Obama's Lack of Historical Knowledge Clouds His Iraq Position
For a searing analysis of Barack Obama's current position on Iraq, you can't do better than this editorial from the Washington Post. The final sentences sum it up:
Indeed: The message that the Democrat sends is that he is ultimately indifferent to the war's outcome—that Iraq "distracts us from every threat we face" and thus must be speedily evacuated regardless of the consequences. That's an irrational and ahistorical way to view a country at the strategic center of the Middle East, with some of the world's largest oil reserves. Whether or not the war was a mistake, Iraq's future is a vital U.S. security interest. If he is elected president, Mr. Obama sooner or later will have to tailor his Iraq strategy to that reality.
"Ahistorical" is a good word, for Obama seems surprisingly lacking in his knowledge of history for a man educated at Columbia University and Harvard Law School. At one point in the campaign, he cited Franklin Roosevelt and Harry Truman as presidents who met with enemy leaders. In my reading, I have missed the descriptions of the Roosevelt-Hitler summit and the dialogue between Truman and the leaders of imperial Japan. Perhaps Obama had in mind the pictures of Roosevelt sitting next to Josef Stalin at Tehran and Yalta or of Truman sitting next to him at Potsdam. But the Soviet Union was our ally at the time of those meetings. Is it possible that Obama doesn't know this?
Tags: Iraq | Iraq war (2003-) | presidential election 2008 | Barack Obama | history
Tools: 
Share
|
| Comments (33) | Print
Reader Comments
I am not a conservative or a liberal, but I will say that John McCain has made a few slips while speaking as well. But I do agree that pulling out of the war early is not the way. We need a plan and possibly a different view than the one Bush holds, but if Obama plans to immediately take us out of the war without thinking of the consequences, we're all in trouble. Does anyone really think we can just completely erase this from our history by pulling out?
Will the real Obama please stand up?
In early 2007 Baraq Obama used the then popular position that we needed to get out of Iraq immediately to secure his candidacy and subsequently victorious attainment of the Democratic Party nomination for president. Since June he has shifted his proposals numerous times toward the middle in order to try and get the independent vote. His current position is almost a mirror of that of John McCain. Obama is still a far left liberal in spite of these publically displayed positions and I have to wonder, if he successfully wins the election, will he pull out of Iraq immediately in spite of the consequences, gradually over 16 months or stay for a hundred years..... He has shifted similarly on other issues and I, can not vote for him, in the abscence of a stable position.
Baraq Obama has also been trying to find out what the popular position on a variety of issues including his recent nationwide organizational meetings to redefine the Democratic Party Platform, and then to portray those positions as his own. Again I ask, "Who is the real Baraq Obama?"
On healthcare he promises everyone insurance and no exclusions for pre-existing conditions at a lower cost to everyone. Unless he plans on not paying healthcare providers or having the government pay for the insurance I do not see how he could accomplish this. Of course if the government pays for it then the money has to come from somewhere. Taxes?
His promises to cut taxes to anyone under an income of $250,000 and make up the decreased tax revenue to the government by taxing big business and higher tax earners is also unsound. There is no way that the top 1% of wage earners can make up the decreased revenues from 99+ percent of the poulation. And if it did the likely outcome is that those entrepreneurs and businesses would raise prices for their products and services to make up the difference in their decreased take home income , which would result in inflation.
One really has to wonder if Baraq Obama has thought through the consequences of these promises. And if he has does he really intend to fullfil any of them.
Since it is a sad fact that most American college students don't have to take and don't take a single U.S. History course after HS, and their HS exposure is probably just PC crapola denouncing America's "genocidal, militaristic, culturally-oppressive" history. With so many core curricula nowadays and since the Seventies, US students can satisfy some stupid "Social Studies" requirement and take Wymen's Studies, Black Studies, Chicano Studies or whatever IN LIEU OF actual U.S. History. Is it any wonder we have so many historically-illiterate and therefore manipulable voters today, even among or even especially among, college graduates!
advertisement
