Not necessarily: “In a meeting with the editorial board of The Standard-Times, Rep. Frank, D-Mass., also called for a 25 percent cut in military spending, saying the Pentagon has to start choosing from its many weapons programs, and that upper-income taxpayers are going to see an increase in what they are asked to pay. The military cuts also mean getting out of Iraq sooner, he said.”

No point trying to justify it by looking for cryptic messages from Obama.

If Obama is seen to be following Bush’s views on Iraq, than by 2010 he can kiss goodbye to the democratic congress/senate

I mostly agree with you, and this is why I think character counts, and I frankly find Obama’s character to be different than the character that I believe belongs in the White House.

However, I think no matter who gets elected President, they are going to get a mega-dose of reality when they sit in the Oval Office and I suspect even some of my cherished notions about what I would do in that chair might come crashing to a painful end once I saw what their actual implementation might do.

I’ll give Obama the benefit of the doubt that he can learn and pick a better course. In that sense I like the idea that a person can react to reality and change some core beliefs once presented with an accurate picture of reality which forces them to revise their notions. FDR, for example, ran for office as an isolationist who would stay out of European affairs, but once he sat in that office and saw what that policy would mean, he became one of the most committed warmongers we’ve ever seen in that office. And good for him, that was the right thing to do.

CosmicConservative’s last blog post..Toon of the Day

Frankly, I’d rather see someone who I thought had the basic character to honestly say what they would do, even if I didn’t agree with it then someone who didn’t have a lot of intergrity but would do what I prefered. 

Dave Justus’s last blog post..Obama: give me another $10

On about every issue that matters to me he has been all over the map.  Yes most politicians change positions to get votes but he seems to be a very egregious in his tendency to flip and flop.  At the end of the day he is just too much of an unknown factor.

Anyone who thinks Iran is going to give us "open inspections of their plants" and work together with us on "terms of Iraq stability" is simply not operating with a full deck.

This, in fact, is the fundamental foreign policy issue I have with Obama. As you so aptly demonstrate, it is foreign policy based on naive wishful thinking. (Which actually is a fair description of his domestic policy too.)

Again, I have to hope that Obama’s actual advisers will remind him that appealing to the better nature of theocrats and despots has never been a successful policy. And I have to hope that he’s clever enough to realize that, even if many of his supporters are not.

CosmicConservative’s last blog post..The coming Obama thugocracy?

I think success in Iraq is tied to common cause with Iran in a regional sense. A negitiation with Iran in which we supply them nuclear material for power, they pemrit fully open inspections of thenir plants, and we work together in terms of Iraq stability, is ideal. Thats more likely under Obama than McCain, the latter who seems to accept the binary formulation of Iran as Evil Enemy Incarnate.

I’m not really that sophisticated about global geopolitics, but for some reason I have always felt that Afghanistan’s success or failure is more based on our relationship and alliances with their neighbors than what goes on inside Afghanistan itself. I do think more boots on the ground is a way to help maintain some semblance of order as we deal with the actual root causes of the problem in that area. I don’t find it to be a coincidence that Afghanistan resistance is so difficult to root out in a country that borders both Pakistan and Iran.

CosmicConservative’s last blog post..The coming Obama thugocracy?