The toxic Texan's foreign policy doctrine will endure

[laststeamtrain]

The toxic Texan's foreign policy doctrine will endure

The next US president is likely to follow Bush's approach to the brute realities of terrorism, Iraq and the Middle East

Timothy Lynch and Robert Singh
Guardian
Tuesday June 10 2008

American presidential elections are reliable occasions for political futurology. This year's has yielded at least one prediction on which Democrats and Republicans can concur and which European liberals anticipate is true: Bush will soon be gone and change is the order of the day.

Merely to entertain a doubt might seem perverse in the face of Bush's plummeting approval ratings and the seemingly universal conviction that the nation is on the wrong track. But while no candidate ever ran on a platform of "elect me and nothing will change", the 2008 contest may be historic in an unanticipated way. Rather than ending the Bush era, it could represent the end of the beginning of what historian Philip Bobbitt recently dubbed the "wars on terror". In short, 2008 may more resemble 1952 - an election that consolidated the cold war era - than 1992, the first post-cold war election; 2008 will consolidate, not repudiate, the war on terror.

"Change" will of course occur - in the next president's personnel, style and personality, the toxic Texan will be no more. Merely by being the "un-Bush", Barack Obama or John McCain will enjoy a honeymoon at home and abroad. On climate change, Guantánamo and torture, Obama and McCain have committed the next administration to departures from the Bush precedents. But in terms of overall substance, there are three good reasons to expect more continuity in United States foreign policy than change under the next president.

<snip>

Whether it goes unmentioned or re-branded, the war on terror will not end. The substantive differences between McCain and Obama, thus far, are not about whether to continue the war, but how to prosecute it better.

True, an Obama presidency would probably see more troops withdrawn more rapidly from Iraq. True, also, Obama evidently places more faith in negotiations with America's enemies without preconditions. But his avowed purpose in an Iraq withdrawal is to redeploy those forces - outside Iraq, in Afghanistan and to wage war on al-Qaida in Pakistan's borders if Islamabad refuses so to do. Even if it represents a shrewdly cynical campaign ploy rather than a genuine strategic commitment to "hard power", Obama's liberal credentials are nonetheless married to a refusal to be "soft" on terror.

<more>

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/jun/10/georgebush.usforeignpolicy

[midnight]

1. This is not a peaceful resolution to the last seven years of war.

[bemildred]

2. No it won't.

The "Toxic Texan's" foreign policy has been a disaster, and if continued if will continue to fail.

[texastoast]

3. HE'S NOT A TEXAN

He claims to be, and he is not.


More like Toxic Turd.

[Skittles]

4. THANK YOU

that bastard is as phony a cowboy and Texan as he is a president