June 3, 2008
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It looks like the presidential battle between Sens. John McCain and Barack Obama will be about one overarching theme: judgment versus experience. And Exhibit A will be the Iraq war. ...
Obama, who was a junior Illinois state senator from a very liberal district in Chicago and a star parishioner of the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr.'s Trinity United Church of Christ when the country was debating invading Iraq, would have voters believe that he carefully weighed the pros and cons and concluded it would be a bad idea. ...
A far more plausible explanation is that Obama took the position you would expect from him. Just as it never occurred to him that his pastor would be an albatross in a national election, it never dawned on him that he should take a stance other than the one expected of anyone on the far left of the Democratic Party. ...
But, even if you want to give Obama the benefit of the doubt, it's hard to give him the benefit of the facts.
As a candidate for the U.S. Senate in 2004, Obama said he would "unequivocally" oppose President Bush on the war. But once in office, he voted for every war-funding bill -- until he decided to run for president.
After the invasion, Obama did not favor an immediate pullout from Iraq. On July 27, 2004, the day after he delivered his brilliant keynote address to the Democratic National Convention, he told the Chicago Tribune that when it came to the war, "there's not much of a difference between my position and George Bush's position at this stage." In other words, while he opposed the war, he was now committed to seeing it through. ...
During the long battle for the Democratic nomination, however, Obama's position evolved (or devolved) into a consistent call for withdrawal in order to differentiate himself from Hillary Rodham Clinton. When the Bush administration finally implemented the "surge" of troops last year, it was Obama who "dug in," insisting that it wouldn't work -- and in fact would make things even worse.
By last November, the success of the surge was obvious to all open-minded observers, yet Obama insisted that the gains had come merely in a few "certain neighborhoods." ...
To View The Entire Article, Please Visit: http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oe-goldberg3-2008jun03,0,4829049.column
PDF Format
It looks like the presidential battle between Sens. John McCain and Barack Obama will be about one overarching theme: judgment versus experience. And Exhibit A will be the Iraq war. ...
Obama, who was a junior Illinois state senator from a very liberal district in Chicago and a star parishioner of the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr.'s Trinity United Church of Christ when the country was debating invading Iraq, would have voters believe that he carefully weighed the pros and cons and concluded it would be a bad idea. ...
A far more plausible explanation is that Obama took the position you would expect from him. Just as it never occurred to him that his pastor would be an albatross in a national election, it never dawned on him that he should take a stance other than the one expected of anyone on the far left of the Democratic Party. ...
But, even if you want to give Obama the benefit of the doubt, it's hard to give him the benefit of the facts.
As a candidate for the U.S. Senate in 2004, Obama said he would "unequivocally" oppose President Bush on the war. But once in office, he voted for every war-funding bill -- until he decided to run for president.
After the invasion, Obama did not favor an immediate pullout from Iraq. On July 27, 2004, the day after he delivered his brilliant keynote address to the Democratic National Convention, he told the Chicago Tribune that when it came to the war, "there's not much of a difference between my position and George Bush's position at this stage." In other words, while he opposed the war, he was now committed to seeing it through. ...
During the long battle for the Democratic nomination, however, Obama's position evolved (or devolved) into a consistent call for withdrawal in order to differentiate himself from Hillary Rodham Clinton. When the Bush administration finally implemented the "surge" of troops last year, it was Obama who "dug in," insisting that it wouldn't work -- and in fact would make things even worse.
By last November, the success of the surge was obvious to all open-minded observers, yet Obama insisted that the gains had come merely in a few "certain neighborhoods." ...
To View The Entire Article, Please Visit: http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oe-goldberg3-2008jun03,0,4829049.column
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