Obama’s Foreign Policy Follies (UPDATED)
By Larry Johnson on March 7, 2008 at 5:39 PM in Current Affairs
The American people are getting a chance to see how unprepared Barack Obama’s team of advisors are to help lead this country through the minefield of foreign policy problems that await the next President. Thank God Barack’s advisors are not allowed to carry firearms. They have spent the past week metaphorically shooting themselves in the feet and other delicate areas. Just imagine the damage they would do with real bullets.
We started with the Austan Goolsbee flap. You know, Barack’s senior economics advisor who told the Canadians essentially that Senator Obama’s public comments about NAFTA did not reflect his true feelings. Poor Austan did not understand that foreign governments take notes and file reports with their counterparts back home.
(UPDATED) Good lord! Obamatrons really are pathetic. They construct a complete bullshit story that the Clinton campaign was somehow responsible for the Goolsbee blow up. Well, the Canadians say, “Nonsense!”:
Democratic presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton never gave Canada any secret assurances about the future of NAFTA such as those allegedly offered by Barack Obama’s campaign, Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s office said Friday.
Not to be outdone, Susan Rice, a senior foreign policy advisor, jumps into the fray and essentially shoots Barack in the back when she admits that neither Barack Obama nor Hillary Clinton are qualified to answer a crisis phone call at 3am.
But wait, there is more. Samantha Powers, another high powered foreign policy advisor personally selected by Obama, calls Hillary Clinton a monster and then pulls a Goolsbee–she tells the BBC that Barack’s stated plan to withdraw two battalions a month from Iraq is not firm and will depend on what the situation on the ground is in January of 2009. While that may be a sensible position it does not jive with Obama’s public position. And in a Presidential campaign a major task for any candidate is to persuade voters that he or she can be trusted. Well, this string of advisors saying their candidate does not mean what he says does not build the warm and fuzzy feeling among prospective voters.
But that’s not all. John Brennan joined the party. Think Progress has the story:
Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL) has consistently spoken out and voted against granting retroactive immunity for telecoms that participated with the administration’s warrantless wiretapping program. This stance was part of the reason he won the support of Sen. Chris Dodd (D-CT), a leader on civil liberties issues.
One of Obama’s advisers on intelligence and foreign policy advisers, however, is someone who “strongly” supports telecomm immunity. John Brennan is a former CIA official and the current chairman of the Intelligence and National Security Alliance. In a new National Journal interview, Brennan makes it clear that he agrees with the Bush administration on the issue of immunity.
Brennan is not some “Johnny come lately” adviser. He’s an experienced hand. Brennan headed the National Counter Terrorism Center in his last job in the Bush Administration. It was under John Brennan’s watch that the Bush Administration issued false statistics on the number of terrorist attacks in 2004. He tried to cook the books and keep the public in the dark that terrorist attacks had soared to unprecedented levels. So if he is taking a position directly opposite of his candidate it has to mean he’s gotten the same wink and nod that Austan Goolsbee and Samantha Powers got from Senator Obama.
Now, everyone can make a mistake. But this is ridiculous. These people cannot be trusted to accurately represent their candidate’s public positions on key issues and Senator Obama wants the American people to trust his judgment in selecting folks to run the bureaucracies that he already admitted he can’t run? God save us.
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