>>Here is a small piece I posted on the now dead and buried MakeSocialismHistory.com site in early August of last year, it address’ a comment made by Obama when talking about his Foreign Policy. I thought it was interesting and have therefore decided to re-post it here. The piece is pre-Bhutto assasination and written when my favoured candidate for the White House was still in with more than a good shot.<<
Barack Obama, the junior Senator from Illinois and Presidential hopeful has just made me splutter my cup of tea all over my keyboard. On reading through GoogleNews I nearly fell off my chair when I saw an article on the Guardian’s website stating that Obama would be prepared to enter Pakistani territory without the permission of Pakistan’s Military dictator, General Musharraf. Is this however his true opinion or is the Obama campaign merely attempting to claw back some of the significant poll lead that Hilary Clinton (the long time favourite for the nomination as the Democratic Party’s Presidential Candidate for 2008) holds on issues such as security and war-leader characteristics?
The revelation comes from an advanced copy of a speech the Presidential hopeful will give later today and is perhaps intended to force the Clinton team into following Obama’s line on this issue. I personally do not think that Clinton would be stupid enough to take the bate; she can come back with a response along the lines of “this again shows the Junior Senator’s lack of understanding and experience in Foreign affairs and illustrates why Sen. Obama is not yet ready to undertake the job of President of the United States of America”. Such a statement would again highlight Obama’s lack of experience on the international stage and remind the American public of actually how big a job being President is (as it seems so regularly to decend into a circus type affair). The statemenet would also allow the Clinton team to qualify the comment by later; stating that Sen. Clinton respects and admires Sen. Obama, but does not believe that the Senator for Illinois has as yet the experience required to carry out the job. AGAIN reinforcing his inexperience yet allowing for the fact that in other areas Obama is strong and it is only a matter of time before he can quite realistically reach the White House.
The most important question (or questions rather) in all of this is (are) however; does Barack Obama really believe this, and will he continue on this trend for an Obama Administration policy for Afghanistan into the primaries, if he does get the nod in the primaries; will he carry it into the full general election a year from now? I think it really does depend on how his polling does in light of this, how Conservatives react to the idea and how Clinton’s band-wagon deal with the thought of what would be or all intents and purposes invading a key ally on the war on Terrorism.
It would be very interesting to see a Democrat ticket headed by Obama verses a GOP ticket headed by Giuliani and how both camps would deal with this issue, how will the GOP front-runners react to this? Oh dear, far too many questions posed and so little answered…
