Who Advises Obama?

The New York Sun has an article up about the people who are advising Senator Barack Obama, particularly on foreign affairs. The article carries the following two paragraphs:

Who advises Mr. Obama and whom the candidate would appoint to key foreign policy posts if elected president has raged as the topic of intense speculation on the Internet and through often anonymous e-mails warning Jewish voters that Mr. Obama's team may be neutral or indeed hostile to Israel.

In a series of interviews with the campaign's foreign policy advisers and supporters, as well as critics, the national security team that emerges around Mr. Obama is one that is in the mainstream of the Democratic Party. The senator's advisers favor a withdrawal from Iraq and see it as a distraction from the wider war on Al Qaeda; they have developed a detailed policy on how to exit the country. The campaign favors high-level diplomatic engagement with Syria and Iran, but in the context of changing the behavior of these regimes. And the foreign policy team, like the candidate, does not support pressuring Israel into negotiations with Hamas.

This article is very interesting because, as the writer notes, there has been concern in the Jewish community over what policies an Obama administration would follow regarding Israel, the Palestinians, and the Mideast. Clearly this article is an attempt to allay the fears of some Jewish voters regarding Israel and Obama.

If you are interested in this area, you need to check out this article and the companion piece that lists all of Obama's inner circle of foreign affairs advisors.