The Mindset That Got Us Into War Is Alive and Well

I must admit that, like most progressives and antiwar activists in the coalition that played a crucial role in the victory of President-elect Barack Obama, I have been greatly disappointed with his national security team (NST). Gone are all the hopeful signs of real change in the American foreign policy that we saw – as it now appears self-deludedly – coming with the election of Obama. Instead, we must confront the cold – but by now very familiar – reality that the main players in U.S. foreign policy for several years to come will be people we have disagreed with very strongly, even despised, over the years.

There is not even one progressive or antiwar voice with principled positions in Obama's NST to counter all the pro-war people he has picked, even though when introducing his NST, Obama declared that he believes in having "strong personalities and strong opinions" and that he will welcome "vigorous debate inside the White House."

I don't want to rehash all the praise that Obama has been receiving for the selection of his NST from the neoconservatives and the War Party, which is a glaring sign of how terrible his NST is. Many people, including the author, have already done that. It should suffice to say that the neocons and the War Party could not have been happier with Obama's NST. The turncoat Joe Lieberman, whose sole purpose in life seems to be starting a war with Iran, called Obama's selections "virtually perfect," and Michael Goldfarb of the Weekly Standard declared that the selections indicate "surprising continuity on foreign policy between President Bush's second term and the incoming administration. … The expectation is that Obama is set to continue the course set by Bush…."

Here, I only want to describe the views of Obama's NST about Iran. Sensing his victory as inevitable, the neocons and the War Party started an all-out campaign before Nov. 4 to convince Barack Obama that Iran is the biggest threat to the U.S. That was not, of course, unexpected. It is not even surprising that many members of Obama's NST routinely speak of Iran's "nuclear weapon program," a program that the International Atomic Energy Agency and the U.S. intelligence community have declared to be nonexistent. More