The B list.

This week I'm going to rant about some issues that the new Obama administration should, in my humble opinion, address. However, it would be hard to post this without commenting on the Iraq/U.S. status of forces agreement approved on Thursday by the Iraqi parliament. This is, in essence, a timetable for withdrawal, setting an end date for our occupation of Iraq - something Bush repeatedly refused to do, used time and again to bait war opponents as being surrender monkeys, unsupportive of the troops, etc. ("Waving the white flag of surrender" as Sarah Palin put it.) So all of that.... was a lot of hot air again, right? Did you catch that too? Thought so.

Okay, back to the O-man. As I wrote last week, Gaza and the D.R. of Congo are festering sores that should be attended to with all speed. There are many other foreign policy nightmares to dispel, and again, I don't think I need to mention Iraq and Afghanistan as part of that "short" list. Let's make the list a little longer:

Russia. One thing that is creeping up on us gradually is the threat of a renewed cold war with Russia. While a McCain presidency would most certainly have been a disaster on this front, we are certainly not out of the woods. Russia has a massive nuclear arsenal, nearly on par with our own. The rising price of oil has helped that country climb out of the economic hole that we helped put them in after the fall of the Soviet Union. The rising distrust they have for us is largely the product of our support for the application in the early 1990s of economic shock therapy and the resulting demographic disaster that took place, our insistence on expanding NATO (what was a hostile military alliance) deep into eastern Europe and right to their borders, our idiotic deployment of the dysfunctional boondoggle known as "missile defense" in Poland and the Czech Republic, and our enthusiasm and funding for creatures like Saakashvili, who started the conflict in Georgia this past spring. Obama could do worse than to reverse this policy before it gets beyond asinine.

Venezuela. Related to the above in terms of manufactured threats, the Bush Administration and many others in Washington - including Democrats - despise Chavez for the simple reason that he cannot be intimidated by them. They tried to remove him in a coup, supported by the U.S. and Britain, which quickly backfired. Now they treat him like a dictator, though in electoral terms he has far more legitimacy than George W. Bush, having prevailed in contested elections and plebiscites a number of times. Our leaders deplore his tendency towards empowering the poor and chipping away at the privileges the traditionally U.S.-oriented elite sectors of Venezuelan society, but what REALLY irks them is his material support for independent development and greater regional integration in Latin America. My guess is that most of Obama's advisors will be on the same side as Bush's Latin America team with regard to Chavez, judging by what the O-man has said himself. And now, in true cold war fashion, they are making hay out of his arms purchase from Russia and the presence of Russian war ships in "our" hemisphere.

More to follow next week, but as I'm sure you're aware, the institutional tendencies towards confrontation run strong and deep in our foreign policy. There will be plenty of opportunities to speak up in the next four years.

luv you,

jp