Obama's Foreign Policy Team

President-elect Barack Obama unveiled his picks for the members of his foreign policy team today.

As expected, Hillary Clinton is Obama's choice for Secretary of State and General James Jones, who's controversial views on Israel and the Middle East I've mentioned beforewill be Obama's choice for National Security Adviser.

Robert Gates stays on for the present as SecDef, which is appropriate as his views very much coincide with the rest of Obama's foreign policy team on subjects like Israel and Iran.

Incidentally, the vociferously anti-Israel Samantha Powers, who advocates a US invasion of Israel to enforce a Palestinian state on the pre-1967 borders is back in the administration as a member of Obama's foreign policy transition team.No doubt a high level position with the administration is in her future - perhaps as Middle East envoy.

During the Thanksgiving holiday, my mother, one of those elderly Democrats-for-life whom still thinks she's voting for FDR admitted to me that it didn't look to her that Obama was 'going to be so pro-Israel.'

I have a feeling that a great many American Jews who voted for Obama are going to come to that same guilty realization.I hope I'm mistaken.

Obama is re-instating the post of UN Ambassador as a cabinet level position, and his pick for that position is Dr. Susan Rice.


At the announcement Monday, the president-elect also announced his nominations of Eric Holder Jr. to be attorney general and Governor Janet Napolitano of Arizona to be secretary of homeland security.

The best that can be said about Holder is that he isn't Jamie Gorelick, who was also rumoured to be on Obama's short list for Attorney General. As a lobbyist and ex-Clintonista with a disturbing connection to Clinton's pardons of Mark Rich and others and some unorthodox views on the Justice Department's role in combating jihad domestically, his choice gives us a pretty clear idea of where the Obama administration is likely headed.

Napolitano's appointment could signify tougher border policies or amnesty and more or less the same border situation we have now. I'm guessing it's the latter, especially as Obama will now have the votes on both sides of the aisle in the Senate to pass it, and he owes Hispanic groups like MALDEF and La Raza for their support of him during the general election.


Obama hasn't named him yet, but he's expected to name Admiral Dennis Blair, a retired Pacific Fleet commander, as director of national intelligence. Blair is well connected politically with top Democrats, and was an Oxford classmate of former president Bill Clinton, and was a classmate at the Naval Academy of Senator Jim Webb of Virginia.