Obama Foreign Policy to Pay Domestic Dividends

Guest post by PD:

In another impressive display of both his domestic and foreign policy acumen, Obama yesterday laid out exactly how his radically rational approach to rebuilding America's image abroad will reap tangible benefits here at home--and soon.

Obama kicked off a week focused on economic issues by highlighting this year's record $482 billion budget deficit--adding to Bush's other economic high-water mark: increasing the national debt by over $3 trillion in 8 years. In a stunning display of economic sanity, Obama pointed out that the ill-devised and poorly-executed wars in Iraq and Afghanistan--which cost the taxpayer over $12 billion per month--might be causing us to neglect some of our needs here at home.

"When you think about the big problems we face here at home, they're connected to the problems we face abroad," he said before the "Unity: Journalists of Color" conference. Redeploying troops from Iraq and sharing the burden in Afghanistan among the international community, Obama argued, would "free up money to keep folks in their homes" and provide funds for needed infrastructure and domestic projects.

Echoing the sentiments from his recent speech in Germany, Obama said: "The world is waiting for the United States to reengage." This, coming on the heels of the Bush administration's latest co-opting of Obama's plan for diplomatic negotiations with Iran, I would say hints that Obama may just have that special kind of momentum in a political campaign that only comes from being right.

Rebuilding America's image abroad--which no one can argue is more likely to happen under a President McCain than under President Obama--will pay dividends not only in peace and security for our children's generation, but here and now, and to the tune of $3 billion per week not spent on an unnecessary war.