Why Can't Barack Obama be like ...

Obama’s Afghanistan speech: A missing piece in the puzzle - Joseph Nye, Power & Policy: "As I argue in The Future of Power, a smart strategy for the U.S. in the 21st century would return to the wisdom of Dwight Eisenhower:

strengthen the domestic economy and avoid involvement in a land war in Asia. Afghanistan violates both those considerations." Image from

What Would Nixon Do? - Gideon Rose, New York Times: In Vietnam, Mr. Nixon

and Mr. Kissinger sought to extricate the United States from a war even as the local combatants continued to struggle. The Obama administration should try to do the same in Afghanistan — while planning carefully for how to keep withdrawal from turning into defeat. Image from

It Has to Start With Them - Thomas L. Friedman, New York Times: Wariness about Afghanistan comes from asking these three questions: When does the Middle East make you happy? How did the cold war end? What would Ronald Reagan do? After a suicide bomber killed 241 U.S. military personnel, Reagan

realized that he was in the middle of a civil war, with an undefined objective and an elusive enemy, whose defeat was not worth the sacrifice. So he cut his losses and just walked away. He was warned of dire consequences; after all, this was the middle of the cold war with a nuclear-armed Soviet Union. We would look weak. But Reagan thought we would get weak by staying. As Reagan deftly put it at the time: “We are not bugging out. We are moving to deploy into a more defensive position.” Image from

Obama’s prudent policy on Afghanistan - E.J. Dionne Jr.,  Washington Post: Among Dana Carvey’s most brilliant sketches on “Saturday Night Live” were his dead-perfect impersonations of President George H.W. Bush,

which made a permanent contribution to America’s political language. “Not gonna do it!” Carvey-as-Bush would say. “Wouldn’t be prudent!” What Carvey grasped is that Bush 41 was a conservative not so much by ideology as by temperament. Prudence really was one of his cardinal virtues.  But his effort to find a more stable middle ground in foreign policy deserves more support than it’s getting. There are worse things than to deserve comparisons with George H.W. Bush, Dana Carvey’s brilliant barbs notwithstanding. Image from

After the honeymoon - Electing Barack Obama president won't be enough to improve America's standing in the world – John Brown, Guardian (26 June 2008): The new administration should 

not give overseas audiences the false hope that its arrival on the world scene will mean a sudden, drastic departure from the policies of Bush, despite his low reputation at home and abroad. The American political system, which leads presidential candidates to adopt "centrist" positions, leaves the options for restructuring American foreign policy limited. Image from