Comments on: Obama and Clinton Foreign Policies

By: yetanotherjohn

yetanotherjohn — Sat, 04 Aug 2007 23:12:52 +0000

I'm sorry, but you lost me when they said that Obama's position to abandon the fight against AQ in Iraq, then unilaterally invade a putative ally who has nuclear weapons to chase AQ there followed by saying under no circumstances would he use nuclear weapons (such as perhaps when we get nuked by the radical islamist country who took over the nukes after we invaded and then pulled out because an American soldier was killed thus creating a quagmire we had to run away from), makes sense.

By: Dale

Dale — Sat, 04 Aug 2007 15:28:58 +0000

True. Lets just hope the experts aren't agenda driven.

By: James Joyner

James Joyner — Sat, 04 Aug 2007 13:29:58 +0000

learn things from their various in briefings (intelligence, defense, state) that most people just don't know.

Quite right. Then again, much of what they "learn" is filtered through a set of institutional preferences that perpetuate doing things the way we always have. But it's incredibly risky for a president, especially one whose experience is primarily domestic affairs, to buck the advise of the "experts."

By: Dale

Dale — Sat, 04 Aug 2007 12:50:38 +0000

I suspect that actual presidents adopt a foreign policy similar to their predessors largely because of what they learn things from their various in briefings (intelligence, defense, state) that most people just don't know.