January 12, 2009 I liked Roger Cohen's article in the New York Times today. His point about Barack Obama's "back to the future" Middle East team is not unlike the one I made the other day about Michael McFaul, who appears to be emerging as Obama's point-man on Russia. It's a real pity, but Obama's foreign policy seems to be heading (in some ways) towards a watered-down version of Bush's foreign policy.  Obama's approach to the world  probably will not involve invading other countries, mind you (a very important difference). But at the same time,  I fear that a lot of Obama's foreign policy "change" may end up taking place mainly with regard to tone, rather than substance. Changing the tone is important, but I think it has got to be only the beginning. I'd also like to see more debate regarding the wisdom of withdrawing not only from Iraq, but also Afghanistan. During the campaign Obama often argued that, while we should try to get out of Iraq by 2010, we should use this withdrawal as an opportunity to step up our forces in Afghanistan. This is an argument that needs to be challenged. Withdrawing from either of these countries is a complicated issue which needs to involve a lot of thought. I support withdrawing from Iraq, although what we do there obviously will have to depend upon circumstances on the ground. But why the insistence upon staying in Afghanistan? What are our objectives there? Shouldn't the absence of terrorist training camps in that country be enough for us? And, if Osama bin Laden or someone else returns to that country to re-establish training camps, couldn't we return and destroy the camps without occupying the country full-time? After all, it appears that one of the unintended consequences of our occupation of Afghanistan is that the Taleban has gone over the border into Pakistan., a country which possesses nuclear weapons. How is this preferable to the Taleban being in Afghanistan? As is the case with Iraq, withdrawing from Afghanistan would have to be done very deliberately. However, I think it's high time the debate started moving in the direction of withdrawal from not only Iraq, but Afghanistan too.