robert Gates about keeping his position in the new administration had already prompted loud complaints that keeping him on was not in keeping with his campaign’s mantra of change. His apparent preference to make Sen. Hillary Clinton his Secretary of State, despite all the times he publicly trashed her position on the Iraq War during the primaries, has only added to those concerns.

But nowhere in Obama’s “Team of Rivals” cabinet is any suggestion of an appointee less-hawkish than himself, meaning his increasingly tenuous claim to being an antiwar politician will serve as the base-line for his administration’s foreign policy, with his cabinet pulling it in ever more bellicose directions.

Editorial director of Antiwar.com Justin Raimondo says that “the likely appointment of Hillary Clinton as secretary of state should disabuse even the most brain-dead of Obama’s supporters that we won’t be seeing much change in American foreign policy. If I were an Iranian, I’d start digging a bomb shelter.”

Raimondo rather sees antiwar Republican Sen. Chuck Hagel as a much better fit for a key role, saying “that would be an unmistakable sign from the Obama camp that they really are nonpartisan.”

Kelly Dougherty, executive director of Iraq Veterans Against the War complains that “Obama ran his campaign around the idea the war was not legitimate, but it sends a very different message when you bring in people who supported the war from the beginning.

More of the same. Shame we told the fools who believed in Obama that he was more of the same. That is what America gets for being stupid. F*ck Obama, and F*ck the idiots who voted for him.

Originally Posted by Horhey

Editorial director of Antiwar.com Justin Raimondo says that “the likely appointment of Hillary Clinton as secretary of state should disabuse even the most brain-dead of Obama’s supporters that we won’t be seeing much change in American foreign policy. If I were an Iranian, I’d start digging a bomb shelter.”

Rhetoric like this from an editor is pretty much why I dismissed that site long ago as a tool of people hellbent on one perspective and and not able to differentiate between the war in Afghanistan, the war in Iraq, or any other situation that we have in the middle east.

I still maintain that we cannot judge an administration that hasn't even manned post yet.

Originally Posted by Ronin Tetsuro

I still maintain that we cannot judge an administration that hasn't even manned post yet.

If you want to know how a president will govern, look at the record of the people in his administration. Bush ran on a humble foriegn policy and against nation building, but he had Cheney, Rumsfeld, and Wolfowitz in his cabinet and look what happenned.

Or you can just look at history. The US has been an imperial super power since Eisenhower. And the empire has been maintained by every administration since then. No president alone will end it or they wouldnt have had a chance to get elected in the first place. Principled candidates that dont conform to established doctrine are marginalized and ridiculed in the media and their oponents get all of the financial and political support of US power centers.

Obama speaks in platitudes. The way he presents himself is kind of a blank slate - so you can write down whatever you like - and there are a few slogans: "hope", "unity", "change" - now write down whatever you like there. And it does arouse enhusiasm. You can understand why. The last 8 years have been pretty grim. There is tremendous disatisfaction with institutions. Theres alot of talk of Bush's very low poll numbers, but people sometimes overlook the fact that Congress is polling even lower.

Almost all institutions arent trusted and theres a sense that everything is going wrong. So when somebody says "hope", "unity", "change", talks eloquently, nice looking guy and so on. 'Yea that's fine'. Alot of people are unaware of the "strong line of continuity" of the empire, so it's understandable why they might be excited about the new administration.