Whither the Obama of Hope?

The clear continuity in Obama and Bush's counter-terrorism policies belie Obama's mantra of change.

“What happened to hope?”

That’s the question many of U.S. President Barack Obama’s supporters are asking three years after a campaign that criticized “wars of choice” and the Patriot Act, promised to “finish the fight” in Afghanistan, and vowed to close the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay and use “tough direct diplomacy” to prevent Iran from deploying nuclear weapons.

When it comes to foreign and defence policy, the answer is simple: The message of hope and change collided with reality. In short, Obama’s supporters are learning that conducting U.S. foreign policy is far more difficult than simply critiquing it. As a consequence, on the central foreign-policy and national-security issue of the day – the global struggle against jihadists and their patrons and partners – there is far more common ground between Obama and former president George W. Bush than Obama’s supporters expected, and less change than his opponents feared.

To be sure, there are important differences in other areas of foreign policy (the divergent approaches to Russia, missile defence, and the United States’ leadership role in NATO, for example). And, without question, the Bush-Obama continuity on counterterrorism is often overshadowed by Obama’s rhetoric, sprinkled with references to “the failed policies of the previous administration.” But in the fight against terrorists with a global reach, actions speak louder than words.

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It pays to recall that one of Obama’s first acts after his election was to hire Bush’s defence secretary, Robert Gates, who helped plan the revised mission for Afghanistan/Pakistan (AfPak) under Bush and carried out the successful surge strategy in Iraq. Part of the revised AfPak mission crafted by Gates and other national-security leaders from the Bush era was the so-called “drone war,” the controversial yet effective use of unmanned planes to strike enemy targets in Pakistan, which began under Bush and has been expanded under Obama.

Even upon Gates’ retirement, Obama selected, in Leon Panetta, someone who seems to be more comfortable with Bush’s polices than with candidate Obama’s rhetoric.

For example, while others in the Obama administration made a concerted effort to expunge the “war on terrorism” phraseology from official pronouncements, Panetta, who served as CIA director before taking over at the Pentagon, refused to engage in the rhetorical games and debates over word choice. “There’s no question this is a war,” he bluntly said of the struggle against jihadist terrorism.

While others in the Obama administration discussed talking Iran out of its drive for nukes, Panetta told it like it was, reporting that Iran has “enough low-enriched uranium right now for two weapons.”

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To top it all off, during a recent visit to Iraq, Obama’s newly minted defence secretary explained to the troops, “The reason you guys are here is because on 9/11 the United States got attacked … And we’ve been fighting as a result of that.”

Panetta’s point – and Bush’s – is not that Saddam Hussein perpetrated the 9/11 atrocities, but that 9/11 taught Washington a grim lesson about the danger of failing to confront threats before they are fully formed. In the same way, the appeasement of Adolf Hitler had nothing, and yet everything, to do with how the U.S. waged the Cold War against Joseph Stalin and his successors.