Zen interventionism, if you will

Justin Raimondo is quite possibly my favorite commentator, with a focus on anti-war issues, and takes a look at Obama. His take is very similar to mine, in fact, his take generally informs mine. (I've been reading Antiwar.com every day for about ten years.)

He writes of mail he receives whenever he cautions that Obama is not the antiwar candidate some (many) people take him to be:

The common assumption of these letter-writers is that Obama is just trying to "pass," so to speak, as a warmonger. Once he's in office, peace will break out all over. What evidence do we have for this? None whatsoever.

And in conclusion?

But – and I hate to tell you this, but somebody has to -- the politics of fear and deception have not been patented by the Republicans. Look for the Democrats to add their own ingredient to this bipartisan recipe for overseas disasters: the politics of guilt. White liberal guilt, to be sure. We'll be smack dab in the middle of Africa's feuding tribes faster than you can say "Samantha Power."

And that's the best case scenario. In the worst case, the Dennis Ross faction of Obama's emerging foreign policy movers and shakers will maneuver us into a confrontation with Iran, and relations with Russia will deteriorate to a new low as NATO escalates its eastward expansion. In any case, those who are working to effect a fundamental change in American foreign policy have a duty to take Obama at his word -- hoping for the best, but preparing for the worst.

Justin Raimondo is not popular among the neocons/anti-jihadist right. And there have been times when I thought his work had holes in it, places where my own knowledge pointed in a very different direction than that in which Raimondo pointed. But as I have said in the past, I expect my heroes to have feet of clay. Neither his unpopularity with the crazier, more interventionist neocons nor his occasional misstep are reasons to miss his thrice-weekly columns at Antiwar.com, however.

Obama is a blank slate, I believe he has consciously so modeled himself, and if we see in him what we wish to see, based on nothing more than our own preferences and Obama's airy generalities, then who is the fool? Is it Obama? Or is the fool us?

Ask Pogo.