Some of Sen. Barack Obama’s (D-Ill.) Democratic rivals criticized his new, hawkish tone on foreign policy Wednesday, but Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (N.Y.) was not one of them.
Clinton, whose campaign spent a week in the wake of the most recent Democratic presidential debate trying to depict Obama as a foreign policy neophyte, appeared this time instead to follow Obama’s lead.
In a radio interview, Clinton apparently supported Obama’s belief that it may be necessary to intervene militarily in Pakistan.
Obama raised eyebrows among his opponents and foreign policy experts Wednesday morning with a speech on terrorism that suggested he might, as president, send troops to fight al Qaeda in Pakistan, a U.S. ally.
The Illinois senator has seen his stances on diplomacy and foreign policy challenged in recent weeks as amateurish and exceedingly dovish, particularly in the case of debate comments last Monday that sparked a prolonged fight with Clinton.
After Obama said he would meet the leaders of America’s most intransigent antagonists without preconditions, Clinton called the answer “irresponsible” and “naïve.” Obama stood his ground, but his less than three years in the Senate have raised questions about his foreign policy acumen.
Clinton’s campaign went non-confrontational Wednesday, however, granting a little-known radio interview and essentially agreeing with Obama’s stance.
“I’ve long believed that we needed tougher, smarter action against terrorists by deploying more troops to Afghanistan, and if we had actionable intelligence that Osama bin Laden or other high-value targets were in Pakistan I would ensure that they were targeted and killed or captured,” Clinton said in an interview with American Urban Radio News Network. “And that will be my highest priority because they pose the highest threat to America.”
Clinton said she would first pursue diplomacy, but using her husband, former President Bill Clinton, as an example, took the same hawkish tack Obama had employed earlier in the day.
“But clearly we have to be prepared — as my husband was when he fired on training camps and as we must be with special operations, with using technology like the Predator [unmanned aerial vehicle] — to be constantly on the hunt for bin Laden and the other al Qaeda leadership,” Clinton said.
Sen. Joseph Biden (D-Del.), by contrast, lashed out at Obama’s speech, congratulating Obama sarcastically for his “Johnny-come-lately position.” He argued that Obama had only recently come to the same conclusions Biden did months ago.
Sen. Chris Dodd (D-Conn.) was equally as pointed. “As commander in chief, I would take the steps necessary to defend the American people, beginning with hunting down Osama bin Laden and stopping terrorists from acquiring nuclear weapons,” Dodd said. “But I will not declare my intentions for specific military action to the media in the context of a political campaign.”
Pakistan has been an ally but is also alleged to be a haven for terrorists including al Qaeda’s leader, Osama bin Laden.
“As 9/11 showed us, the security of Afghanistan and America is shared,” Obama said. “And today, that security is most threatened by the al Qaeda and Taliban sanctuary in the tribal regions of northwest Pakistan.”
Obama said that, as president, he would make aid to Pakistan conditional on President Pervez Musharraf rooting out terrorists in his country.
“There are terrorists holed up in those mountains who murdered 3,000 Americans; they are plotting to strike again,” Obama said. “It was a terrible mistake to fail to act when we had a chance to take out an al Qaeda leadership meeting in 2005. If we have actionable intelligence about high-value terrorist targets, and President Musharraf won’t act, we will.”
Obama made it clear he is ready and willing to use force, but he said it is being used in the wrong place and that it needs to be accompanied by more political and economic solutions.
He restated his commitment to withdrawing from Iraq and announced his desire to increase foreign aid sharply and fund a program to facilitate cooperation between intelligence and law enforcement in foreign nations.
Obama also struck more contrasts with Clinton and former Sen. John Edwards (D-N.C.).
He repeated his charge that the Iraq war should have never been authorized — a frequent line of attack on Clinton, who voted for the war — and said the country is less safe now than it was before Sept. 11, 2001.
Clinton said during a recent debate that the United States is safer now.
Obama also clearly supported the concept of a war against terrorism, even though he didn’t use the specific “war on terror” label.
Edwards has said the “war on terror” is a meaningless slogan.
Edwards reacted to the speech by saying he would push for more diplomacy with Pakistan as he sought to turn the debate towards the Bush administration’s plan to deal arms to Saudi Arabia.
Democratic strategist Jenny Backus said Obama’s speech was in part designed to continue to draw a comparison, for primary voters, between his and Clinton’s vote on Iraq.
“Obama very much seems to be drawing the wrong-place-wrong-war argument right now,” Backus said, adding that Obama’s speech was “another shot across the bow” of the Clinton campaign.
Backus said Obama’s decision to go to the Iraq war vote again points to the success Clinton has had in minimizing the negative effects of her vote.
“In August, as the temperature goes up, so is the level of tension between Sens. Obama and Clinton,” Backus said.
Foreign policy experts were of two minds on Obama’s speech.
Former Rep. Lee Hamilton (D-Ind.), president of the Wilson Center, called Obama’s the “most comprehensive statement on counterterrorism that I have seen made by a presidential candidate.”
Stephen Biddle, a senior fellow for defense policy at the Council on Foreign Relations, said Obama’s remarks about Pakistan contained “an important degree of probably calculated ambiguity.”
“The devil, however, is in the details,” he said, adding that Obama’s plan is “either a fine thing or a very dangerous idea.”
Clifford May, president of the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, said Obama’s warning is “fairly reckless unless [he has] thought through it.”
“I fear that this hasn’t been carefully thought out,” May said, adding that the speech might have just been political saber-rattling. “The problem is that these things are heard abroad and taken more seriously than perhaps the political class here [takes them].”
|
