Reporting from Washington -- Antiwar groups and other liberal activists are increasingly concerned at signs that Barack Obama's national security team will be dominated by appointees who favored the Iraq invasion and hold hawkish views on other important foreign policy issues.
The activists are uneasy not only about signs that both Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) and Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates could be in the Obama Cabinet, but at reports suggesting that several other short-list candidates for top security posts backed the decision to go to war."Obama ran his campaign around the idea the war was not legitimate, but it sends a very different message when you bring in people who supported the war from the beginning," said Kelly Dougherty, executive director of the 54-chapter Iraq Veterans Against the War.
The activists -- key members of the coalition that propelled Obama to the White House -- fear he is drifting from the antiwar moorings of his once-longshot presidential candidacy. Obama has eased the rigid timetable he had set for withdrawing troops from Iraq, and he appears to be leaning toward the center in his candidates to fill key national security posts.
The president-elect has told some Democrats that he expects to take heat from parts of his political base but will not be deterred by it.
Those of us who don't much like Obama, because we took him at his word during his candidacy, must wonder why he is suddenly looking like a centrist. Is it because he truly intends to govern from a center-right position, or is it simply that he is going where the experience lies in appointing people to his Cabinent?
4 comments:
You'd think he was appointing Bolton and Feith , sheesh
Good post, I missed this article
"Antiwar groups fear Barack Obama may create hawkish Cabinet"
My new theory is he will be centrist. I think Obama doesn't want to do go down ultimately as the "first black president a total failure at it" so he is gonna ditch the folks got him there and try his best for the country surprisingly, but I can't stand the guy so we'll see what he does.
Hell he ditched Rev Wright, Bill Ayers, his now dead granny (at least publicly) why not the netrootnuts, he don't need em now, who does when you think about it ? lol
I hope you're right, Chicago Ray.
Me too Pastorius, but I aint drinkin no Obama Koolaid that's for sure.
I'm out here watchin his a** just like you and others. But we, unlike lunatic hate filled liberals, put country before party and ideology, and at least we want the guy to try and make it and prove us all wrong.
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