Obama Says U.S. Needs to Space Out on Foreign Policy

Howard Dean cheering for defeat in Iraq.


I’m always amused when I hear such high praise of Barack Obama’s oratory skills. Obama is articulate, certainly, but his oratorical skills are merely competent. Against a backdrop of President Bush, who thinks well but sometimes speaks in a chopped or clipped manner, Obama’s oratory causes the 90 percent of media hearts which are Democrat to palpitate.

At a recent blah-blah campaign speech from Washington, Obama said the U.S. had pursued a “single-minded” policy approach. He said that the U.S. was paying the price for a foreign policy that “lectures without listening.”

In the next breath, the Great Orator said: “By any measure, our single-minded and open-ended focus on Iraq is not a sound strategy for keeping America safe.” Obama goes on and on in the stentorian tone of voice which he uses to disguise the poverty of his vagaries, but let’s look for the content in the “single-minded and open-ended focus on Iraq”, as he puts it. Let me put it this way. Having a “single-minded focus” is a bad thing, according to Obama. Having an “open-ended” policy is also bad, even though the open ended policy may be flexible, may adjust to conditions on the ground, and may be looking out for trouble on both ends.

It just goes to show you what BS Obama can get away with in the liberal media. He disdains the “single-minded”. Okay, so does that mean he advocates a broad approach which encompasses a wide array of foreign policy concepts. He never says. We’d certainly like to know what kind of broad approach he’d take but that is a campaign secret. Most likely, he means getting back to serving subpoenas to the bombers who tried to take down the World Trade Center with bombs in 1993. Goombaye. As Hillary Clinton said, all Obama’s got is a speech before an anti-war group to sum up his foreign policy experience.

In the next breath (and the same sentence), he disavows the “open-ended focus”. That’s downright stupid. In the same sentence, Obama contradicts himself by criticizing single-mindedness and also a broad approach taken within the context of an “open-ended focus” on Iraq. That’s very lawyerly. It’s also very illogical, deceptive, and vague. It’s not great oratory and can only pass for such in an era in which the liberal media has talked down and dumbed down and homogenized the news to the degree that insults the intelligence of literate people. If your vocabulary extends beyond “duh”, and your only response to foreign policy is to say “no” to all of it, and believe that by doing so you are participating in a great cause, you will think Obama is a great orator.

So what is this spaced-out approach that Obama recommends. He plays up Afghanistan as if he is a militarist straight from the hard-line ranks of the Harvard Law Review. It’s media posturing of the worst sort and has more Obama-interest in it than national interest. Against Senator McCain, Obama’s puffery looks anemic and fake. Obama is a candidate on training wheels, someone who depends on a script, and who will be guided by an invisible cabal of pacifist Democrats who mistake sentiment for character.

John McCain is right on the money when he says:

“Sen. Obama will tell you we can’t win in Afghanistan without losing in Iraq. In fact, he has it (precisely) backwards.”