Yesterday, during a campaign speech, Barack Obama criticized Hillary Clinton’s 2002 Iraq war vote (The Swamp, via Memeorandum). This is not the first time that Obama has brought up the issue, so it’s fair game.
Yesterday, Joseph Wilson — retired Ambassador to African nations and Iraq who worked under Presidents Bush-I and Clinton (and the husband of Valerie Plame Wilson) — defended Hillary and questioned Obama’s reliability on foreign policy issues and affairs. An excerpt follows. Of course, you can argue that this is just former Ambassador Wilson’s opinion. Nevertheless, it seems safe to call it an informed opinion.
"… I was involved in that debate in every step of the effort to prevent this senseless [Iraq] war and I profoundly resent Obama’s distortion of George Bush’s folly into Hillary Clinton’s responsibility. I was in the middle of the debate in Washington. Obama wasn’t there.
"I remember what was said and done. In fact, the administration lied in order to secure support for its war of choice, including cooking the intelligence and misleading Congress about the intent of the authorization. Senator Clinton’s position, stated in her floor speech, was in favor of allowing the United Nations weapons inspectors to complete their mission and to build a broad international coalition. Bush rejected her path. It was his war of choice.
"There is no credible reason to conclude that Obama would have acted any differently in voting for the authorization had he been in the Senate at that time. Indeed, he has said as much. The supposed intuitive judgment he exercised in his 2002 speech was nothing more than the pander of a local election campaign, just as his current assertions of superior judgment and scurrilous attacks on Hillary Clinton are a pander to those who now retroactively think the war was a mistake without bothering to acknowledge Senator Clinton’s actual position at the time and instead fantasizing that she was nothing but a Bush clone. Obama willfully encourages and plays off this falsehood.
"What should we make of Obama’s other judgments in foreign affairs? Take Afghanistan, for example. It has been evident for some time that our efforts there are going badly and that cooperation and support from our NATO allies would be helpful. As chairman of the subcommittee on Senate Foreign Relations responsible for NATO and Europe, Obama could have used his lofty position actually to engage the issue and pressure the administration to take some action to improve our chance of success in that conflict against the Taliban and Al Qaeda. Of course, that would have involved holding hearings, questioning administration witnesses, and taking a position and offering alternatives. That is what we expect that from senators in a democracy. It is called oversight.
"But, instead, Obama, by his own admission, offers the excuse that he has been too busy running for president to do anything substantive, such as direct his staff to organize a single hearing….
"As a consequence of Obama’s dereliction of duty on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, a feckless administration has had absolutely no oversight as it careens from disaster to disaster in Afghanistan, including the central governments loss of control over 70 percent of the country and yet another bumper crop of opium to fuel the efforts of the Taliban and their terrorist allies.
"Of course, if you don’t hold hearings, conduct oversight, make recommendations or sponsor legislation, then you have no record to explain or defend and you are free to take whatever position is convenient when attacking those who actually did address issues. Meanwhile, on the campaign trail, Obama holds forth on Afghanistan, chiding the administration and our allies as though he’s a profile in courage and not someone who has abandoned his post in establishing accountability."
Wilson goes on to discuss Iran (you can read the rest here at The Huffington Post.)
Cross-posted to Buck Naked Politics
