Every so often, someone on the CCPPC discussion group will send something out worth reading.  Today I received a link to Stephen Zunes' analysis of the Obama and Clinton camps' policy advisers.

Voters on the progressive wing of the Democratic Party are rightly disappointed by the similarity of the foreign policy positions of the two remaining Democratic Party presidential candidates, Senator Hillary Clinton and Senator Barack Obama. However, there are still some real discernable differences to be taken into account. Indeed, given the power the United States has in the world, even minimal differences in policies can have a major difference in the lives of millions of people.

As a result, the kind of people the next president appoints to top positions in national defense, intelligence, and foreign affairs is critical. Such officials usually emerge from among a presidential candidate’s team of foreign policy advisors. So, analyzing who these two finalists for the Democratic presidential nomination have brought in to advise them on international affairs can be an important barometer for determining what kind for foreign policies they would pursue as president. For instance, in the case of the Bush administration, officials like Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, and Richard Perle played a major role in the fateful decision to invade Iraq by convincing the president that Saddam Hussein was an imminent threat and that American forces would be treated as liberators.

The leading Republican candidates have surrounded themselves with people likely to encourage the next president to follow down a similarly disastrous path. But what about Senators Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton? Who have they picked to help them deal with Iraq war and the other immensely difficult foreign policy decisions that they'll be likely to face as president?

Anyway, it's worth reading.

Edit, 2/13/08:

I'd like to qualify something. I'm not trying to advocate or defend Obama--because, at the end of the day, he still sucks--but he is slightly better than Clinton on foreign policy issues. That was the point in posting the above piece by Zunes, who I think it is fair to say is a decent leftwing Middle East specialist.

Of the four big presidential candidates on the table who have a realistic chance of winning, I imagine Obama will probably suck the least. (That's not saying much, of course.)

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