Can This Marriage Last?

Having savaged each other for a
year, Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton have now formed a
rare partnership in power. Not since

James Garfield chose
James G. Blaine has a new president chosen his
principal rival to be secretary of state.

What does this tell us?

First, don`t take campaign oratory
all that seriously.

Second, unlike Dennis Kucinich,
Ted Kennedy,
Ron
Paul or

Jesse Helms, , Hillary and Barack are pragmatists.
They do not let ideology or past insults get in the way
of a mutually beneficial deal.

But this is not some

Hitler-Stalin pact of American politics.

Dick Morris has it right. As in a
parliamentary system, where Cabinet members come
straight off the majority party front bench, Barack, as
prime minister, is knitting together a coalition
government that allocates its highest honors to its
greatest stars.

As Tony Blair named rival Gordon
Brown as chancellor of the exchequer, Barack made Joe
Biden his vice president, Hillary his secretary of state
and Bill Richardson his secretary of commerce. Had
John
Edwards not

fouled his nest, he, too, would be in the Cabinet.
Perhaps attorney general.

And while Barack has taken a risk
naming Hillary, with her national following and ruthless
courtiers, Hillary`s investment is even greater. Should
a clash erupt, as it did between Ronald Reagan and Al
Haig, Barack, though at great cost, can terminate her
and her career. The idea that a cashiered secretary of
state could challenge President Obama in 2012, capture
the nomination and win, after humiliating and dumping
our first African-American president, is absurd.

And the Clintons know it. Absent
divine intervention, Obama is the nominee in 2012.
Hillary has to know this is likely her last chance to
make history. Thus she seized the offer of State, and
Bill agreed to go the Full Monty on his financial
relationships.

What does this marriage of
convenience, with Biden, Bob Gates and Gen. Jim Jones as
ushers, mean for U.S. foreign policy?

Methinks the antiwar left has the
crying towel out too early.

Our new decider`s heart is still on
the left. Moreover, his political interests argue for
relegating to the trash bin of history a Bush-neocon
policy of endless war until the Middle East resembles
the Middle West. America cannot sustain the wars that
Bush`s policy produced, nor those it promises.

Look, then, for Obama to make a
large, early down payment on his pledge to withdraw all
U.S. combat brigades from Iraq within 16 months. Though
the Status of Forces Agreement accepted by Iraq doubles
the time Obama has to pull out, to December 2011, the
nation, not just the left, wants out, with but a single
caveat: America does not want a Saigon ending.

What happens after—whether Shia
attack Shia, or join to crush Sunnis, or Arabs engage
Kurds—is not a war Americans are willing to intervene in
with any new surge of U.S. troops.

About Afghanistan there is a
gathering consensus that victory over a resurgent
Taliban with a sanctuary in Pakistan`s border region
cannot be achieved without an infusion of U.S. troops
this country is unwilling to support.

Escalating the war means more air
strikes that have alienated the Afghan people as well as
President Kharzi. More Predator strikes in a Pakistan
where anti-Americanism is rife and the government is
besieged hardly seems a promising policy.

What is the U.S. bottom line in
Kabul? Not the impossible dream of a democracy modeled
on our own but a government committed to keeping
al-Qaida out. Given the bloody beating the Taliban have
taken for seven years, they may be amenable to such an
arrangement.

But the first test of the
Obama-Clinton team may be Iran.

Tehran claims its nuclear program
is for peaceful purposes, and the International Atomic
Energy Agency has never declared it in violation of the
non-proliferation treaty. Yet, the suspicion is broad
and deep in Washington and Tel Aviv that Iran is
hell-bent on building an atom bomb. Obama and Hillary
have both said that will not happen, no matter what it
takes.

If war with Iran is to be averted,
the new team must move swiftly to talk to Tehran and put
its cards on the table. It is here that the potential
for a split between Barack and Hillary is greatest.

If Likud`s "ibi"
Netanyahu wins the Israeli election, he will push hard
for U.S. air strikes on Iran`s nuclear sites, and push
back against any Obama deal with Tehran. With the
Israeli lobby and a Jewish community that gave Barack 80
percent of its votes, plus the neocons and Evangelical
right calling for strikes against Iran`s nuclear sites,
would the Obama-Clinton team stand united—against war?

Would Hillary, a former senator
from New York who relied even more heavily than Barack
on Jewish contributions and votes, stand by Barack if
the two disagree on whether the survival of Israel is at
stake?

On second thought, the antiwar left
is right to be nervous.

COPYRIGHT

CREATORS SYNDICATE, INC.

Patrick J. Buchanan
needs

no introduction to VDARE.COM readers;
his book State of Emergency: The Third World Invasion and Conquest of America, can be ordered from Amazon.com. His latest book
is Churchill,
Hitler, and "The Unnecessary War": How Britain Lost Its
Empire and the West Lost the World,
reviewed

here by

Paul Craig Roberts.