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WaPo on Obama

April 28th, 2007
By Marc Schulman

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In a generally favorable review of Obama’s recent speech at the Chicago Council on Global Affairs, the Washington Post observes that, while the Senator says he agrees with President Bush that “America’s larger purpose in the world is to promote the spread of freedom,” he does not employ the phrase “war on terrorism” and “more remarkably, he doesn’t mention Islam, much less Islamic extremism.”

The Post then proffers this advice:

Mr. Obama ought to explain more directly how he views jihadism. Is it an ideological challenge comparable to communism and fascism, as Mr. Bush contends, or merely an esoteric dogma held by bands of criminals, like the anarchism of the early 20th century? Is terrorism the central threat of the early 21st century, or, as some Democratic strategists argue, merely one of a panoply of challenges that include global warming, pandemics and the rise of China?

More than semantics are at stake. Mr. Bush has defined the era after Sept. 11 as one dominated by a “generational” struggle against extremist Islam, both by military means and through efforts to spread democracy. For the next president to set aside that policy would be akin — at least within Mr. Bush’s conception — to a rejection, by the successors to President Harry Truman, of a U.S. foreign policy defined by the Cold War. If Mr. Obama, or the other presidential candidates, see the world very differently, now is the time to make that clear.

Let’s hope that the moderators of the forthcoming avalanche of debates force the candidates to take a stand on this most important of all issues. Any candidate who refuses to take a stand — one way or the other — is not worthy of the office he/she is seeking.



This entry was posted on Saturday, April 28th, 2007 at 8:21 am and is filed under Barack Obama. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

 
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