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What Now
I’m wondering what will be the first disappointments of Obama’s presidency. There’s never been a US president taking office with such high expectations, realistic and unrealistic, and no one politician can be everything to all of his constituents. Signing on to Bush’s Warrantless Wiretapping has been my biggest disappointment with Obama so far, when he did that I realized that there will be times he does the wrong thing in order to win other, hopefully more important battles later on. Of the things Obama has said he’ll do – closing the Guantanamo prison camp, getting out of Iraq in 16 months, balancing the budget with a fairer tax system, what promises do you think he’ll break? The things that inspire us to vote for him – that he would support reproductive rights, stem cell research, and marriage equality, that he would oppose torture, secret concentration camps, and corporate welfare – those are positions I’ve assigned to him based on my perceptions of his values but I haven’t heard of specific actions he’ll take. What if he turns out to be not as good as we thought he is, what if he’s only sorta-good, what if he was only an inspiring speaker and capable politician, and nothing more? Whatever he’ll do, whatever we can be, it’s so exciting to think about. The chance to emerge from the insanity of eight years of conservative republican disaster, it’s positively intoxicating. Now to see what we can do in the real world.
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Most of the rest I see as being more difficult to change, because there are so many people involved. Corporate welfare removal would be tough to get through the rest of the system because there's so much incentive (despite laws restricting it) for the folks in power to cooperate with the corporations. Marriage equality is something that I can see him being very cautious with, mostly because it's the sort of thing that SHOULD be handled at the state level. Federal things should perhaps be rewritten a bit to be neutral, but other than that it's so hard to say. One man wanting change, even if he's the president, is not enough to make it happen.
When did I get so cynical?
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I'd rather, personally, see it totally abandoned.
I have high hopes that Obama will be more flexible and willing to work with Russia. I will be fairly disappointed if nothing changes in that region.
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Well,this looks promising.
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No, the first disappointment might be Rubin and/or Summers getting back into the Treasury Dept - I mean those are the two who helped make sure CDS weren't regulated.
Kerry as Sec. State would also kind of suck.
Second (as Cris mentioned) will be Afghanistan and Pakistan - honestly I'm not sure how they are going to accomplish this, but they'll do something.
Gitmo will close, there will be trials, and the people will be released. I'm sure we'll see a few from the other prisons go, and some "get lost" and others get handed over to friendly middle eastern Central European regimes.
I do think Universal Health Care will happen, and it will happen in such a way that leads to single payer several years down the line (yay) and I'm sure Obama will return taxes to the Clinton levels (if not a little higher for things like capital gains). He'll do something for corp taxes, most likely not enough. He'll hopefully raise the min wage...he will do public works to stimulate the economy (I'm debating on investing more into green companies) - and in infrastructure (hello caterpillar). These are also low hanging fruit that will help with a long recession. The good news is that he has a lot of bright people who know what FDR did right and wrong so there is hope that Obama will at least not repeat the same mistakes.
Overall I have a hunch Obama will be a lot more center left than people think, and that may annoy some people - but honestly that may be the best place. I also think he'll do a lot more than we think, but maybe not exactly as we expected
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War will end (for us) with a final withdrawal about two years from now.
Those are the wins, and easy wins (in terms of pleasing public opinion) they will be.
Less sure is how he will handle the fiscal/economic crisis. A serious contraction in both foreign aid and military projection overseas is required. Concurrently, we need to see a re-invigoration of our domestic manufacturing base. These will not happen quickly or easily.
TO balance this contraction, efforts must be focused on the repair and modernization of our domestic infrastructure. Crumbling roads and bridges, inefficient power plants and delivery systems, and a lack of modern refineries for petroleum are all needed.
As for industry, if he wants to save the Detroit auto makers, set goals to meet, and use the carrot-and-stick approach to make/encourage them to meet them. Once better, more efficient cars are available, put in tax breaks to encourage consumers to buy them.
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Withdrawing from Iraq won’t be a win unless it becomes and somewhat stable nation, reasonably free of Iranian (and every other) influence, and with a minimum of ethnic cleansing and genocide. I suppose it would split up into three different countries – Sunni, Shia, and Kurd; is that “good” outcome? I dunno, what do we think about the breakup of Yugoslavia?
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Oh, and no doubt one of those prison ships will end up at the bottom of the sea. But you and I will barely hear of the "accident" with the poorly-kept cargo ship, will we?
The current administration has a lot of bodies to bury - literally - before they leave.
As for Iraq, look for a repeat of the Soviet withdrawal/retreat from Afghanistan. (relatively) Quick, a bit messy, and covered with spin. And yeah, we'll see a "balkanization" of the region similar to Yugoslavia, but this does not surprise me, as the Middle East, much like central Africa, was divided politically by Western colonial powers for their own interests, and with little care for the regional clan/political/religious structures. A reshuffle in Iraq is inevitable - the only question is the level of brutality it will generate.
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Oh, well, let's worry about that later.
I think, if anything, you guys need to stay ensure stability in the region, and that's going to be a tougher, more tedious slog than Iraq, as it will also entail building a civil society from the ground up. There's a lot of potential in there to contradict Obama's earlier antiwar rhetoric as most of his early calls have been about snuffing out Al Qaeda and killing Bin Laden, but not necessarily rebuilding the country. I think that he sincerely believes that Afghanistan must be stabilised, but it's going to be tough for him to sell that to voters who just don't want see any more foreign troop deployments.
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The Taliban, on the other hand, are an indigenous insurgency, and so evicting them from the country is less of an option. I tend to think, though, that you can still focus on eroding their base of sympathy. At the end of it all, the Taliban enjoy popular support partially because they have community roots, but also because they keep order and get things done. Without them, folks beyond the major cities have to fend for themselves in what is defacto anarchy. So, swamp the area with security, pave its valleys, get it so that cops from Kabul can actually drive in to the remotest sections of the Hindu Kush in a couple of days.
That's kind of been the strategy so far, but done on the cheap with leftovers in men and resources from the war in Iraq. I think that, even with Iraq shut down, and surge directed to Afghanistan it will take a good few years to stabilize Iraq while still taking casualties and still getting this vague feeling that the people that you're trying to help still kind of hate you. You just have to stick it out.
As far as what your allies can contribute -- I think things can change with new leadership at the helm. I know that the war's been largely unpopular in Canada, but that's largely linked with not wanting to have our folks die just to support your recklessness. However, there's still support for the cause across NATO. I think you hear a lot about nations not wanting to put troops in harm's way, like Germans or Spanish, but you don't hear about, say, France post-Sarkozy has ante'd up and reconfirmed its participation. It's still not enough to match the American presence, but it's more than token.
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russia re-arming plus doing naval exercizes with venezula,
and opening talks with cuba.
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