A New Foreign Policy? Not So fast...

[zero_hero]

“Our national security state continues to gobble money and avoid any accountability, with the complicity of most of Congress, Dems and Repubs. It’s like an enormous Rottweiler, on steroids. Anyone who would tame this beast would need a) excellent political skills at manipulating and taming bureaucracies and b) some measure of experience within the military or national security state and c) the political will to do so. The Obama administration has none of these qualities.”

http://www.counterpunch.org/2013/01/21/ ... m-vietnam/

[Steve Plonk]

I don' t think the Obama administration is going to pull a fast one. I think our foreign policy is evolving. We don't have to agree with everything in it. I think Obama, & Co., are up to the job no matter what "Counterpunch" says. Of course, no one wants any more "Vietnams".

I am pleased that Obama nominated Sen. Kerry, of Mass., for Secretary of State.
I do wish Obama had nominated Wesley Clark for Secretary of Defense. That senator, Hagel, from Nebraska, is just too conservative for me. What's up with that, anyway?!
I am wary of our helping the French in Mali...just like I was in Libya & Syria. Looks like we are trying to have even a lighter footprint than we do in Syria.

Hell, the world ought to be glad, as most of us are, that Obama got a second term.
It sure is a hell of a lot better than having that "Mormon wiener", Romney, as president.

[stilltrucking]

Some people remember the Alamo, I remember every senator that voted for George W. Bush's bogus war, and that includes Chuck Hagel, John Kerry, and Hillary Clinton.

[mnaz]

Of course, no one wants any more "Vietnams".

but we seemed ok with our iraqs and afghanistans ....

[zero_hero]

ARTICLE STARTS OUT LIKE THIS

What Hagel and Kerry Really Learned in Vietnam
by MICHAEL ARRIA
A piece from Bryan Bender in the Boston Globe sets the beltway narrative of Obama’s recent cabinet picks up nicely, “President Obama’s nomination on Monday of Chuck Hagel for secretary of defense, coupled with his pick of Senator John F. Kerry for secretary of state, would put two Vietnam veterans known for their cautious approach to the use of military force at the helm of American defense and foreign policy.”

This sentiment was echoed in the New York Times, where they ran a piece, by Elisabeth Bumiller which declared, “Between them, Senator John Kerry and Chuck Hagel have five Purple Hearts for wounds suffered in Vietnam, shared a harrowing combat experience in the Mekong Delta and responded in different ways to the conflict that tore their generation apart. But in nominating one as secretary of State and the other as Defense secretary, President Obama hopes to bring to his administration two veterans with the same sensibility about the futilities of war.”

No doubt I am losing my sanity. I have such a strong sense of Das Unheimliche.