Obama Returns to the Status Quo Ante

I saw Obama announce his new foreign policy team, and I got to say, I’m not very impressed.

While it was reassuring to hear Obama stress the need to utilize diplomacy, restore old alliances, work more through the UN, and lead with our values, it did not strike me as “a new beginning for American security,” as Obama put it.

Instead, it was merely a return to the status quo ante, before Bush and Cheney stretched American unilateralism –- and our Constitution -- to the breaking point.

In fact, it looked like the Clinton Restoration, or some composite of Bill Clinton and H.W. Bush’s team.

There’s Hillary herself, and Bob Gates, who represents continuity between two Bush administrations and the coming one. There’s General James Jones as national security adviser. He’s the former Supreme Allied Commander of NATO, who was responsible for the No Fly Zone in northern Iraq after the first Gulf War.

None of these signifies in any way “a new beginning.”

The tip-off was Obama’s reliance on old words and phrases. He talked several times about “pragmatism.” He vowed to run a “bipartisan national security policy.” And he recycled the platitude that in national security policy there are no Democrats and no Republicans, only Americans.

Give me a break.

Many progressives who voted for Obama, perhaps entranced by his stance against the Iraq War, believed he represented real change from foreign policy as usual.

But now he shows that he has no basic problem with American foreign policy prior to 2000.

I sure do. We were an aggressive empire before 2000, and it looks like we’ll remain one after 2008.