This is some seriously shallow analysis:
When Obama plays the hawk he also wins friends on the center and the right. We like our presidents to act “against type” — in other words, for Republicans to use carrots with our enemies, and for Democrats to use sticks. It suggests moderation and pragmatism: a president who isn’t a prisoner of ideology. So, for Obama, the act of being hawkish — almost regardless of how or where — encourages the image of a steadfast guardian of the Republic.
And presidents have more credibility when they deviate from expectations. After all, if a perceived dove like Obama favors escalation in Afghanistan, then perhaps it really is necessary.
Is Obama a hawk? Is he a hawk like John McCain? Is he “playing” a hawk?
What’s true is that the left would not be quiet about the escalation of the war in Afghanistan if a Republican were in office. The left would not be quiet about civil liberties if a Republican were in office. On some security related issues it does seem to add legitimacy that presidents of both parties feel they are necessary.
But, mostly what we have are a bunch of bedwetting politicians who are petrified of getting blamed for not doing enough to prevent a mass-casualty terrorist attack. It’s not about hawks and doves. It’s about guts, and it’s about priorities. Obama can’t even close Gitmo because of the bedwetting. But at least he’s trying, and that’s not something a hawk would do.
I wouldn’t call him a dove or a hawk. He’s the leader of a country that can’t stand to be made uncomfortable for two minutes.
We’re also a country that can’t stand being made uncomfortable by acknowledging or even thinking about the actual cost of those wars, financial or human. Most Americans have no first-hand awareness of any of the wars now being fought in their name. Which is just how they like it.
I wouldn’t wish war on any people, but sometimes I feel like our spoiled lot of couch surfers need a domestic war so they know the nightmare and horror that plagues more than 50% of the world. Maybe then we can get millions of demonstrators protesting a war like Iraq rather than thousands.
He’s “no drama Obama”. He thinks things through, considers them from all angles, then makes long-range strategic decisions (not to say he doesn’t make short-term tactical decisions).
During the campaign, he said he’d start pulling US troops out of Iraq. Bush began adopting Obama’s Iraq policies, and once in office, Obama quickly made clear to the Pentagon and everyone else that he fully intended to follow through on his campaign agenda, and he ended “combat operations” in Iraq on schedule.
During the campaign, he said he’d escalate the Afghanistan War. Once in office he did. First he called for a full review of policy, asking that policy options presented by his generals include a strategy for ending the war. When they presented proposals that called for a troop “surge” and (effectively) endless war, he pushed back and secured their public agreement to and support for an accelerated surge, with a troop drawdown beginning in July 2011. For over a year now, he has resisted all attempts to change that timetable—most recently in his State of the Union address last month.
We’ll see what happens in the coming days and weeks. Certainly Obama’s recent actions regarding Egypt—and those of his administration—are open to a variety of interpretations. But I think the most likely interpretation is that he’s doing in Egypt what he’s done in virtually every aspect of foreign policy (and domestic policy for that matter): steadily keeping his eye on the long-term interests of the United States, using all the resources (not just those headquartered in the Pentagon) available to him to minimize war, terror and poverty, and to maximize the chances of peace and prosperity.
I am a dove. Barack Obama is NOT a dove- to my consternation.
I feel you, rikyrah. But to his credit, he’s doing now what he said he’d do when he was campaigning. We can’t say we didn’t know what we were getting. (Unlike, say, people who voted for Lyndon Johnson because they feared Goldwater would get us in deeper in Vietnam.)
He’s a raven; ever-pragmatic he eats meat or grain as the situation demands.
Perfect!