Obama demands Europe send more troops to Afghanistan

[Henk Elegeert]

REPLY TO: D66 at nic.surfnet.nl

2008/7/27 Henk Vreekamp <vreekamp at knoware.nl>:
> REPLY TO: D66 at nic.surfnet.nl
>
> Als ik de kranten volg heeft Obama al een aantal malen zijn standpunten
> tussentijds gewijzigd. Zijn grote voorbeeld schijnt Kennedy te zijn: kijk
> dan naar het Varkensbaai-debakel, zijn Vietnampolitiek en zijn eenzijdige
> economische politiek (steunend op de lichte industrie).
> Ik snap niet dat men in Westeuropa niks heeft geleerd van de afgelopen eeuw.


Een krantje als voorbeeld:

http://hnn.us/blogs/entries/52625.html

"
Gil Troy
Obama's World Tour: Seeking Nuance and Passion

Historians are trained to bristle at the term "unprecedented." We
watch journalists hyperventilate and hype stories as we acknowledge we
have seen it all before with a world-weary sigh. But Barack Obama's
whirlwind world tour is certainly un... usual. True, senators travel
all the time, jetting around the world with more zeal than Phineas
Fogg or the Harlem Globetrotters. (Memo to the under-thirty crowd, for
Phineas Fogg check out "Around the World in Eighty Days," for Harlem
Globetrotters check out any old geezer who grew up in the Seventies).
True, John McCain himself has visited Iraq and just last month made a
foreign policy speech in Ottawa, the capital of that country to the
north of the United States. But to appreciate the um, out-of-the-box
nature of Obama's trip, consider his trip in broader historical
perspective – and check out the amazing coverage he received.

Thinking historically, let us remember that it was not until the
twentieth century that a president in office actually traveled abroad.
In 1906 Theodore Roosevelt visited Central America to supervise the
construction of the Panama Canal. In December, 1918, when Woodrow
Wilson traveled to Paris for World War I peace negotiations, he stayed
abroad for all but ten days of the next six months, returning to
Washington in July 1919. More recently, it would have been
inconceivable during the 1944 election, at the height of World War II,
for the Republican nominee Thomas E. Dewey to drop by Winston
Churchill or Josef Stalin for a quick chat while campaigning against
Franklin D. Roosevelt. And in October, 1952, Dwight Eisenhower
generated coast-to-coast headlines with a simple, dramatic, promise of
an intention to travel, proclaiming, "I shall go to Korea."

The Eisenhower pledge is worth remembering because, like Barack
Obama's Middle East and European tour, it was all about stagecraft
more than statesmanship. When the great hero of World War II promised
to go to Korea, he was playing to Americans' hopes that his presence
would magically solve the Far Eastern mess. In this case, the alchemy
is supposed to have a reverse flow: Democrats are hoping that by not
making a mess of it, the drama of overseas travel will burnish Barack
Obama's foreign policy credentials – and boost his standing as a
leader.

Midway through the trip, the magic seems to be working. Most important
of all, Obama has avoided a major gaffe. But beyond the avoidance of
the negative, the level of coverage has been iconic, not just
presidential. Even before delivery, his Berlin speech was being
compared with John Kennedy's "Ich Bin Ein Berliner" and Ronald
Reagan's "Mr. Gorbachev, Tear down this wall" – two of the most
influential presidential addresses in history. The three-network-news
anchor honor guard accompanying Obama guaranteed Pope-level coverage.
This trip has proved once again that not only is Obama's candidacy the
most exciting political story of the decade, but that the election
remains all-Obama-all-the-time; this election is Obama's to win or
lose.

There are two, contradictory, lessons one hopes Obama will draw from
his excellent adventures. His foreign policy needs more nuance and
more passion. The simplistic sloganeering the campaign trail demands
simply does not fit the Middle Eastern realities. Only a fanatic could
visit Iraq, Afghanistan, and Israel without realizing just how messy
and multi-dimensional each conflict is. Seeing each of those
situations should be humbling for a potential president, reminding him
of Dwight Eisenhower's warning to John Kennedy that the easy decisions
are made outside the Oval Office, only the impossible problems end up
on the president's desk.

At the same time, Obama risks being too cool, too detached, especially
on core issues such as the fight against terrorism. He says the right
thing, as he did after the heinous bulldozer attack in central
Jerusalem, just blocks from his hotel; but many listeners are never
sure how deeply he cares about the issue. This latest Palestinian
terror attack, executed by an East Jerusalem resident with Israeli
papers, may give Barack Obama what we could term his John
Kennedy-Joschka Fischer wake-up call. John Kennedy only realized the
depths of poverty in America when he visited Appalachia during the
1960 West Virginia primary. Joschka Fischer was the German foreign
minister who was visiting Israel in June 2002, when a suicide bomber
murdered 21 young Israeli revelers outside the Dolphinarium disco.
Fischer also had teenager children and had recently jogged right in
front of that site. He subsequently referred to that moment as " the
terrible terror attack on the kids in the Dolphinarium" and was much
more passionate in denouncing Palestinian terrorism.

Both Kennedy and Fischer were intellectuals in politics. Each was
"cool," and not afraid of nuance, but also not afraid of passion.
Obama could do well by emulating both – and showing that, in the wake
of what he has learned and experienced, he will be a muscular moderate
as leader, rooted in principles, angry when core values are assailed,
but nimble and adaptable to the changing conditions of a chaotic
world.
"

Henk Elegeert

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