Sen. Barack Obama would have us believe that his opposition to the Iraq War proves his superior “judgment” outweighs Sen. John McCain’s “experience.” A lot is riding on Obama’s claim of superior national-security judgment, because a Democratic Congress — and perhaps a filibuster-proof Democratic Senate — would leave his judgments largely unchecked over the next four years.
But what about that judgment? Let’s investigate Obama’s record on two of today’s most important national security issues. Just what does his record on Iran and Iraq tell us about his judgment?
First, despite his later denials, he did, in fact, say he would meet with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinijad without preconditions. And despite Sen. Joe Biden’s attempt to deflect the charge in the vice presidential debate, Biden and Sen. Hillary Clinton admonished Obama for this in the Democratic primaries.
Small wonder, then, that Obama and his campaign team thought that President Bush was referring to him when the president observed in an address celebrating Israel’s birth, “Some seem to believe we should negotiate with terrorists and radicals, as if some ingenious argument will persuade them they have been wrong all along.
We have heard this foolish delusion before. As Nazi tanks crossed into Poland in 1939, an American senator declared: “‘Lord, if only I could have talked to Hitler, all of this might have been avoided.’”
President Bush was not referring to Obama, but if the shoe fits…
The Obama team acted as if shoe fits.
If Obama’s first instinct on Iran has too often been appeasement, his first instinct on Iraq has been preemptive capitulation. Throughout 2006 and into 2007, violence in Iraq was spiraling out of control.
America was on the verge of a military defeat that would have profound and permanent strategic implications across the globe. A January 2007 National Intelligence Estimate declared that “unless efforts were taken to reverse these deteriorating conditions, the security situation would only get worse.”
Moreover, the assessment warned of the consequences of a precipitous U.S. military withdrawal – the end of the ISF (Iraqi Security Force) as a non-sectarian national institution, meddling by neighbor states in the Iraq conflict, the likelihood of massive civilian casualties and forced population displacements, the establishment of an al Qaida safe haven there, and a possible Turkish military incursion into Iraq.
Confronted with such a strategic and humanitarian catastrophe, President Bush decided that defeat was not an option. He brought in Gen. David Petreaus, and ordered the implementation of a new counter-insurgency strategy with a surge of troops.
The result: Success in bringing security and stability to Iraq that is now beyond dispute and, according to CIA Director Michael Hayden, the “near strategic defeat” of al Qaida in Iraq.
McCain, of course, was a long-time advocate for a change in strategy and the “surge.” Obama’s “judgment” on the surge? “It is clear at this point,” Obama declared in October 2006, “that we cannot, through putting in more troops or maintaining the presence that we have, expect that somehow the situation is going to improve…..”
His judgment in February 2007? He declared his opposition to the surge and said he had a plan “that will bring our combat troops home by March of 2008.”
His position in May 2007? Obama voted against funding our combat operations there.
And September 2007, only three months after the final surge forces had deployed to Iraq? Obama declared that the time had come to “immediately” remove all of our combat troops — “not in six months or one year-now.”
The United States would have suffered a humiliating, self-inflicted defeat if we had relied on Obama’s serial misjudgments?
Although Obama at long last acknowledges the success of the new strategy, he still says he was right to oppose the surge.
What does this say about Obama’s judgment on critical national security issues? Despite all evidence that the new counterinsurgency strategy was succeeding, Democratic Sen Joe Lieberman said last November, his party “remained emotionally invested in a narrative of defeat and retreat in Iraq.” Obama, the record shows, not only embraced this narrative, but reveled in it.
And now, Obama tells us to trust his “judgment” on a new “troop surge” in Afghanistan. What’s worse, a filibuster-proof Democratic Congress is likely to rubberstamp his misjudgments in this and other national-security areas. Allowing this to happen would display dangerously poor judgment on the part of voters.
Republican Rick Santorum is the former U.S. senator from Pennsylvania.
