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19 March 2009

THE WEEKLY STANDARD BLOG is reporting that Senator Brownback is publicly threatening to hold Chris Hill’s nomination, which would doom it. TWS points out that Brownback isn’t running again and has little to lose by raising the ire of Sen. Richard Lugar. Lugar, who represents the State Department in the Senate, is also Chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee.

IT WAS LUGAR, you will recall, who quietly torpedoed the nomination of John Bolton as U.N. Ambassador, despite the fact that Bolton rammed the only effective U.N. resolutions on North Korea through the Security Council. The Obama Administration, Japan, and South Korea now see those same resolutions as their main diplomatic leverage in preventing a new North Korean missile test. Which all goes to show you how much irony there is in this world.

YES, I FIGURED AS MUCH: North Korea is now demanding light-water reactors before it allows verification. With all of the excellent questions this new demand raises, my favorite is “verification of what?,” given that there has been zero actual disarmament.

THEY DENIED IT, SO IT MUST BE TRUE, RIGHT? South Korea denies that it is considering closing the Kaesong Slave Labor Industrial Park.

OBAMA LEADING WAR MANIACS‘ PLOT FOR HEGEMONY! Says KCNA:

The concentration [they mean USFK restructuring around Camp Humphreys, south of Seoul] is a revelation of the U.S. undisguised scenario to perpetuate the presence of the U.S. imperialist aggressors in south Korea and realize its ambition to dominate the Asia-Pacific region.

Why do they still hate us? By the way, this must be the perfect KNCA headline: “Ever-victorious DPRK Led by Great Brilliant Commander.”

IT’S A QUAGMIRE! NO END IN SIGHT!

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  3. KCJ, It’s pretty simple to me. Petraeus and Odierno serve at the pleasure of the president and want to ingratiate themselves with someone they may have to work with during a potentially critical period. Coming out in favor of Hill costs them nothing, win or lose. Not coming out in favor of Hill if asked costs them a lot of influence on such key issues as withdrawal timelines.

  4. So what I hear you saying is the Obama administration has politicized the outcome of the Iraq regime change operation, no? In the case you present, Petraeus and Odierno are more concerned about the Iraqi nation and American military credibility/prestige, while the POTUS is looking to score political points.

    Look, I have two trips to Iraq under my belt and I am far from dispassionate about what happens there. But this explanation leaves me cold. I am still convinced that Pres. Obama is invested in failure in Iraq. That is unconscionable.

  5. “I am still convinced that Pres. Obama is invested in failure in Iraq.”

    I don’t have a strong feeling on this topic one way or another, but my feeling as it is is — that Obama is a fixed, out-moded politician rather than a manager-politician.

    I’m thinking of two examples: his views on Iraq and his views on missile defense.

    He was against the war in Iraq, for whatever reasons, and he used that opposition to great effect during the campaign season when things in Iraq were going very badly and the public was well aware and unhappy about it.

    But, after things got better, Obama hasn’t shifted his opinion/approach (much).

    Now that success in establishing Iraq as a stable, semi-democratic to full democratic nation connected with the world community seems likely, a politician-manager would shift his focus into reaping the benefits of that by ensuring it — not by carrying out campaign pledges from during the dark days – that are now the best method of putting a positive outcome in jeopardy.

    Obama hasn’t made that shift.

    (You could say that he is pleasing his base, but I don’t see where he stands much of a chance of getting hurt by his base on Iraq if he were to modify his position to match current realities on the ground. Whatever support he’d loose from the base he’d gain back and more with the general public. The mood on Iraq is night-n-day different today than it was when Obama sold himself as the anti-Iraq War candidate. A politician like Clinton would recognize that and adjust. Obama hasn’t shown that (much)).

    The same with missile defense. During the 1980s, when Obama was becoming of political age, the left had strong ammunition against “Star Wars” due to cost and the limits to even an optimistic potential benefit against the massive Soviet nuke threat. And, the issue was one they successfully struck a chord with in the American public: making Reagan look foolish and terribly wasteful with tax payer’s money in a skyrocketing federal budget.

    And that is the same mindset I get from Obama’s messages about cutting missile defense – and ending “wasteful defense spending” and “unproven” or costly weapons systems.

    Obama sold himself as bringing hope and change — but I have never see the signs of change.

    When he talks policy, especially when he talks to his base, the message actually sounds to me like he is trapped in the 1970s-early 80s. It is the exact same kind of liberal message from that era going back into the late 1960s.

    And maybe we can also see this in how he has handled the economic crisis to date:

    The walls are on fire all around him, but he is seemingly stuck on his agenda. Rather than adjusting to the pressure of the day – like putting all his energy into tackling the economic crisis – he is busy putting together an agenda that takes on health care, education, military spending, and other items —- that are all classically liberal.

    It is as if these thoughts guided him: “This is the change I’ve wanted to see America take since I started dreaming about being president back in the 1980s, and now I have the chance to do them….” – and being so fixated on those dreams he ignores the contemporary world around him.

    Clinton dreamed about being president as a little kid, and he started out with a classic liberal agenda, but he then adjusted to political realities at hand – like when he said the “Era of Big Government is over” and that he had reformed welfare as we’ve known it.

    It is still early, but Obama has shown me signs he perhaps inflexible in changing. Which will turn out to be highly ironic if it is so.

    Who knows – even his inability to pick appointees that can actually get confirmed is a sign of inflexibility in thinking…

  6. Great insights, usinkorea. My only disagreement is that President Obama is not a classical liberal at all; he’s a marxist. The rank stupidity of the American electorate has doomed the US to perpetual debt, dependence on government for everything one could imagine, a ruined healthcare system, nationalization of the banks and the auto industry, the most radical abortion policies on earth (that’s saying something when you think about China), and a nosedive in military prestige around the globe.

    People didn’t like Bush either but they feared him. No one fears President “Happy Nawruz!” Obama…