I was watching a talking head this weekend who said historians will look back on the Obama administration and point out how similar the current administrations Middle East policies are to the Bush administration.
The implication being that historians will view Obama either as a political opportunist who never intended on keeping his political promises or a failure who was not able to accomplish his middle east agenda.
I disagree. I think historians will chuckle at the idea that we expected Obama to change our current middle east policy in 365 days.
Change takes time. Our current conflict in Afghanastan is just the tip of 40 years worth of failed policy in the middle east. Actual change in the middle east requires a much deeper level of examination and discussion, followed by comminent to long term policies on disengagement.
It's incredible that the current media is dissapointed with the Obama administrations inability to create change in its' first year. Now I know there's a degree of hype to the media's reaction; but there also seems to be a current cultural disconnect with just how long change takes.
Whether it's global warming, or affirmative action, there is a general consesus that these issues which took hundreds of year to manifest should be fixable within a generation or two. To disagree is to be obstructionist or opportunist.
I think this is one of the real issues plaguing Washington. The lack of political will to explain the reality of change to the general public. I'm sure inside the beltway no one believes immediate policy change is possible in the middle east.
Yet our current political zeitgeist is built on this assumption. The result is an endless series of course corrections that are costly and useless.
