Redstate

Posted at 10:28am on Mar. 7, 2008 Who Is Samantha Power?

Don't Worry, Though. Obama's Just As Bad As His Advisers.

By Dan McLaughlin

For those of you whose first exposure to Obama senior foreign policy adviser Samantha Power is her foolish insults to Ohio and Hillary Clinton discussed by Moe below, you have some catching up to do - but fortunately, Paul Mirengoff at Powerline has been on the case for months. Mirengoff has laid out his case that Power - to an even greater extent than some of Obama's other key advisers - is anti-Israel and buys into the Walt-Mearsheimer line that U.S. policy in general, and Iraq policy in particular, is under the nefarious influence of "special interests," mainly the Israel lobby, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here. Key quote from Power:

Another longstanding foreign policy flaw is the degree to which special interests dictate the way in which the "national interest" as a whole is defined and pursued. Look at the degree to which Halliburton and several of the private security and contracting firms invested in the 2004 political campaigns and received very lucrative contracts in the aftermath of the U.S. takeover of Iraq. Also, America's important historic relationship with Israel has often led foreign policy decision-makers to defer reflexively to Israeli security assessments, and to replicate Israeli tactics, which, as the war in Lebanon last summer demonstrated, can turn out to be counter-productive.

So greater regard for international institutions along with less automatic deference to special interests – especially when it comes to matters of life and death and war and peace – seem to be two take-aways from the war in Iraq.

Of course, this sort of paranoia should not surprise observers of Obama, given where Obama himself, in his celebrated 2002 war speech, placed the blame for the decision to go to war:

(Read On...)

Posted in 2008 | Obamafiles | When in Doubt Blame the Jews — Comments (24)/ Email this page » / Read More »