{"id":6572,"date":"2009-12-14T20:23:31","date_gmt":"2009-12-15T04:23:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/?p=6572"},"modified":"2009-12-14T20:23:31","modified_gmt":"2009-12-15T04:23:31","slug":"now-robert-kagan-pivots-too","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/2009\/12\/14\/now-robert-kagan-pivots-too\/","title":{"rendered":"Now (Robert) Kagan Pivots, Too"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>As <a href=\"http:\/\/www.ips.org\/blog\/jimlobe\/?p=319\">predicted<\/a>, Bob Kagan <a href=\"http:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/wp-dyn\/content\/article\/2009\/12\/11\/AR2009121103517.html\">follows <\/a>in Kristol\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s wake. Afghanistan is so pass\u00c3\u00a9; it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s clearly time to focus on Iran. Check out the last paragraph in his column in Sunday\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Washington Post \u00e2\u20ac\u201d specifically, the order in which the problems facing Obama are presented, and then the singling out of Iran:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\u00e2\u20ac\u0153It is only natural that President Obama should respond to unexpected or shifting circumstances by reevaluating his approach. Events in Iran, Afghanistan or China do not occur in isolation. You cannot expect a president to escalate a war without it affecting his broader attitude toward the questions of war and peace. You cannot expect Iran\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s spurning of his good-faith offer to have no effect on his broader perception of the strategy of engagement. For Obama, as for all of us, these events, these decisions and these lessons affect our broader perceptions and understandings, about the way the world works and about America\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s proper role in the world. Obama\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s current understanding was on display at Oslo last week. People at home and abroad should take notice.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>The neo-cons clearly see a <a href=\"http:\/\/domino.ips.org\/ips%5Ceng.nsf\/vwWebMainView\/2B512E15EEA442E4C12576830010C53A\/?OpenDocument\">great opportunity<\/a> in Obama\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s escalation in Afghanistan and the follow-up of the Nobel speech in Oslo. They\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re trying hard to re-establish alliances they made with liberal interventionists in and around Bill Clinton and the Balkans in the 1990s by appealing to that \u00e2\u20ac\u0153great tradition of hawkish Democrats fighting wars both hot and cold: Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman and John Kennedy, as well as that one-time Democrat, Ronald Reagan.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d (Make sure you read Kristol\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s and Fred Kagan\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s <a href=\"http:\/\/www.weeklystandard.com\/Content\/Public\/Articles\/000\/000\/017\/307lxxjy.asp\">editorial<\/a> in the December 14 <em>Weekly Standard<\/em>, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Support the President.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d)<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.ips.org\/blog\/jimlobe\/?p=320\">Read the rest of the post<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>As predicted, Bob Kagan follows in Kristol\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s wake. Afghanistan is so pass\u00c3\u00a9; it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s clearly time to focus on Iran. Check out the last paragraph in his column in Sunday\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Washington Post \u00e2\u20ac\u201d specifically, the order in which the problems facing Obama are presented, and then the singling out of Iran: \u00e2\u20ac\u0153It is only natural that [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":49,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-6572","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"meta_box":{"disable_donate_message":"","custom_donate_message":"","subtitle":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6572","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/49"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6572"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6572\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6573,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6572\/revisions\/6573"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6572"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6572"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6572"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=6572"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}