Obama The Peacemaker (Cough)

"We've had enough of a misguided war in Iraq that never should have been fought — a war that needs to end," he said during his first election campaign. He proclaimed, "Now is the time to start bringing our troops out of Iraq — immediately." His opponents portrayed him as gullible and weak. But he got elected on a war-averse ticket. Or, rather, as someone purporting to be war- averse. One way or another he turned out to be someone who developed a taste for war. Instead of immediately withdrawing from Iraq, he adhered to the same departure timetable already established by Dubya. Not until the end of 2011 did the last American forces make their exit.

In Afghanistan, Obama actually escalated the war projecting a distant deadline (2014) for ending the combat role. He has hugely increased the frequency of drone missile attacks on targets in Pakistan, and he has made them in Yemen and Somalia. He launched an air war against the government of Libya, which had neither attacked nor threatened America. If this is an anti-war candidate, what would a pro-war candidate like Romney do?
So far, Obama has held his fire on Iran and Syria. For now. Yet the American right portay Obama as a UN-loving, concession-granting, unilaterally disarming appeaser. The scaremongering smear has worked for them before. It say all we need to know about how America has become a danger to the world, when the warmongers are portrayed as wimps in the mould of Jimmy Carter. In relation to foreign policy in the next five years, two conclusions:

- Here in the UK, the Prime Minister will be given an envelope containing UK foreign policy for the next five years by the incumbent President, whoever wins.

- In the unlikely event that Romney wins, the destructiveness, crassness and lack of self-assessment of US foreign policy has very little room left for deterioration.