Obama And Darfur

Kirchick offers a common misinterpretation of Obama’s foreign policy that mistakes Obama’s opposition to the war in Iraq for a model for his views about intervention, particularly “humanitarian” intervention.  In this reading, Obama must be opposed to “humanitarian” interventions in cases of genocide because he wants to withdraw from Iraq (where, according mainly to war supporters, there might be a genocide after a withdrawal).  Another guest blogger, Hilzoy, offers the necessary corrective, reminding us of just how overly ambitious and potentially dangerous Obama’s foreign policy is.  The strangest thing of this electoral cycle is the readiness with which so many critics of Obama try to cast him as some sort of “neo-isolationist,” to borrow a word from Sullivan.