Thinkin’bout Stuff

Today we play, what did he really say…

On invading Pakistan:

From AP August 1, 2007 (link dead, but I have some of the original text) – Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama said Wednesday that he would send troops into Pakistan to hunt down terrorists even without local permission if warranted — an attempt to show strength when his chief rival has described his foreign policy skills as naive.

The Illinois senator warned Pakistani President Gen. Pervez Musharraf that he must do more to shut down terrorist operations in his country and evict foreign fighters under an Obama presidency, or Pakistan will risk a U.S. troop invasion and losing hundreds of millions of dollars in U.S. military aid.

“Let me make this clear,” Obama said in a speech at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. “There are terrorists holed up in those mountains who murdered 3,000 Americans. They are plotting to strike again. It was a terrible mistake to fail to act when we had a chance to take out an al-Qaida leadership meeting in 2005. If we have actionable intelligence about high-value terrorist targets and President Musharraf won’t act, we will.”

Now, I won’t deny that a covert operation to take out Osama bin Ladan or other terrorists would be a good thing… but announcing intentions to do so is hardly covert and is irresponsible for someone who wants to be president. 

On meeting with the leaders of Iran, Venezuela, Cuba, Syria and North Korea.. in his own words:

And as an added bonus, I transcribed the question and the answer for you:

Question – In 1982 Anwar Sadat traveled to Israel, a trip that resulted in a peace agreement that has lasted ever since.  In the spirit of that type of bold leadership, would you be willing to meet separately, without precondition, during the first year of your administration, in Washington or anywhere else, with the leaders of Iran, Syria, Venezuela, Cuba and North Korea in order to bridge the gap that divides our countries?

Obama – I would! And the reason is this, that, the notion that somehow not talking to countries, ah, is punishment to them, ah, which has been the guiding, ah, diplomatic principle of this administration, is ridiculous.  Now Ronald Reagan, and Democratic presidents like JFK, constantly spoke to Soviet Union at a time when Ronald Reagan called them an evil …  evil empire.  And the reason is because they understood that we may not trust them, they may pose an extraordinary danger to this country.  Ah, but we have the obligation to find, ah, areas where we could potentially move forward.  And ah, and I think that it is, ah, a disgrace that we have not spoken to them.  We’ve been talking about Iraq, one of the first things that I would do in terms of, ah, moving a diplomatic effort in the region forward, ah, is to send a signal that we need to talk to Iran and Syria, because they’re gonna have responsibilities if Iraq collapses, they have been acting irresponsibly up until this point, but if we tell them that we are not gonna be a permanent occupying force, we are in a position to say that, ah, they are gonna have to carry some weight in terms of stabilizing the region.

What’s interesting here is agreeing to meet without precondition is only the tip of this iceberg:

• The foundation for Obama’s justification is flawed because this “ridiculous” principle is one that has been followed well before the Bush administration. Reagan never met with any leader of the Soviet Union without precondition and JFK’s meeting with Khrushchev was nearly disastrous and led us to the brink of nuclear war… yeah that worked out well.  We dealt from a position of weakness and lost.
  • In the aftermath of the Bay of Pigs, Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev saw JFK as a weak, inexperienced figure whom the U.S.S.R. could easily bully. In June of 1961, the two world leaders met at a summit in the Austrian capital of Vienna. The central issue for discussion was the fate of Berlin. At the end of World War II, the German capital had been divided, along with the nation itself, into two zones: Communist East Berlin and democratic West Berlin. Since the city as a whole lay in Communist East Germany (which was, in turn, under the thumb of the U.S.S.R.), the Communists were constantly threatening to cut off access to West Berlin, thus strangling the democratic half of the city. In Vienna, Khrushchev renewed this threat, suggesting that the Soviet Union might sign a treaty with East Germany that would cut off all access by western nations to West Berlin. JFK stood firm, and the promised blockade never materialized; but the East Germans did throw up an ugly concrete and barb-wired wall between East and West Berlin, to prevent their own people from leaving for the West. The Berlin Wall became a symbol of the Cold War, one that would endure until 1989.
    
    The true challenge for JFK, however, lay still ahead. Khrushchev, probing for weakness, authorized the construction of Soviet missile bases in Cuba, from which the entire United States could be threatened with nuclear attack. On October 16, 1962, JFK’s military advisers handed him aerial reconnaissance photographs showing these missile emplacements. Many of the president’s generals urged an immediate invasion of Cuba, but JFK held out hope for a peaceful settlement. On October 22, he announced that a United States naval and air quarantine would go into effect, preventing any further missile shipments from Russia to Cuba. He also demanded that the Soviets remove any and all nuclear weapons already in place.So began the Cuban Missile Crisis, in which the world teetered on the brink of nuclear war. As Russian ships steamed closer to the blockade cordon, a flurry of telegrams shot back and forth between Washington and Moscow. Khrushchev, alternately conciliatory and bellicose, claimed that he was only trying to protect Castro’s government from U.S. invasion, and then suggested that the missiles might be removed if the U.S. dismantled its own Jupiter missiles in Turkey, just across the Black Sea from the Soviet Union. On Wednesday, October 24, Russian ships steaming toward Cuba turned back, and by the end of the week an agreement had been struck: Khrushchev would remove the missiles from Cuba in return for JFK’s public pledge that the U.S. would cease trying to undermine Castro’s government, and his private pledge that the U.S. would dismantle the Jupiter missiles in Turkey.
• He believes it is a disgrace that President Bush has not spoken to the leaders of any of these countries face-to-face? I don’t think Iran, Syria and North Korea are brand new enemies… so I guess we have a history of disgraced presidents in Obama’s opinion.  They were all wrong, he’s right.  And why should we doubt him, after all, he has years of experience as a state senator.
• We have the obligation to find areas where we could potentially move forward?  If only we had chatted over tea and crumpets with Hitler, we could have avoided that whole Holocaust thing.. oh wait, what am I saying. We mustn’t upset Ahmadinejad by implying the Holocaust really happened.  So where is that area of common ground we so hope to find with Iran?  I can’t even imagine what would be acceptable to a leader who wants to vaporize Israel.. maybe he’ll give us time to evacuate the country.
• Iran and Syria have been acting irresponsibly?  Is that what we call killing US troops in Iraq these days?  Bad Iran!  Bad Syria!  Go to your rooms!
• Since Obama plans to not leave an occupying force (is that what our future president calls US troops that have liberated a country, an occupying force?  Nice…), we must make certain Syria and Iran will promise they will behave responsibly after we leave.  Maybe we can even get them to sign a piece of paper.  But who better to act as a stabilizing force in the region than the man who has vowed to vaporize Israel?  Is he really this naive?  Scary.

Please… listen to what he says before his handlers spin him back around in the right direction, because if he does get elected president, there are no Mulligans in the real world.