Foreign Policy: Is Obama a Puppet?

After reading the article on Barack Obama's foreign policy team in the New York Times this morning (A Cast of 300 Advises Obama on Foreign Policy by Elisabeth Bumiller), I didn't know if I should laugh or cry. The first paragraph is fine, as I would hope that anyone who is a Senator, let alone anyone who is running for President, would have a staff that's responsible for advising him on foreign policy. 300 individuals seem a bit much, but if that's what he needs, so be it:

WASHINGTON — Every day around 8 a.m., foreign policy aides at Senator Barack Obama’s Chicago campaign headquarters send him two e-mails: a briefing on major world developments over the previous 24 hours and a set of questions, accompanied by suggested answers, that the candidate is likely to be asked about international relations during the day.

It's the next paragraph that really startles me, however:

One recent Q. & A. asked, for example, whether Mr. Obama supported the decision by Iraq’s prime minister, Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, to include a timetable for American troop withdrawal in any new security agreements with the United States. The answer, provided to Mr. Obama with bullet points, was yes — or “a genuine opportunity,” as he put it in a speech on Iraq this week.

The first thing that jumped out at me was the fact that the statement Obama is questioned about, "include a timetable for American troop withdrawal in any new security agreements with the United States", is demonstrably false - as shown here in this post: Obama's Op-Ed on Iraq - Premise Untrue, And a History Lesson. It was a mistranslation - al-Maliki never said "withdrawal". So the Times reporter, by using this particular example, is perpetuating a known and substantial error as the new conventional wisdom.

But the fact that a NYT reporter would use an outdated and incorrect 'fact' to buttress an article is almost besides the point. More troublesome is that Obama needs to be handed "bullet points" to tell him how to answer the most basic foreign policy questions. It's not as if troop withdrawal from Iraq is an unfamiliar subject to this candidate. It would be understandable if Obama needs help answering a question about the internal politics of, say, the Republic of Seychelles - but not on a country with which we're allied in a "hot" war.  He should know the Iraq subject inside and out, and this article makes it clear that he doesn't - or that he can't remember what his current position is, which is probably worse.

The reporter also inadvertently slams Obama and his foreign policy expertise while attempting to compare him favorably to President Bush:

Unlike George W. Bush, who entered the presidential race in 2000 with scant exposure to national security issues, Mr. Obama has served since his election to the Senate in 2004 on the Foreign Relations Committee and has had a running tutorial from aides steeped in the issues. His campaign says that he is well prepared and that he often alters and expands on the talking points provided to him by his foreign policy advisers.

If that's the case, with such foreign policy background and "experience", why does Barack Obama need to be told what to say on the subject? It's almost as if someone else is controlling his message. And as for the attempted slam against Bush, national security wasn't a big issue in the 2000 election. Vice President Al Gore hardly mentioned it, nor did the press bring it up often at the time, if at all. Times are different today. We're at war now, and foreign policy is vitally important. This article makes it apparent that Obama already had aides assisting him at the Senate Foreign Relations Committee for years, so why does he need additional help now? And why does he need to be told what to say on the major foreign policy issues confronting us today at all?

Furthermore, for someone who is constantly claiming sole ownership of the "change" message, the names that the reporter includes in her article as members of Obama's core group of foreign policy advisers seem awfully familiar: Madeleine K. Albright, Warren Christopher, Susan E. Rice, Anthony Lake, Gregory B. Craig, Richard J. Danzig, and Dennis Ross. In fact, they're all recycled Clinton Administration officials. Richard Holbrooke is also mentioned at the end of the article as a member of the team, although because of his previous strong support and defense of Senator Clinton during the Democratic primaries, it seems as if he has yet to be embraced fully by the Obama campaign.

To take the "Obama's Foreign Policy = Bill Clinton's Foreign Policy" theory even further, when you go and look up the "13-member senior working group" of Obama's campaign that the article refers to, you'll find the names listed above (except for Ross) with the following additions: David Boren, Lee Hamilton, Eric Holder (my he gets around), Sam Nunn, William Perry, Tim Roemer and James Steinberg. Of those thirteen, nine of them are former high-ranking members of the Clinton Administration - the others being important allies of Clinton during his Administration.

It seems as if Obama is being given talking points by the same officials who prepared the way for the 9/11 attacks (only name missing is Jamie Gorelick), pushed frantically for the failed Middle-East peace process with Yasser Arafat, allowed North Korea to develop nuclear weapons on their watch, allowed the Oil for Food scandal to occur right under their noses, made no effort to stop A. Q. Khan's nuclear weapons proliferation activities in the Middle East and North Korea, oversaw the disintegration of the sanctions program against Iraq, allowed the expansion of Al Qaeda ... the list can go on and on. Even Colin Powell, who's mentioned in the article as advising Obama on some level, was a disaster as President Bush's Secretary of State - allowing State Department "lifers" to run the show.

It's becoming more and more apparent that with Obama's foreign policy, we'll be moving backwards, not forwards. Almost as if someone else is calling the shots.