What foreign policy game will Obama play?

As the week of Nov. 4 wound down, there was only one issue that made me nervous. It wasn’t the economy, it wasn’t science and it wasn’t social rights. I was scared about what may happen to our efforts in the War on Terror.

Obama was elected and, to be honest, I was unresolved about his good-natured approach to everything. I thought the attribute that almost lost him the election could cost us the war.

See, it’s been shown that it’s in his nature to look for the best in everyone, even if it is not there. For example, he found a pious man in Reverend Jeremiah Wright and he found a justified man in William Ayers. I was scared of what he might find next: a reasonable man in Osama bin Laden.

In some situations, diplomacy isn’t effective in bringing about change. Diplomacy wasn’t effective against Hitler, Stalin or Hussein and it won’t work with terrorists (can we include Ahmanijedad in that group?).

These people don’t answer well to being told what they should and shouldn’t do. However, they often have nothing left to say when the world provides some resistance to their bull.

Obama is trying his hardest to resolve some of the Middle Eastern conflicts, and that deserves applauding. But he will soon find out that politics over there don’t work as usual.

A few days after the inauguration, the first missile attack on Pakistan under Obama’s administration proved to be a successful one that took out Abu Laith al-Libi, a wanted al Qaeda terrorist. When most people heard about that attack (most people didn’t hear about it – this was surprisingly underplayed by the media), they might have been interested, they may have been angry or they may have been happy, but I was encouraged.

I wasn’t encouraged because people died, because that is always a tragedy. I was encouraged to see that Obama wasn’t afraid to use force when necessary.

I was encouraged to see that he did what Dubya was too scared to do himself: attack.

The distinct styles of going in full throttle versus tiptoeing around the issue can be found in everyday life, not just the decisions of presidents.

Let’s look at it this way:

I am a horrible video game player. To watch me is even more painful. I am a bit of a perfectionist. That means I have to get every coin and every star, and I have to kill everything in front of me.

My friends are much better than I am. They run through each level, killing everything they need to and avoiding everything they don’t. They usually beat each level with time to read a John Steinbeck novel before I’m done.

My point is this: Bush is me. He went into the Middle East to fight terrorism, but he saw a lot of corruption and unethical treatment, so he tried to fix that too. He over-exerted himself, our troops and ultimately America. Bush is a good man; I trust that he did whatever he thought was in the best interest of the country. It was never his intention to get us so deeply into trouble, but I think his concern developed tunnel vision.

I guess it’s too early to tell, but Obama could end up being like my friends. He has the luxury of seeing how, what, when, where and why Bush messed up. He can go in there quickly and just take the extremist group’s legs out from underneath them. He can do so without getting tied down with conflicts like the ones in Israel and Iran. Let them fight their own battles. We have one we still need to control before we involve ourselves in another.

Clinton McGue is a journalism senior and a Mustang Daily reporter.