"We can remove Saddam because that could start a chain reaction in the Arab world that would be very healthy."
"And on this issue of the Shia in Iraq, I think there's been a certain amount of, frankly, Terry, a kind of pop sociology in America that, you know, somehow the Shia can't get along with the Sunni and the Shia in Iraq just want to establish some kind of Islamic fundamentalist regime. There's almost no evidence of that at all. Iraq's always been very secular."
Second, what sort of foreign policy legacy will Obama leave behind?
Third, (and dovetailing with the thread on media war coverage), is it wrong for a president to acknowledge our checkered past?
http://www.weeklystandard.com/the-costa ... le/2001794The Goldberg article makes abundantly clear that Obama is following in Attlee's footsteps. Consider this passage from Obama: "We have history. We have history in Iran, we have history in Indonesia and Central America. So we have to be a mindful of our history when we start talking about intervening, and understand the source of other people's suspicions."
Obama has always betrayed a slim and selective knowledge of American history, but what he does know, or thinks he knows, involves American sins abroad. In his view, American foreign policy for decades has been too aggressive and militaristic and has been on what he considers the wrong side of history, whether in overthrowing Mossadegh in Iran in the 1950s, waging war in Vietnam in the 1960s and 1970s, or intervening in Iraq in the 2000s. American foreign policy has been, Obama thinks, counterproductive to U.S. interests and bad for the world. And it has created unnecessary suspicions and enemies.
