It’s hard work… defending Bush:

Click here to view the embedded video.

Chris Matthews managed to ridicule “George W. Bush for leaving office with one of the lowest presidential approval ratings in the nation’s history, for creating an economic mess that President Obama had to clean up, and for leading a foreign policy based on “truly frightening” rationales.”

Whew that was some serious fireworks there… Shoulda grabbed some popcorn.

On Wednesday, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said that the economic sanctions that have been imposed by the U.S. and “other Western governments had failed to pressure the repressive Burmese government,” thus pointing to a potential shift in U.S. policy on Burma.

At a news conference in Jakarta, Clinton “did not deny that easing sanctions was one of the ideas under consideration by the Obama administration as part of a major review.”

“We are looking at possible ideas that can be presented,” she told reporters and said that she had discussed the issue with Indonesia officials here.

“Clearly the path we have taken in imposing sanctions hasn’t influenced the Burmese junta,” she said, adding that the route taken by Burma’s neighbors of “reaching out and trying to engage them has not influenced them either.”

Burma (aka Myanmar), is considered to be one of the “world’s most oppressive nations.” Secretary Clinton is reported to have been ”careful not to tip her hand on the direction of the policy review,” but she also spoke in using mild terms ”about the Burmese government, describing ‘the unfortunate path’ taken by Burma, leaving it ‘impervious to influence from anyone.’”

It remains to be seen if Clinton can help to “liberate Burma.” It is definitely time for some major shifts in Foreign Policy and I look for great things to come from Secretary Clinton. Check out the latest on DipNote, by the way, it’s a great little human interest piece about HRC’s visit to Jakarta.

UPDATE: Incase you missed Secretary Clinton’s interview on Tuesday with MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell you can watch it here:

Click here to view the embedded video.

[Originally published at TaylorMarsh.com] Sphere: Related Content

]]> http://thedemocraticdaily.com/2009/02/19/secretary-clinton-signals-possible-policy-shift-on-burma/feed/ 0 http://thedemocraticdaily.com/2008/12/28/obamas-foreign-policy-worries/ http://thedemocraticdaily.com/2008/12/28/obamas-foreign-policy-worries/#comments Sun, 28 Dec 2008 19:08:17 +0000 Stuart O'Neill http://thedemocraticdaily.com/?p=4293

For those long term DemDaily readers they know that we don’t generally cover any foreign news other than Iraq. The reason I’ve run three stories in a row on foreign issues is simple.

Barack Obama faces, perhaps, the worst foreign policy set of issues since LBJ. He’s in a nearly no win position. We need to understand that while we are in the midst of a domestic diaster we cannot expect him to virtually all his time and effort solving that disaster. Just look at three stories and see how they are interlocked in the Middle and Near East.

Foreign policy has a place in any political discussion.

While most of us couldn’t find Guinea on a blank African map, it is one of the former colonies, this one French, that achieved independence 50 years ago. As noted below in a news report, it is one of the poorest countries in Africa. [When a corespondent calls a country 'one of the poorest in Africa' it is poor indeed.]

The long time leader, President Lansana Conté, a famously corrupt leader,  has died and a military coup followed immediately. Democratic elections had been scheduled for later in December, but they had been sham elections in the past.

From Foreign Policy Passport is this summation followed by a news report.

So now what? For now, the military has the reins, despite claims from Souare that he retains control. The perpetrators of the coup, calling themselves the National Council for Democracy and Development, has called a curfew and has promised elections in two years. As in previous times of tension, soldiers fill the streets and much of Conakry is shut down. Companies, such as mining giant BHP, are closing offices for now.
Other countries in the region are condemning the coup.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Barack Obama is leading in Ohio, Pennsylvania and Florida according to polls conducted by Quinnipiac University (one of Nate Silver’s preferred pollsters so they’re good enough for me). The gains are due to independents moving toward Obama after the debate, the economy turning overall voting confidences to him and Sarah Palin’s declining favorability. I’ll be honest and say I started laughing when I saw that she had a negative favorability rating in Florida and Pennsylvania and is just breaking even in Ohio. I really want to see the change in those numbers after her debate with Joe Biden. 

John Kerry, our 2004 nominee, tore into John McCain tonight in his convention speech. He left no stone un-turned, he left as he pilloried John McCain with the “strongest language yet uttered from the convention podium.”

Seth Colter Walls notes on the HuffPo:

Kerry describes McCain as “insulting” and “desperate’ for questioning Obama’s patriotism, and “pathetic” for continuing to support President Bush’s war policy; he digs at McCain’s age, saying voters should elect a president based on judgment and character, not “years on this earth”; and he hammers McCain and Bush on foreign affairs, charging that their policies have left “Hamas, Hezbollah, the Taliban and dictators everywhere…on the march.”

Watch Kerry’s speech here:

Click here to view the embedded video.

On the NY Times blog, The Opinionator tonight Chris Suellentrop called the speech, “The Kerry Surprise.”

The instant reviews of the convention’s third night are in. And the consensus judgment in blogdom is that Joe Biden was good, but that John Kerry – yes, that John Kerry – was better.

My response… No surprise there for me. Good gracious have all these bloggers just not paid atention to what Kerry’s been saying all these years, because honestly I have never heard a speach from Kerry that wasn’t “stirring, passionate, acerbic and moving.” Okay… So, I’m biased. I’m still an avid Kerry supporter and always will be.

The full text of John Kerry’s speech is as follows:

Thank you so much. Four years ago, you gave me the honor of fighting our fight. I was proud to stand with you then, and I am proud to stand with you now, to help elect Barack Obama as President of the United States.

In 2004, we came so close to victory. We are even closer now, and let me tell you, this time we’re going to win. Today, the call for change is more powerful than ever, and with more seats in Congress, with more people with more passion engaged in our politics, and with a President Obama, we stand on the brink of the greatest opportunity of our generation to move this country forward.

The stakes could not be higher, because we do know what a McCain administration would look like: just like the past, just like George Bush. And this country can’t afford a third Bush term. Just think: John McCain voted with George Bush 90 percent of the time. Ninety percent of George Bush is just more than we can take.

Never in modern history has an administration squandered American power so recklessly. Never has strategy been so replaced by ideology. Never has extremism so crowded out common sense and fundamental American values. Never has short-term partisan politics so depleted the strength of America’s bipartisan foreign policy.

George Bush, with John McCain at his side, promised to spread freedom but delivered the wrong war in the wrong place at the wrong time. They misread the threat and misled the country. Instead of freedom, it’s Hamas, Hezbollah, the Taliban and dictators everywhere that are on the march. North Korea has more bombs, and Iran is defiantly chasing one.

Our mission is to restore America’s influence and position in the world. We must use all the weapons in our arsenal, above all, our values. President Obama and Vice President Biden will shut down Guantanamo, respect the Constitution, and make clear once and for all, the United States of America does not torture, not now, not ever.

We must listen and lead by example because even a nation as powerful as the United States needs some friends in this world. We need a leader who understands all our security challenges, not just bombs and guns, but global warming, global terror and global AIDS. And Barack Obama understands there is no way for America to be secure until we create clean energy here at home, not with a little more oil in five, 10 or 20 years, but with an energy revolution starting right now.

I have known and been friends with John McCain for almost 22 years. But every day now I learn something new about candidate McCain. To those who still believe in the myth of a maverick instead of the reality of a politician, I say, let’s compare Senator McCain to candidate McCain.

Candidate McCain now supports the wartime tax cuts that Senator McCain once denounced as immoral. Candidate McCain criticizes Senator McCain’s own climate change bill. Candidate McCain says he would now vote against the immigration bill that Senator McCain wrote. Are you kidding? Talk about being for it before you’re against it.

Let me tell you, before he ever debates Barack Obama, John McCain should finish the debate with himself. And what’s more, Senator McCain, who once railed against the smears of Karl Rove when he was the target, has morphed into candidate McCain who is using the same “Rove” tactics and the same “Rove” staff to repeat the same old politics of fear and smear. Well, not this year, not this time. The Rove-McCain tactics are old and outworn, and America will reject them in 2008.

So remember, when we choose a commander-in-chief this November, we are electing judgment and character, not years in the Senate or years on this earth. Time and again, Barack Obama has seen farther, thought harder, and listened better. And time and again, Barack Obama has been proven right.

When John McCain stood on the deck of an aircraft carrier just three months after 9/11 and proclaimed, “Next up, Baghdad!”, Barack Obama saw, even then, “an occupation of “undetermined length, undetermined cost, undetermined consequences” that would “only fan the flames of the Middle East.” Well, guess what? Mission accomplished.

So who can we trust to keep America safe? When Barack Obama promised to honor the best traditions of both parties and talk to our enemies, John McCain scoffed. George Bush called it “the soft comfort of appeasement.” But today, Bush’s diplomats are doing exactly what Obama said: talking with Iran.

So who can we trust to keep America safe? When democracy rolled out of Russia, and the tanks rolled into Georgia, we saw John McCain respond immediately with the outdated thinking of the Cold War. Barack Obama responded like a statesman of the 21st century.

So who can we trust to keep America safe? When we called for a timetable to make Iraqis stand up for Iraq and bring our heroes home, John McCain called it “cut and run.” But today, even President Bush has seen the light. He and Prime Minister Maliki agree on – guess what? – a timetable.

So who can we trust to keep America safe? The McCain-Bush Republicans have been wrong again and again and again. And they know they will lose on the issues. So, the candidate who once promised a “contest of ideas,” now has nothing left but personal attacks. How insulting to suggest that those who question the mission, question the troops. How pathetic to suggest that those who question a failed policy doubt America itself. How desperate to tell the son of a single mother who chose community service over money and privilege that he doesn’t put America first.

No one can question Barack Obama’s patriotism. Like all of us, he was taught what it means to be an American by his family: his grandmother who worked on a bomber assembly line in World War II, his grandfather who marched in Patton’s army, and his great uncle who enlisted in the army right out of high school at the height of the war. And on a spring day in 1945, he helped liberate one of the concentration camps at Buchenwald.

Ladies and gentlemen, Barack Obama’s uncle is here with us tonight. Please join me in saluting this American hero, Charlie Payne. Charlie, your nephew, Barack Obama, will end this politics of distortion and division. He will be a president who seeks not to perfect the lies of Swift boating, but to end them once and for all.

This election is a chance for America to tell the merchants of fear and division: you don’t decide who loves this country; you don’t decide who is a patriot; you don’t decide whose service counts and whose doesn’t.

Four years ago I said, and I say it again tonight, that the flag doesn’t belong to any ideology. It doesn’t belong to any political party. It is an enduring symbol of our nation, and it belongs to all the American people. After all, patriotism is not love of power or some cheap trick to win votes; patriotism is love of country.

Years ago when we protested a war, people would weigh in against us saying, “My country right or wrong.” Our answer? Absolutely, my country right or wrong. When right, keep it right. When wrong, make it right. Sometimes loving your country demands you must tell the truth to power.

This is one of those times, and Barack Obama is telling those truths.

In closing, let me say, I will always remember how we stood together in 2004, not just in a campaign, but for a cause. Now again we stand together in the ranks, ready to fight. The choice is clear; our cause is just; and now is our time to make Barack Obama the next President of the United States.

Thank you.

Thank you Senator Kerry, for reminding us all once again how right you were four years ago and “what might have been (and I do mean 2004).”

I’ll continue the concept of Pamela’s excellent article with another long shot possibility that may have been made by Barack Obama. I agree with Pamela that all this smoke may be a screen for another VP pick. With that as a basis I’ll bring another name to the list. A name I know very well.

Wes Clark. 4 Star General Wesley Clark, former NATO Supreme Commander, brings unquestioned foreign policy credentials and military expertise. His morality and commitment to his positions and soldiers has been validated throughout his career.

Most do not know that he is an excellent planner and administrator. He proved those merits in a number of positions in his career particularly while he was Allied Supreme Commander of NATO. In that position he not only mediated a crisis in the Balkans but also managed, in detail, a war with only one US casualty saving 1.5 million people from ‘ethnic cleansing”. He also was responsible for the welfare of 900,000 troops and families.

His knowledge of not only of foreign policy but his close personal relationships with many of the current players on the world stage, developed during his time in Europe and other posts, could complete his qualifications. But there is one more that again is little known but could play a major part in an Obama administration.

Wes Clark was J5, senior intelligence officer, for the Joint Chiefs of Staff. As J5 all intelligence reports or proposals to be presented to the Joint Chiefs had to go through his hands. Reputedly most original papers were sent back for re-examination and better documentation.

It is unlikely that any agency or senior policy maker could someone blow false intelligence reports into the Obama WH with Clark’s knowledge of exactly how to validate or reject those reports. He could be a key player in making sure we again never commit to miltary action without reason and without a concrete, detailed and closely examined plan for success.  That has been his constant refrain for years: never go to war without a plan for success and never go to war except as a unwanted and difficult last resort.

It is unlikely that Wes Clark will actually be picked for the Vice President in an Obama administration. Given his qualifications, however, he should have been on the very secret short list.

John Kerry’s new ad running in Massachusetts highlights the work he has done in the Senate on veteran’s rights and issues. The legislation that Kerry has had passed in the Senate that benefits and helps veteran’s doesn’t just affect veteran’s in Massachusetts, but all across the country. And that’s why I am supporting John Kerry for Senate. Watch Kerry’s ad here:

Click here to view the embedded video.

Now, as much as I support John Kerry’s re-election in the Senate, I’d be thrilled to pieces to have Barack Obama choose Kerry as his VP. It’s a long shot, perhaps but word has it that Kerry has been vetted:

Howard Wolfson, former communications director for Hillary Rodham Clinton’s presidential bid, stoked those rumors during an appearance Tuesday night on Fox News Channel when he said he had heard that Kerry was being vetted by the Obama team. “Look, John Kerry has been vetted,” said Wolfson. “He ran for president. I think he would be a strong choice. He’d be a good choice, especially in the context of foreign policy.” (Hat tip: The indispensable Michael Patrick Allen and his “Politico Playbook.”)

Kerry supporters can still dream… Kerry also sent out an email today “to his three million person strong list — still one of his biggest assets as a national player in the party — denouncing the new anti-Obama book by Jerome Corsi as a re-run of the Swift Boat-style attacks that were aimed at him during the ‘04 campaign.”

“We’ve got to fight back every way we can,” wrote Kerry, introducing a new website called . Later in the email he writes: “You can’t just play defense against smears, pointing out how they aren’t true. You’ve got to play offense, too, exposing the whole cynical game.” That sort of language is music to the ears of the Democratic base on whom Obama is depending to produce a massive turnout in the fall.

Visit truthfightsback.com and help fight back against the “right-wing smear machine,” and join me in supporting John Kerry for Senate.

In a nutshell: “Over the past several weeks there has been perhaps no better surrogate for Barack Obama than Senator John Kerry.”

In the past week alone, Kerry delivered a major address on counterterrorism in which he systematically ripped apart John McCain’s foreign policy depth and understanding. He took to the airwaves to defend Obama against charges of celebrity, before turning in a highly praised performance on Meet the Press against Democrat turned Democratic-thorn Joseph Lieberman. All of which was topped off by Kerry’s MC-ing at Obama’s birthday party in Boston, where he delivered the most memorable line of the night:

“I don’t know if you know this,” said the Massachusetts Democrat. “John McCain is looking for someone for vice president who has more economic expertise than he does. So congratulations to all of you, you’re on the short list.”

The toughness, campaign experience, and media and political savvy has members of Obama’s team gushing with gratefulness over having Kerry as a political henchman.

Incase you missed the speech that Sam Stein is talking about in his HuffPo piece quoted above, the text of Kerry’s speech is available here. As for Kerry being the Surrogate In Chief for Obama, Stein is on the money… Read the rest of his piece here…

Ed Rendell had the best quote of the day: “Speaking Tuesday on MSNBC, Rendell said he has not been vetted by the Obama campaign, indicating he’s not a focus for their search.

“I haven’t been contacted by anybody — showing that the Obama campaign has good sense,” Rendell said, adding that Obama would do well to get someone with better foreign policy experience than Rendell has.

Also running away from McCain’s Veep search today, Bobby Jindal (La.) and Tom Ridge, former Homeland Security Czar. I think pretty soon McCain’s going to painfully get down on one knee and ask Dennis Kuncinch.

A quick thought on John McCain’s bad weekend… Let’s hope it’s a trend for McCain. Because John McCain doesn’t really know what Iraqi’s or American’s want. Barack Obama knows American’s want out of Iraq and he’s in Iraq scoping out the facts on the ground.

This is part of the Talking Points Memo Media Team covering the Netroots Nation going on in Austin, Texas this week.

This a short substantive comment from a former NATO Supreme Commander, Gen. Wes Clark, on the potential for NATO’s involvement in Afghanistan.

He makes key points the nation needs to consider about what is at stake in the upcoming November election.

His comment about having a strategy for success alone makes this video worth watching:

Click here to view the embedded video.

My own take on the issue: First, lets put to rest any thought that Wes Clark is anything but the hardest working Democrat on the circuit. Since 2004, he has helped Congressional races raise money all around the country. He’s a man I know well. He’s a Democrat.

This interview was about the possible future involvement of NATO, an organization of 17 countries that must reach consensus before taking action, in Afghanistan. When you are hearing from the former NATO Supreme Commander on NATO issues you have to stop and listen. His point, which I have heard him make many times, is that the Bush Administration has damaged our relationship with every country in NATO. We have little influence except the power of our pocketbook. Clark is already on record calling for a deployment of more troops and assets to Afghanistan. He’s been talking about it for years.

Clark’s point in the interview is simple. We need a new administration that is willing to open the lines of communication and listen to our allies. The damage can be repaired. We can have a good relationship with the world. It will take Barack Obama’s new face, his new administration , a new attitude and a continuing, concerted effort. It will be done.