.No, Iraq Wasn't a 'Distraction'
Whatever the much anticipated vice presidential debate may have told us about Gov. Sarah Palin and Sen. Joe Biden, it revealed clear differences in the foreign policy philosophies of the two tickets.
As Mrs. Palin pointed out, when it comes to foreign policy, the Obama-Biden team is backward looking. It continues to view international issues through the prism of opposition to George W. Bush. Nowhere is this more apparent than in Obama-Biden's continuing assertions that the Iraq war was a mistake, from beginning to the end, and that, at best, it constituted an irrelevant distraction from the combat that really matters -- in Afghanistan.
Osama bin Laden himself called Iraq the "central front" in his fight against the United States. Thousands of jihadists operated in Iraq where, with the help of Sen. John McCain's and Gen. David Petraeus's surge strategy, al Qaeda was resoundingly defeated. Its standing in the Muslim world has plummeted.
As in many other conflicts in American history, our enemies in this war operate in many geographically distinct theaters. The essence of being a good commander in chief is appreciating the connections among these theaters -- including the adversary's willingness to open new fronts -- rather than obsessing about where the last enemy attack originated.
This is exactly what President Franklin Roosevelt did in World War II when he chose to dedicate initially the bulk of American resources to the European theater, believing that destroying Hitler's Reich was the most urgent task and that Imperial Japan could be dealt with in turn; history proved him right. Yet, under the Obama-Biden playbook, FDR blundered by getting distracted from the "real" war -- in the Pacific, where America had been attacked.
Another problem with the Obama-Biden foreign policy is its obsession with high stakes presidential-level diplomacy focused on the world's rogue states. Of course, high level diplomacy is a key tool of statecraft, but it risks devaluing the president's own capital on the international stage.
Having a president try and fail fundamentally damages the nation's own credibility. The textbook example of this phenomenon remains Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev's taking the measure of a young and inexperienced John F. Kennedy in the 1961 Vienna Summit meeting. Khrushchev found Kennedy to be ill-informed and weak, and consequently embarked on an aggressive policy in Berlin and Cuba. Although Kennedy ultimately proved that he was made of sterner stuff, the world was nevertheless brought to the very brink of a nuclear war during the Cuban Missile Crisis.
The next president will likely be similarly tested by Russia and by Iran. Iranian leaders are stubbornly pursuing a policy of acquiring nuclear weapons, despite years of dialogue with Western interlocutors. The chances that they would take any more seriously diplomatic advances from a new and untried President Barack Obama are remote. Most likely, they would interpret it as a sign of weakness, causing them to accelerate their nuclear program.
The best way to create a strong negotiating position vis-à-vis Tehran, would be to alter the strategic environment in its backyard, such that the Iraqi government has stabilized that country and maintains strong military and intelligence ties with the United States, while dramatically curtailing Iranian influence. This, of course, is precisely what Mr. McCain's Iraq strategy is in the process of accomplishing, and what Mr. Obama's Iraq policy can never achieve. It would be the McCain-Palin team that is best positioned to engage in fruitful diplomatic dialogue with the Iranians.
WSJ
As Mrs. Palin pointed out, when it comes to foreign policy, the Obama-Biden team is backward looking. It continues to view international issues through the prism of opposition to George W. Bush. Nowhere is this more apparent than in Obama-Biden's continuing assertions that the Iraq war was a mistake, from beginning to the end, and that, at best, it constituted an irrelevant distraction from the combat that really matters -- in Afghanistan.
Osama bin Laden himself called Iraq the "central front" in his fight against the United States. Thousands of jihadists operated in Iraq where, with the help of Sen. John McCain's and Gen. David Petraeus's surge strategy, al Qaeda was resoundingly defeated. Its standing in the Muslim world has plummeted.
As in many other conflicts in American history, our enemies in this war operate in many geographically distinct theaters. The essence of being a good commander in chief is appreciating the connections among these theaters -- including the adversary's willingness to open new fronts -- rather than obsessing about where the last enemy attack originated.
This is exactly what President Franklin Roosevelt did in World War II when he chose to dedicate initially the bulk of American resources to the European theater, believing that destroying Hitler's Reich was the most urgent task and that Imperial Japan could be dealt with in turn; history proved him right. Yet, under the Obama-Biden playbook, FDR blundered by getting distracted from the "real" war -- in the Pacific, where America had been attacked.
Another problem with the Obama-Biden foreign policy is its obsession with high stakes presidential-level diplomacy focused on the world's rogue states. Of course, high level diplomacy is a key tool of statecraft, but it risks devaluing the president's own capital on the international stage.
Having a president try and fail fundamentally damages the nation's own credibility. The textbook example of this phenomenon remains Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev's taking the measure of a young and inexperienced John F. Kennedy in the 1961 Vienna Summit meeting. Khrushchev found Kennedy to be ill-informed and weak, and consequently embarked on an aggressive policy in Berlin and Cuba. Although Kennedy ultimately proved that he was made of sterner stuff, the world was nevertheless brought to the very brink of a nuclear war during the Cuban Missile Crisis.
The next president will likely be similarly tested by Russia and by Iran. Iranian leaders are stubbornly pursuing a policy of acquiring nuclear weapons, despite years of dialogue with Western interlocutors. The chances that they would take any more seriously diplomatic advances from a new and untried President Barack Obama are remote. Most likely, they would interpret it as a sign of weakness, causing them to accelerate their nuclear program.
The best way to create a strong negotiating position vis-à-vis Tehran, would be to alter the strategic environment in its backyard, such that the Iraqi government has stabilized that country and maintains strong military and intelligence ties with the United States, while dramatically curtailing Iranian influence. This, of course, is precisely what Mr. McCain's Iraq strategy is in the process of accomplishing, and what Mr. Obama's Iraq policy can never achieve. It would be the McCain-Palin team that is best positioned to engage in fruitful diplomatic dialogue with the Iranians.
WSJ
posted by madtom at 5:21 PM
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