Obama’s Cheney on the warpath

In spite of the alleged advent of “change” in Washington, it looks like one Bush administration tradition is being preserved: the War Party has taken up residence in the office of the vice president. Joe Biden has quickly taken on the role of Obama’s Cheney, a hard-liner with a special antipathy toward Russia.

In stationing sophisticated anti-missile systems in Poland and the Czech Republic, the U.S. basically abandoned the INF arms-control treaty concluded by President Reagan. These provocative policies are not slated to end with Cheney’s exit, but are finding new adherents in the incoming administration — including Biden, who announced the U.S. would pursue the missile shield plan.

Biden's belligerent remarks on Russian-Georgian relations — “We will not recognize any nation having a sphere of influence”! — indicate little change in the frosty air of the new Cold War era. The launch pad for this challenge to Moscow — an international security summit in Munich — is significant: it was the Obama administration’s first major foreign policy statement since the election.

Americans voted for change — not a revival of the Cold War, but a new era in our foreign policy. Against the new Cold Warriors, antiwar.com has been presenting the facts: we told you who started the Georgian war, and why. We challenged the conventional anti-Russian bias of the “mainstream” media from the beginning, and we were proved right.