Barack Obama accelerated his political ascent in 2002 by positioning himself firmly as the voice of anti-war Democrats. Unlike Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden, John Edwards and John Kerry, then-Illinois state Sen. Obama announced that he opposed the effort to topple Saddam Hussein, not because he opposed all wars, but because he resisted what he called “dumb wars.”

What was “dumb” about the Iraq War? Sen. Obama didn’t say precisely, but he inveighed against “the cynical attempt by Richard Perle and Paul Wolfowitz and other armchair, weekend warriors in this administration to shove their own ideological agendas down our throats …”