Barack Obama Returns to George W Bush's Foreign Policy?

Walter Russell Mead makes an interesting argument in a recent article- in spite of Obama running as the anti-Bush and in spite of his supporters voting for him because he was supposed to be the anti-Bush, his recent actions show that he is in fact working his hardest now to push for Bush's policies in international affairs:

....President Obama’s speech to State Department employees today was billed as a major address on recasting American foreign policy in the Middle East.

It lived up to its billing. President Obama has deep-sixed the ‘realism’ that marked the first two years of his approach to the Middle East. He has returned to the foreign policy of George W. Bush.

The United States is no longer, the President told us in words he could have borrowed from his predecessor, a status quo power in the Middle East. The realist course of cooperating with oppressive regimes in a quest for international calm is a dead end. It breeds toxic resentment against the United States; it stores up fuel for an inevitable conflagration when the oppressors weaken; it stokes anti-Israel resentment when hatred of Israel becomes the only form of political activism open to ordinary people; it strengthens the hold of extremist religion and strangles the growth of liberal forces.

More, he attacked Iran. All that talk about avoiding polarization with Iran is gone. Instead, President Obama singled out Iran as an oppressive, tyrannical regime supporting terror and running an “illicit nuclear program” as well.

He also followed Bush in attacking some US allies, calling on Bahrain and Yemen to make changes. It was a speech that enraged almost every powerful actor in the Middle East and put America out on a limb. Like Bush, Obama is willing to confront some of America’s closest allies (the Saudis, who back the crackdown in Bahrain). Like Bush, he hailed Iraq as an example of democracy and pluralism that can play a vital role in the transformation of the region. Like Bush, he proposes to work with opposition groups in friendly countries.

His policy on Israel-Palestine is also looking Bushesque. Like Bush, he wants a sovereign but demilitarized Palestinian state. Like Bush, he believes that the 1967 lines with minor and mutually agreed changes should be the basis for the permanent boundaries between the two countries — and like Bush he set Jerusalem and the refugees to one side....

Obama is showing quite a bit of courage in abandoning all of his previous principles, opinions, views, and voting records to continue the previous policies of an administration that he personally attacked many times, and his supporters are very brave in supporting Obama's remarkable change in policies from George W Bush to George W Bush. But in spite of all of this change and togetherness and hope and rainbows, I can't help but feel that if Bush's policies are so good and wise now, what sort of damage did Obama do in fighting them in the Senate during the blink-of-eye that he was actually in government prior to becoming President, and what sort of damage did Obama do to our nation in resisting these policies during the first two years that he was getting his ears dried off while playing at being President?

I guess I'm just nit-picking though- I should be happy that Obama finally is learning that all of his instincts and ideas regarding foreign policy are wrong and that George W Bush was right about a great many things. Obama's greatest foreign policy successes have come by following on Bush's heels- from killing OBL to the surge in Afghanistan- and maybe one of these days he'll begin to follow in Bush's domestic policy heels too and we'll go back to the awful days of 5% unemployment growth and positive GDP growth.

UPDATE: To be serious for a moment, I still can't figure out why the Jewish community voted for Barack Obama so strongly last election. I've always thought that something about how he deals with Jewish people bothers me- he appears at times to be against Jewish people, demanding more evidence from them and less from others, not believing them and believing others, and being cold and vaguely disrespectful towards Israel's leaders while warm and inviting towards the leaders of Israel's enemies. The National Review Online actually did some analysis of his speech, and picked up on a couple of these tendencies of Obama- his tendency to blame the Jews, his tendency to order the Jews to do things, and his tendency to minimize threats to the Jewish people. These are all vaguely disturbing tendencies for the President of the United States to have.