Include this in the file of “Obama supporters who have no arguments.”  The problem that his fans seem to have with my criticisms of Obama is that I look at the rest of his foreign policy, and not just the parts where I might agree with him.  If they want to pretend that he didn’t support the bombardment of Lebanon, would have supported the war against Yugoslavia and is willing to contemplate bombing Iran, I suppose that’s “fine,” too.  Yes, sir, he’s some antiwar candidate!

P.S.  Not that I ever said he did, would Obama agree with the Euston Manifesto?  I think it would be absurd to claim that he doesn’t agree with almost everything in it.  Obama clearly does support wars for “humanitarian” intervention, which is something that I thought his supporters would find laudable.

Update: The author follows up with a response, in which he says:

But to simultaenously [sic] argue that he wants to save armed liberalism and is also an inveterate uppity America-hater just won’t wash.

Of course, I have never said anything of the kind, and I have gone out of my way (and probably annoyed a lot of my readers) to reject the attacks on Obama along these lines, be they the false Muslim rumours or the “Obama’s mother taught him to hate America” arguments.  The argument that Obama doesn’t hold the deeply troubling views that he espoused just last year, but really has maintained his antiwar position on Iraq throughout and will put it into action, doesn’t persuade.  He has had a consistent foreign policy message, expressed in his early statements, his Foreign Affairs essay and in his campaign literature, and it is in keeping with the implications of his claim that American security is inextricably tied to the security of all other nations.  If you think that is a desirable way of thinking about American foreign policy, Obama is your man.  If you think is the cause of endless meddling and conflict throughout the world, as I tend to think it is, it is at the very least worth bearing in mind and it is probably a good reason to be wary of the candidate.  It may be that, on the whole, Obama offers a more amenable foreign policy agenda, but there is real potential for the same dangers that exist with McCain.  It seems reckless to ignore that.  If antiwar voters want to back Obama, I can see their reasoning, but they should make that decision with as much information as possible, and they should be aware of the rest of Obama’s policy positions beyond the better-known ones that happen to coincide with their own. 

You can argue, as some have, that the views he expressed in the past weren’t so troubling, or you could argue that I and other non-interventionists and antiwar writers have exaggerated the significance of his past remarks and his actual foreign policy voting record.  I don’t see how Obama gets to have credit for the views where he has taken the right position, but shouldn’t receive criticism for views that show him to be much more activist and aggressive in his foreign policy than most people think he is.  If he can defend his support for what the author calls “the rape of Lebanon,” I would be interested to hear how he thinks it is that different, as a matter of principle or strategy, from what was done in Iraq (except that it was briefer and on a smaller scale).  He said he opposed “rash” and “dumb” wars, but didn’t oppose U.S. backing for a war that was both.  If we are supposed to trust him on his judgement, what does it say about his judgement that he went with the herd in backing Israel to the hilt in what almost everyone acknowledges was one of the greatest military blunders of their history?  Shouldn’t the Iraq war have made him even more cautious about backing such a campaign?  Shouldn’t his supposedly more nuanced understanding of what it means to be “pro-Israel” have warned him against reflexively deferring (to use Samantha Power’s language) to the Israeli government’s assessment of the campaign?  He does not seem to think that his position on Lebanon is a cause for regret or embarrassment–the foreign policy section of his website highlights as proof of his “pro-Israel” bona fides.  Do we dismiss that as necessary election-year posturing?  But if we do, why do we then assume that his antiwar convictions on Iraq are any deeper or more reliable?