Who's the Real Obama?
On this crucial issue of the use of American power, Obama is inconsistent. He has a different tune when he turns to Darfur. He urges deployment of a "U.N. or NATO-led force" and recently accused the administration of conducting "foreign policy as if the children in Darfur are somehow less than the children here, and so we tolerate violence there." What a strange equivalence.
On the Rwandan genocide, he suggests that "an international show of force ... might have stopped the slaughter." As the historian Niall Ferguson points out, Obama is trying to have it all ways in the different civil wars. "In one, Obama recommends intervention (Darfur), while in the other he recommends a military withdrawal (Iraq)." In fact, far more than in Sudan, the United States bears a moral responsibility to prevent an even more horrendous Iraqi bloodbath. We cannot be absolved from dealing with the mess there that we have created.
For now, the senator is the most impressive insurgent candidate. But if he is to maintain momentum, he must grow. Along with his uplifting eloquence, he must show a capacity for leading the West-and above all for realism and resolution in the deployment of American power for the common good.
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