Not so different

Here's a link to the column I wrote last week for Antiwar.com, comparing and contrasting the three remaining possible candidates for president on the Iraq war and foreign policy. I concluded that even though their rhetoric is rather different, when you get to likely policies they aren't all that different. Obama will face the fact that even a prompt withdrawal will take more than a year just to get all the people and equipment out, and might face a situation that makes him want to delay withdrawal a while. McCain, obviously more militaristic, will face the prospect of the military being thoroughly "hollowed-out" if he stays in Iraq much longer. Likewise Hillary.

The striking thing is that when it comes to what the political scientists call Grand Strategy there's not more than a dime's worth of difference among them. They all believe the U.S. should play a grandiose role in the world at large. Even Barack does, though he calculated that Iraq was a mistake at the outset, which was not all that tough to do.