Does Obama Deserve (Progressives) Support ?

Except that there's nothing "good" about being a status quo centrist like Clinton or Obama.

Sure there is - they have the potential to achieve the kind of power that the Left in this country is simply incapable of achieving. The Left will NEVER end this war because they are hopelessly convinced of their own dominance. Obama and Clinton understand that you have to get power to use power, and groups like Wall Street and the Military-Industrial Complex cannot be simply ignored.

"Achieving power" is useless if you aren't going to use it for anything worthwhile. Neither Obama nor Clinton is anti-war, they're anti-THIS-war. So what? Everyone but the nutjobs are anti-this-war at this point. They will "achieve power" and then use it to keep up the same thing everyone else who achieves it uses power for. Sure, it's marginally better than a McCain or a Bush, but it's still the lesser of two evils.

Neither Obama nor Clinton is anti-war, they're anti-THIS-war.

As they should be! This war was bad, but there are times when war is justified. Our species is not yet above destroying ourselves. There are some real evil people out there, and leaving ourselves defenseless is leaving ourselves open to be brutalized!

Being opposed to war is not synonymous with being opposed to the capacity for self-defense.

Yeah, well... sometimes all that's required for evil to triumph is for good people to do nothing. If the U.S. sat around during the Bosnian war more people would have been killed... we're sitting around right now while Danfur is being destroyed and evil is winning there. There are times when war is justified!

The NATO Bosnian intervention predated the attempted ethnic cleaning, it didn't end it. This is a fact which was well known even at the time. Clinton intervened in Bosnia because he wanted to restore NATO's credibility and relevancy as a military force in the post-Soviet era, not because the events on the ground necessitated it. There was an actual, and much greater, ethnic cleansing occurring in East Timor simultaneously, and we did not intervene there simply because our eggs were in the NATO basket at the time and NATO doesn't operate in Indonesia. The Bosnian intervention was really no different in purpose than our intervention in Iraq, which was much more about proving that the United States is dominant than ending Saddam Hussein's regime.

I would not be opposed to Americans participating in effective, internationally-led UN peacekeeping missions to halt genocide. Such a beast has yet to ever exist.

Then you're not anti-war - peacekeepers carry assault rifles! Pacifism is not a desireable quality for the most powerful office on the planet.

Obviously, I disagree. And you know what? I take back my peacekeeper statement. I'm not sure I'd support that after all. Suffice it to say that I'll never know, because both Clinton and Obama will maintain the interventionist status quo, according to their platforms.

Well I like an interventionist policy, because there are some real evil men out there, some true predators. We'd all love a world where we magically live in harmony but we don't live in that world.

I thought this article would be bullocks, but it is actually a pretty decent write-up of reasonable concerns.

Overall, I agree with More Than Happy on virtually every single point, and with everybody else that Obama is the last bad candidate.

Still, it is said that democracy is the least bad form of government, and I would not be content or even remotely comfortable living in any other system. There is a long way from being a neo-con hawk to not being a pacifist.

Iraq is, to any responsible observer, a true dilemma. You can't really invade a country, topple the government and then, when you feel it is too expensive in life and tax dollars, cut and run. There is a true problem here, and one that really qualifies as a "national security" issue. It is about the security of Iraqi nationals now, and they sure aren't too comforted with the prospect of the feeble democracy thrown into the hands of sectarian warlords. It is 100% a bind created by the Bush administration, and it is unfair to throw it in the face of Obama - or Clinton or McCain for that matter (not condoning his "I don't think Americans care if we stay 100 years in Iraq" comment - that was ill advised).

As a European the health care issue really concerns me on your behalf. I hope this list will be something that may land on Obama's table, and that he will take seriously, rather than a list of of things that will alienate voters from him.