I feel like I’m watching Walter Mondale run for President when I listen to some of Obama’s surprisingly left-wing positions, viz.:
Senator Barack Obama will propose on Tuesday setting a goal of eliminating all nuclear weapons in the world, saying the United States should greatly reduce its stockpiles to lower the threat of nuclear terrorism, aides say.
I don’t know where to begin. But how ’bout this one: we have a tiny conventional military compared to rest of the world, and countries that are competitive with us like China, India, Russia, North Korea, and Venezuela will be able to act with impunity if we give up our conversation-ending nuclear capability. Greater parity of arms leads to more wars, not less. Exhibit A: notice the lack of a general European war since the advent of nuclear arms.
Our nukes allow us to protect ourselves and our interests. They allow the same for other nuclear powers. We’re not little kids sharing toys. False notions of fairness and equity should not fit into our calculations. This is international relations, and the language is power, because the relations of nations are essentially in a state anarchy. Frequently the gain of another nation, particularly another nation with whom we have conflicting interests, is our loss. Because the power of states is only important in relative terms, it is not in our interest for other nations in the developing world to get nuclear weapons, and it is no one’s interests for rogue states like Iran to do so.
Without nuclear weapons, we cannot deter such nations from attacking us, nor make credible offers of protection. These two capabilities come from nuclear means and are the only means by which we can prevent these nations from developing nukes for themselves. In any case, the goal of nuclear disarmament, considering our relative weakness conventionally, is pie-in-the-sky and unrealisitc. Obama’s return to this faddish issue from his youth shows how mired he remains in the fever swamps of liberalism when it comes to foreign policy.
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I think Space Cadet Obama’s handlers are looking to the VP box in the Clinton Administration’s organization chart.
Here’s the probable game plan: they know Obama’s not going to get the presidential nomination. But they also know Hillary will have to wear a certain amount of rightist makeup in the election campaign to pull in middle-of-the-roaders and Republican bail-outs.
Obama can be her voice box for speaking to the left-wing fanatics who might consider her not MovingOn enough, reassuring them that HilBar really know the score and that (wink wink) she just has to pose as a moderate till the election’s done gone.
What’s in it for Obama? He (or his handlers) surely know that he could never rise as far as VP without attaching himself to a shark. VP is all he’ll ever get, but it should be enough to keep him in book contracts, speaking engagements, and TV chat show appearances for the rest of his natural life.
I think he really believes it, though, which is the scary thing.
Bambi-boy would rather fight with boypower.