Antiwar groups fear Barack Obama may create hawkish Cabinet

[JudyInTheHeartland]

Activists note that most of the candidates for top security posts voted for the 2002 resolution authorizing President Bush to invade Iraq or otherwise supported launching the war.
By Paul Richter

November 20, 2008

Reporting from Washington — Antiwar groups and other liberal activists are increasingly concerned at signs that Barack Obama's national security team will be dominated by appointees who favored the Iraq invasion and hold hawkish views on other important foreign policy issues.

The activists are uneasy not only about signs that both Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) and Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates could be in the Obama Cabinet, but at reports suggesting that several other short-list candidates for top security posts backed the decision to go to war.

"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," said Kelly Dougherty, executive director of the 54-chapter Iraq Veterans Against the War.

The activists -- key members of the coalition that propelled Obama to the White House -- fear he is drifting from the antiwar moorings of his once-longshot presidential candidacy. Obama has eased the rigid timetable he had set for withdrawing troops from Iraq, and he appears to be leaning toward the center in his candidates to fill key national security posts.

"It's astonishing that not one of the 23 senators or 133 House members who voted against the war is in the mix," said Sam Husseini of the liberal group Institute for Public Accuracy.

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-foreign-policy20-2008nov20,0,3851834,print.story

[scheming daemons]

1. Oh... FFS

Give it a rest.

[Skwmom]

16. This is an extremely important issue. Where's the support for the troops?

Obama got more donations from the military than McCain and they didn't donate with the intention of getting more of the same.

[tekisui]

2. That's IT! I want my vote back!

:eyes:

[AlCzervik]

3. maybe they should keep their powder dry until his cabinet is confirmed?

and then maybe wait to see what they do?

[sharp_stick]

4. Unless

everyone in Obama's cabinet can sing an excellent version of "Kumbaya" and "If I Had A Hammer" at the morning staff meetings these same people would still bitch and moan. I for one have had enough of the fucking bitching and moaning about the lefty purity of Obama's fucking cabinet.

Obama is not now, has never been and never will be a lefty dovish voice for America. Where the hell do people get the idea that he will?

Obama said this war was not legitimate and that he would work to bring it to an end. I expect him to do it.

[JudyInTheHeartland]

5. video (n/t)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tg2pDymVX0g

[sharp_stick]

9. Nothing is stopping him from doing just that is there?

I fail to see the connection between his supposed appointments and future inability to carry through on his promises in that video. That is unless people think he's a weak kneed pussy like GWB who will not manage those he is supposed to manage. Obama is the boss, plain and simple, he gets to appoint people who will carry out his vision and hopefully question it when the need arises.

I have to work with lots of former competitors and don't find it difficult at all to manage people who in the past have worked under different systems. In the same vein I now work for a company that is a direct competitor to my former employer. I didn't have a hard time at all switching over and I still have friends in the old company too that haven't disowned me because I failed a new purity test.

Obama is not George W. Bush, I am happy to see him picking people that will do more than parrot his talking points.

[JudyInTheHeartland]

10. Of course you're right about Obama

And I'm 120% confident in his leadership.

But it would be nice to see some recognition for the peace wing of the party. We can certainly do more than just march on Washington and get out the vote. It's time to put one of us into a high ranking security/foreign policy position. If Obama doesn't do it now, it will be a lot tougher as the administration goes on.

[sharp_stick]

12. Who would you like to see

and at what level? He hasn't come close to finalizing anything, there are hundreds of posts to fill, they aren't all Cabinet level but they are executive and they do matter a lot.

I see him right now filling his first cabinet with people that know DC and know politics. Until he won the Democratic nomination I never gave Obama a lot of credit for foresight, now I think he's probably the best politician I've ever witnessed.

If he had of picked a bunch of outsiders for this cabinet it would have invited a lot of ridicule from the public and from us I bet, and I think given us the same gridlock that we saw during the first couple of years of Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carters Presidencies, it took Clinton and Carter a long time to get going at least in part to the fact that the people running their shows didn't know what they were up to and Congress didn't trust or respect them.

I'm much more interested in who Obama puts under his Cabinet leaders, that is where I think a lot of the change will be coming. Obama is, again IMHO, going to be one hell of a manager, he's going to lead a kickass Executive branch.

[JudyInTheHeartland]

13. Katrina van den Heuvel has some good ideas

http://www.foreignpolicy.com/story/cms.php?story_id=4507&page=4

Bill Bradley
Secretary of State

Lawrence Korb
Secretary of Defense

James Bamford
Director of National Intelligence

Andrew Bacevich
National Security Advisor

[Armstead]

15. No,no,no -- Constructive ideas not allowed

[JudyInTheHeartland]

18. Yeah, what's the Congress gonna do, hold them up?

:sarcasm:

[Life Long Dem]

6. The media is at it once again.

[midnight]

7. This is a detail that deserves to be given much more attention.

The war ecomomy is over. We need an ecomomy that has a much greater respect for the citizens of this country. I will have to look into this Institute for Public Accuracy because I'm not familiar with them....

[bunnies]

8. Yep. Clearly he wants the world to exist in a perpetual state of war.

I mean... that MUST be what he meant when he talked about peace. War is Peace. War is Peace. The sonofabitch obviously fooled all of us mindless suckers. We might as well just kill ourselves now and save him the trouble of doing it for us.

[TheKentuckian]

11. I think that anyone who for a moment thought Obama is a dove

is smokin' the chronic. The dude is anti-Iraq war because its a stupid clusterfuck that runs counter to our strategic interests. Obama won't hesitate to use force when he feels its warranted, including in support of Pax Americana.

I'm more or less good with that but I have no doubt many will be up in arms if they caught wind that Obama isn't really anti-war in general terms, you know a political pacifist, aka less electable than an openly atheists, transgender communist.

[Phx_Dem]

14. Let's see

Al Queda is afraid of Obama, the far right is afraid of Obama, and the far left is afraid of Obama.

He must be doing something right!

[4lbs]

17. Obama is against the Iraq War because he said it took our eye off the real target in Afghanistan.

So, he is hawkish on going after Bin Laden.

When the Iraq withdrawal happens, he will have some of those troops sent to Afghanistan to bolster up our military presence there and go after Bin Laden. He'll even go into Pakistan and kill Taliban and Al Qaeda if the intelligence is good.

He's said this for the past two years. I guess some people haven't been listening.