The Wake

Change?

Pundits and political junkies – from the left and right – have gotten so nostalgic about the Barack Obama bid for Presidency that they’ve started comparing his candidacy to South Dakota Sen. George McGovern’s 1972 bid against Nixon. Sure, like McGovern, Obama has broad youth support and is attempting to surprise the Old Guard Democrats by winning the Presidential nomination. But all comparisons should end there.

Obama is commonly labeled as the heroic anti-war candidate challenging a pro-war Hillary Clinton, in the sense that Obama was against the Iraq invasion from the start while Clinton helped authorize it and voted for blank Iraq War checks until last March. To the faux-mental-masturbating pundits, Obama resembles the antiwar McGovern going up against the pro-war Minnesota Sen. Hubert Humphrey.

But is it fair to place Obama in the same category as McGovern, the man who called for immediate withdrawal from Viet Nam, full amnesty for all draft-dodgers and reduction of the U.S. military budget by 37 percent? Despite all his antiwar rhetoric, here’s what I found in Obama’s website regarding his military policy:

“We have learned from Iraq that our military needs more men and women in uniform to reduce the strain on our active force. Obama will increase the size of ground forces, adding 65,000 soldiers to the Army and 27,000 Marines. “

Not only does Obama want to increase defense spending during a time when nearly half of our tax dollars are handed to the military, but he’s also hinted at starting new wars in the Middle East - something I’d think liberals would be enraged over. In the past year, Obama’s made several innuendos at invading Pakistan, a U.S. ally. This aggressive, I’ve-got-the-balls-to-fight-terrorists instinct against Pakistan has, predictably, pissed off Pakistan. The country’s Foreign Minister, Khusheed Kasuri, made these remarks in response to Obama’s threats:

“It’s a very irresponsible statement, that’s all I can say. As the election campaign in America is heating up we would not like American candidates to fight their elections and contest elections at our expense.”

In a Democratic Presidential debate last August, Sen. Chris Dodd said it was “highly irresponsible” to suggest invading a nation “that we’re trying to get to be more cooperative with us.” Obama’s response? He played the old “I-was-against-this-war-from-the-start” card, implying that his future wars will be much smarter than the disastrous War in Iraq (did we forget about the War in Afghanistan?):

“I find it amusing that those who helped to authorize and engineer the biggest foreign policy disaster in our generation are now criticizing me for making sure we are in the right battlefield - and not the wrong battlefield - in the War Against Terrorism!”

Let’s not forget that Obama wasn’t in the Senate during the time of the Iraq authorization and that his voting patterns have been reminiscent of a pro-war politician. As an Illinois senator, Obama has helped appropriate more than $300 billion toward the Iraq War.

So what type of change is Obama always sputtering about? Is an increased military budget and a possibility of a new war part of this change? I sure hope not, but from what it looks like, we’re going to get more of the same. But hey, once the McGovern/Obama comparisons stop, I’ll be a happy camper.

Tags: Democrat, Obama, politics, presidential campaign