Democratic Presidential candidate Barack Obama made huge ripples through the mainstream news media, new media blogs and in the political world with what was touted in advance as a major foreign policy address.

And, oh was it. But was it his Sister Souljah Moment? The Los Angeles Times:

Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Barack Obama said Wednesday that the United States should reserve the right to invade the territory of its Pakistani allies and withdraw U.S. financial aid if it believes Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf is failing to do enough to stop terrorists.

“If we have actionable intelligence about high value terrorist targets and President Musharraf won’t act, we will,” Obama said at the Woodrow Wilson Center here [in Washington, DC]. “I will not hesitate to use military force to take out terrorists who pose a direct threat to America.”

The ostensible hard-line with Pakistan rapidly became the lead on talk shows, news reports, and weblogs (pro and con).

Obama laid out other steps aimed at combating terrorism. He said that while drawing down U.S. troops in Iraq, he would add at least two brigades to Afghanistan — about 5,000 troops — and increase nonmilitary aid to the country by $1 billion, to $3 billion.

The first-term Illinois senator so far has highlighted his long-standing opposition to the Iraq war and his desire to end combat operations there, but he faces a challenge in trying to show voters he has the experience and temperament to be commander in chief. In recent days, his leading rival, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-N.Y., has charged that Obama’s declared willingness to meet without precondition with leaders of adversary nations, such as Iran and Syria, is “irresponsible and naive.”

But while Obama’s 40-minute speech repositioned him on combating terrorists — which voters now identify as their top concern — it also opened him up to potential criticism from liberal Democrats who have provided much of his primary-season support.

The LAT also has this notable quote:

Stuart Rothenberg, publisher of the Rothenberg Political Report, said that Obama previously had emphasized his opposition to the “unilateralism” of President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney. “It’s tough to criticize the Bush administration for unilateralism in Iraq, then say you’d be unilateral in Pakistan,” he said. “I’m wondering if some people are going to jump on him.”

And, indeed, the timing of the hard-hitting speech was interesting.

It came as a new poll showed Senator Hillary Clinton pulling ahead of Obama after the last CNN/You Tube debate and a tussle between Obama and Clinton over some of his remarks that Clinton called naive. Pundits from many parts of the world gave their take on why Clinton was pulling ahead.

Veteran conservative columnist Robert Novak, in his newsletter, had this to say about Obama’s standing after the debate:

The consensus among Democrats is that Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-N.Y.) was the clear winner in the dispute with Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) over meeting with foreign despots as President. It went to his greatest political weakness: his presumed inexperience compared with Clinton. Former President Bill Clinton’s intervention in the dispute keeps it in the news and ends it while she’s way ahead.

So was this Obama’s effort to take a tough stand that might risk part of a voting constituency to solidify his standing with another, bigger voting bloc? The LAT report says his aides deny it. But he certainly seemed to be hammering home the idea that he was tough enough to sit in the Oval Office:

In the speech, Obama at some points used the terminology of the Bush administration in describing the problem of terrorism. He said that terrorists “are at war with us” and are “seeking to create a repressive caliphate in the Muslim world.”

Yet he also declared that as president he would launch a new effort to reach out the Islamic world, which he said has come to view the United States as a hostile occupier.

In arguing that the United States should reserve the right to strike across the Pakistani border, Obama was taking a similar approach to the Bush administration. White House officials recently have said they wanted to preserve that option, a comment that drew a sharp reaction from the Pakistani government.

But in threatening to withhold aid, Obama was going further than the White House, which has opposed any aid reduction on grounds that the United States should not risk weakening a government with a nuclear arsenal that could be ousted by a radical Islamic leadership.

The White House immediately rejected Obama’s line on Pakistan. So did Republican Senator John McCain:

McCain said the situation in Pakistan is “very delicate,” since the country’s leader, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, is an American ally with a tenuous hold on power. The Arizona senator said a direct American attack on the country could cause a backlash that might topple Musharraf.

“I think it’s kind of a simplistic view of a very complex situation,” McCain said at a press conference following an appearance at Stanford University. He advocated using covert action “before we declare that we’re going to bomb the daylights out of them.”

Democratic rivals Hillary Clinton and Senator Chris Dodd both called the comments “irresponsible.”

Opinion was diverse on weblogs, too.

My DD’s Jerome Armstrong writes that “for progressive Democrats that want a more peaceful leadership in the world shown by our next President, it fails the threshold of getting us out of picking fights in the mid-east, and discarding the Bush doctrine of unilateral pre-emptive attacks. If a unilateral pre-emptive strategy of attacking a ‘target’ is the doctrine, then why isn’t Saudi Arabia, where Al Qaeda began and home to most of the 9/11 terrorists, also a potential target? The unilateral pre-emptive doctrine is profoundly un-american and anti-diplomatic in both its actions and ramifications.”

He adds:

The one thing this has done for Obama, is put him in the center, not Clinton, of the dialogue over what’s going to happen next in the middle-east, and everyone is going to be reacting to his positions. For Richardson, who also didn’t vote for the war, it’s an opening to become the one candidate who did not vote for sending troops into Iraq and will pull completely out. For Edwards, it’s an opportunity to further differentiate himself to the left of Obama. If this doesn’t give the opening that Bill Richardson and John Edwards were looking for to criticize Obama directly, I don’t know what does. Heck, even Clinton has the opportunity to move to the left of Obama over the issue of a the US launching a unilateral pre-emptive attack inside Pakistan. Because if Pakistan is game, why isn’t Saudi Arabia as well?

Stephen Green, aka Vodka Pundit:

Let me get this straight. Obama thinks the US can’t handle Iraq, but would do just fine invading a friendly-ish country with double the land area and six times the population? Much as it pains me to agree with Hillary Clinton, “naive” is the word that comes to my mind, too.

Attytood:

This is controversial? In a time when so many David Broder-types bemoan the lack of bipartisanship in foreign policy, isn’t this something that the majority of Americans can agree with? How different is it from this?

THE Bush Administration is not ruling out direct assaults on al-Qaeda hideouts in Pakistan, one of its closest allies in the fight against terrorism.

….That said, I’ve had a chance to look at the entire Obama speech, and I suggest others read it as well. It’s provocative and also right on the money for the most part. The most interesting passage is this:

Instead, we got a color-coded politics of fear. Patriotism as the possession of one political party. The diplomacy of refusing to talk to other countries. A rigid 20th century ideology that insisted that the 21st century’s stateless terrorism could be defeated through the invasion and occupation of a state. A deliberate strategy to misrepresent 9/11 to sell a war against a country that had nothing to do with 9/11.

Read the post in full.
And Andrew Sullivan sees the speech as Obama’s “JFK Strategy” and writes, in part:

Outflanking Bush-Cheney with a serious, aggressive, intelligent campaign against Islamist terror? It’s what the country wants. And it seems to be what Obama is offering. He manages to decouple the war in Iraq from the broader war on Islamist terror…..This is the speech of a potential president.”

And, indeed, several things can be deduced from Obama’s speech:

(1) No matter what happens in 2008, Obama is a key contender in the Democratic Party.

(2) The day started with the dominant political clip being Bill Clinton defending his wife. It ended with news of the speech and reaction to it.

(3) Obama essentially “took on” Pakistan so it’ll be harder for him to be painted by Clinton or Republican foes (if he runs for President or Vice President) as weak on national security.

(4) Some pundits and progressive talker Ed Schultz have been arguing repeatedly that the Democrats can’t count on just being the anti-Bush to capture the White House in 2008, they must convince the public they are as tough as the Republicans (only more competent).

(5) Look for the Clinton-Obama skirmish to intensify.

(6) The downside for Obama is that other key portions of his speech (FULL TEXT IS HERE) got edged out in coverage over his comments about Pakistan. In fact, he detailed quite well how the White House and Republican strategists politicized the terrorism issue.