Ask most Obama supporters what their candidate’s stance on war is and they will quickly spit out the line, “He was against this war from the beginning.” This may be true but the question is rarely asked why he was against the war from the beginning. The answer to the why question is not what most Obama supporters would believe it to be.

He was against the war because he thought that the US forces could not “win” the war. He is a calculating politician and he knew that it would be a long unpopular war, so while serving in the Illinois State Senate he spoke out against the war, knowing he could do nothing about it at the time. Virtually every time he has had the chance Obama, the hawk in sheep’s clothing, has gone on to fund the war in the US Senate.

In his speech against the invasion of Iraq (which can be found on his website) in October of 2002 there is not one mention about the certain suffering of the Iraqi people that was imminent at the time. The only concern he has with the people of Iraq at the time, who were about to start down the long horrific road of losing hundreds of thousands of its citizens to bombs and the consequences of the US invasion and occupation, was the anger that they would certainly have towards the US if his government continued to move forward with the war.

The reason this is important to point out is because if you simply take the old media’s word for it, you would think that Obama is a dove straight out of the anti-war movement. The way the debate is set up in the old media, the closest you are going to get to an anti-war candidate is Barack Obama, and that is simply a joke. The old media’s anti-war candidate will not take a nuclear first strike against Iran off of the table or guarantee that US troops will be out of Iraq by the end of his first term. Obama has also made it clear that he would approve of air strikes within the borders of Pakistan against the will of the nuclear armed Pakistani government.

The fact of the matter is that the United States has used the American people’s tax dollars to build an American city (embassy) in Baghdad and they are not leaving. Period. Barack Obama is fully aware of this, but that does not stop his promises from being made. It is hard for his stances on foreign policy to come back and bite him at this point, because as hawkish as he is, Hillary is much worse. This explains why MSNBC was so deathly afraid of having Kucinich in their most recent debate, it would have exposed the fallacy of the frame in which the Iraq debate is confined.

The only hope continues to be Ron Paul, whose message when contrasted with Barack Obama’s exposes Obama for what he really is; a hawk in dove’s clothing.