Obama's Myopia!

I remain a major supporter of Obama in spite of my concurring with Krugman, Johnson, and Roubini that his approach to the banking industry will most likely not achieve the stated objectives. I now only hope that his approach will avoid the need to do the necessary restructuring urged by his critics because it would mean that tons of money would have been essentially wasted.

I have been supporting his declaring that the Bush policies regarding torture were wrong and are being withdrawn. I can understand why some want at least the people who authored the opinions to be prosecuted, but I can also understand why Obama does not want to proceed down this road.

What I missed is the fact that Obama continues to support the general position that the military has to be present virtually everywhere. I was taken back by Andrew Bacevich's column that expressed strong disagreement with this approach. Bacevich, a person with a distinguished military history, strongly critiqued Obama for continuing the past policies supporting a vision that military power will make our nation more secure.

As he states:

What the president is doing and saying matters less than what he has not done. The sins of omission are telling: There is no indication that Obama will pose basic questions about the purpose of the US military; on the contrary, he has implicitly endorsed the proposition that keeping America safe is best accomplished by maintaining in instant readiness forces geared up to punish distant adversaries or invade distant countries. Nor is there any indication that Obama intends to shrink the military's global footprint or curb the appetite for intervention that has become a signature of US policy. Despite lip service to the wonders of soft power, Pentagon spending, which exploded during the Bush era, continues to increase.