For me, the 2008 presidential election will essentially be about US foreign policy and how America can not only save face from its disastrous Iraq adventure, but give itself some much needed reconstructive surgery. Andrew Sullivan feels the same and he, quite rightly, says Obama is the only candidate that is a peace offering to the world.
Why? He's the only Democratic presidential candidate who can navigate the narrow policy options Iraq presents. Read on...
Here's how Sullivan lays down the logic:
The other obvious advantage that Obama has in facing the world and our enemies is his record on the Iraq war. He is the only major candidate to have clearly opposed it from the start. Whoever is in office in January 2009 will be tasked with redeploying forces in and out of Iraq, negotiating with neighboring states, engaging America's estranged allies, tamping down regional violence. Obama's interlocutors in Iraq and the Middle East would know that he never had suspicious motives toward Iraq, has no interest in occupying it indefinitely, and foresaw more clearly than most Americans the baleful consequences of long-term occupation.
This latter point is the most salient. The act of picking the next president will be in some ways a statement of America's view of Iraq. [Hillary] Clinton is running as a centrist Democrat - voting for war, accepting the need for an occupation at least through her first term, while attempting to do triage as practically as possible. Obama is running as the clearer antiwar candidate. At the same time, Obama's candidacy cannot fairly be cast as a McGovernite revival in tone or substance. He is not opposed to war as such. He is not opposed to the use of unilateral force, either - as demonstrated by his willingness to target al-Qaida in Pakistan over the objections of the Pakistani government. He does not oppose the idea of democratization in the Muslim world as a general principle or the concept of nation building as such. He is not an isolationist, as his support for the campaign in Afghanistan proves.
As this post and our earlier post aims to show, Obama seems to be the only presidential candidate where policy and perception can coexist without contradiction and stave off evermore radicalization in the Muslim world.
