restraint's nice, but this isn't:

"“The Democrats have been stuck in the arguments of Vietnam, which means that either you’re a Scoop Jackson Democrat or you’re a Tom Hayden Democrat and you’re suspicious of any military action. And that’s just not my framework.”

That's good ol triangulation from Obama, positioning himself against all those doves who allegedly hold a powerful position in the party.

I think people initially though Obama was a Hayden Dem. Too bad he isn't.

John Edwards' prescription that Americans need to be patriotic about something other than war seems to fit into this meme.

“The Democrats have been stuck in the arguments of Vietnam, which means that either you’re a Scoop Jackson Democrat or you’re a Tom Hayden Democrat and you’re suspicious of any military action. And that’s just not my framework.”

Unless I'm missing something, Obama seems to be saying BOTH the hawks and the doves are missing the point. We have a much larger toolbox in foreign affairs than the standard boilerplate would admit. That seems like a good thing, and hardly triangulation.

"That seems like a good thing, and hardly triangulation."

It certainly fits my definition of triangulation, whereby you position yourself roughly midwy between libs and cons. What exactly is wrong with being suspicious of military action? Shouldn't that be a minimum requirement no matter how apparently just the cause.

What exactly is wrong with being suspicious of military action?

That's what really bothered me about that quote. For the sake of all that is holy: it is a moral and practical imperative to be highly suspicious of each and every military action. That's not to say military action is never justified (though these situations are pretty rare). But at the very, very least we should be suspicious when somebody comes along advocating it.

Obama seems to share the same basic perspective as many in the media and political elite: when someone comes along advocating war, the burden of proof is placed on those who oppose the war. This is 180 degrees from the way it should be.

Maybe Obama just misspoke. I don't know. But if he really means what he said, it almost disqualifies him to hold the position of commander in chief, because if he's president, there will be someone telling him we have to go to war.

This permanent war posture cannot last. We HAVE to get to a point, and quickly, where we can start making massive cuts in our military budget. The way we are going now is not sustainable.

I suppose we should judge Obama's views on foreign policy through the frame of exactly one quote. It's not like there aren't extensive interviews where he has shown himself to be highly suspicious of military action, and it's also not like he made a speech that was highly suspicious of this war. No, let's just call him a triangulator and militaristic on the basis of one quote.

Or maybe Obama was thinking like this person was when he said, "The United States, as the world knows, will never start a war. We do not want a war. We do not now expect a war. This generation of Americans has already had enough — more than enough — of war and hate and oppression. We shall be prepared if others wish it. We shall be alert to try to stop it. But we shall also do our part to build a world of peace where the weak are safe and the strong are just. We are not helpless before that task or hopeless of its success." JFK Address at The American University, Washington D.C. (10 June 1963)

"The United States, as the world knows, will never start a war. Now, if you'll excuse me, I have a war to start."

It's pretty impressive what you can do with only $6 trillion spent over the course of 60 years. In that time we've managed to assassinate most of the labor leaders (and many of the journalists) in the Third World, staved off the introduction of democracy for 30 or 40 years, actually persuaded some countries to dismantle their railroads and substitute dirt roads ('the magic of the marketplace') and built 600 overseas bases to soak up our taxes for all of eternity.

I was chatting with an older ('Greatest Generation') woman about the flooding we had recently in the PNW. When I suggested that culverts under the roads could prevent a lot of problems, she observed that there would be plenty of money to do that if we didn't have that war in Iraq.

But by and large Americans are seamlessly knit into an economy that depends on endless pump-priming by military spending. After all, you can't call it socialism if the money produces nothing of value!

A most astounding thing is that we actually have more insight into what's happening to us right now than we do of the past. In 1965 you had a huge number of 'Baby Boomers' entering an economy where automation was dramatically shrinking the number of workers required to do any job. In all the recent huffing and puffing about the 60s I've never seen this very basic point mentioned.

I once blew a history test by not remembering that it was our two oceans that protected us from invasion. Apparently I'm not alone in that shortcoming.

The tone of this post is one of "elderly liberalism" . The tone of the blog has become more elderly leftist since it moved to TAP. Reminds me of the stuff I heard growing up in a communist family back, way back in the fifties. The typeface is retro. Go back, Ezra, to where you were. Get back, get back

The problem with that, as we're seeing with the current Democratic Congress, is that when you make a mentality out of compromise and concession, you get rolled over on domestic as well as foreign affairs.