What I think is more than naïve is Obama’s suggestion that it is naïve to authorize a war without know how we are going to get out!
I would like Barrack Obama to list those leaders who got involved their nations in a wars that went according to preconceived plan that included plans for withdrawing from it after victory was achieved. I am assuming no one ever entered into an avoidable war without an assumption of a victory that would not leave them with the problem of how to extricate their nation from that war.
If getting into war without know how your side was going to get out is irresponsible and naïve then history is replete with naïve, irresponsible people. Does he consider that Woodrow Wilson was naïve and irresponsible for getting us involved in WWI or Roosevelt for involving us in the WWII, or Truman got us involved in the Korean Conflict? There is the list of Presidents that were responsible for getting us involved in Vietnam which was probably the least defensible of the them all. Then there was the Spanish-American War, The Mexican-American War and even the to a certain extent the Civil War. Should Lincoln have said I don’t know how I am going to get the Federal Troops out of this, I guess I better just let the South secede? I doubt that Lincoln was alone in not knowing how he was going extricate the troops under his command from hostile territory once they were there.
The very idea that you must know how you get a war before you get into it is absurd unless you are invading something like Grenada. Following Obama’s logic we would have let Saddam have Kuwait and then let him go ahead with his vision of conquering each of his neighbors one by one and then taking over the entire Middle East. We lucked out in Desert Storm both because I suspect that is what Saddam thought we would let him do and since the Republican Guard was even less prepared to fight a well equipped opponent than we anticipated we got out of that one with barely a scratch.
If Obama were president his stated ground rules for getting us involved in a war would leave us and the rest of the world vulnerable to the whims of any nation that is willing to use its military to achieve its aim. For starters, China would not have many qualms about invading Taiwan and Kim Jong-Il would have little reason to fear retaliation if he were to invade South Korea because Obama would not know how he was going to get us out of those conflicts. Going beyond that, Putin might even consider trying returning the Russian Federation to the level of authority it enjoyed when it was the Soviet Union.
The fact that Obama has not considered these ramifications of what he says now, if not a sign of irresponsibility, is definitely a sign of a level of naivety that we can not afford in a President of the United States. While it is far from an ideal state of affairs, the world is such that indicating a willingness to use the big stick that is our military if necessary may in many instances the only means of convincing more unreasonable leaders that the negotiating table is a better alternative.
I had hopes for Obama in the future, but unless he can convince me that he willing to do more than walk softly, I could not even support him for the Vice-Presidency and urge Senator Clinton to look elsewhere for a running mate. To be truthful about it, at this point, I am inclined to think I might have to look the Republican candidates if Obama were to get the Democratic Party’s nomination. Our nation cannot afford a President who is not willing to both walk softly and carry a big stick.
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Comments: 28
Bush said it wasn't our job to do nation building and look where we are now.
No matter what they say now, once they get in office, life takes over.
Let's just hope the next president doesn't screw things up so bad.
This article was not about Bush and Iraq. It was about a candidate for President who as exhibited a level of naivety that has led me to conclude he is not suited to that office.
As for your assessment of Bush, we basically are in agreement. We need change but I do not think Obama can bring about that change in a manner that would not leave us is danger of becoming involved in an even greater quagmire than the one in which we are currently.
Ty,
I doubt that there will any victory in Iraq, and it was more than his promising to sit down and talk to talks with the leaders of hostile nations without preconditions that led me to the conclusion he is too naive to trusted to execute the duties of President of the United States.
Kenneth,
I am not as worried about how the American people's future understanding of campaign rhetoric as I am about those outside the United States. The world hears what our candidates say and the candidate who does not realize that has no business running for President. Regardless of what Obama may have meant the world heard a candidate for president say he would not involve this nation in a war If he did not know how he was going to get us out a war that hadn't even started and that exhibits the belief that the progress of a war is predictable and I know of only one way of doing that and I suspect blasting an enemy into non-existence would have even more undesirable consequence.
You really are a Bushie, but you should be careful what you wish for. Jeb might just have a few surprises in him.
Since most of your article is based on "going into war without an exit strategy" you are basing it on a misquote because that is not what he said.
I never used the words "exit strategy" in any thing I quoted and I don't even think I used them in my article! The full quote to which I was referring was,
"I think what is irresponsible and naive is to have authorized a war without asking how we were going to get out,"
I think I am not the only person to interpret that as suggesting, knowing how to get out of a war is a prerequiste for getting involved one. War being unpredictable, that makes knowing the unknowable a prequsite for going to war.
Trying to negate an article's conclusion on the basis of non-existent misquote smacks of the lowest dirty politics tactics.
"I think what was irresponsible and naive was authoring this war and then waiting five years to ask how we are going to get out of it." Which says something very different than your quote. The way I heard it, he was not stating knowing how to get out was a prerequisite, but that waiting 5 years to even address the issue was a problem.
The first reference to it when I Googled it to supply a link was in the Internation Herald Tribune
http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2007/07/25/america/NA-POL-US-Obama-Clinton.php
Also on MSNBC.com at
http://firstread.msnbc.msn.com/archive/2007/07/25/290301.aspx
Got these by just Googling the quote.
I recall reading one article that mentioned the five years later, but it was not part of the original quote.
If he did say it more than one and shortened it without realizing the implications of the phrasing that would be a sign of his lack of experience and that is what originally prompted me to drop him from my list of presidential candidates.
Experience being the only reason for dropping him from that list I had kept him on at the top of my Vice-Presidential list because between Hillary and Bill he would have two of this countries best to serve as an examples and provide guidance when it was needed, and he would be ready to serve a President at the end of either Hillary's first or second term depending on how many terms she decided to serve. Even if some misfortune made it necessary for him to become President before then he would have had some additional time and hopefully he would have the wisdom to seek the guidance that all presidents need from time to time. Now, I even doubt his qualifications for Vice-Presidency because of the possibility of his becoming President before he has had a chance to correct an misinterpretation of his words that those more powerful and influential and possibly hostile to our nation may have made. If I can misinterpret his words, so can they, and they have power to base imprudent action on that misinterpretation.
Obama was cast into the national spotlight and elevated to the forefront of the national political scene faster than, I suspect, he or anybody else anticipated. Perhaps too fast, and he has caught the Presidential bug before the awareness has sunk in that more than the people of Illinois and even the United States are listening his every word and even now using them to determine how he might react to various situations if he became President.
I hope he learns this before he puts his foot in his mouth many more times, because at this point he is our next best chance of having a future President to guide our nation to a less turbulent future. That is not to say he may not upset a few apple carts on the way, but there are multiple apple carts that need upsetting.
Watch it here:
http://my.barackobama.com/page/invite/DebateSC
Are you readin' this georgie with you new spying hardware ?
Bush believes everything Dick tells him because he is naive. Telling the difference between naivety and stupidity is just difficult in a person who is old enough to know better.
A very fitting article, Carol. Obama Hussein Barrack needs to go to Hollywood where his good looks and charisma would fit in beautifully with all the "beautiful people". He might even make a pretty good actor!
I don't think it's a bad thing to have an exit strategy when entering a war. Military action is usually planned in great detail. It doesn't mean that circumstances won't justify throwing out the plan. Seems like one obvious path on the probability tree was civil war or whatever you want to call what's going on in Iraq now. Reasonable questions for that kind of situation include "How do we get out of it?"
Anyone who thinks Senator Obama is naive has not lived or worked on the South side of Chicago; it's a wake up call.
As far as the war, I believe it was . . .
HILLARY RODHAM CLINTON
who had both the "experience" and "good judgment" to vote yes on the resolution that got this country into this war in the first place.
Senator Obama was not so naive to see that the war was a mistake from the start, and by the way
LOL!
Who says Senator Obama would ever want to be Vice President, especially under Hillary Clinton (LOL)! That's "Hillaryous"
Dream on, folks, dream on!
Is there any evidence that Obama considered it a mistake for the start? I suspect there a lot of people who either had no opinion or supported the invasion of Iraq have been unable to admit even in retrospect that they were wrong. Quite truthfully, if in 2001 Obama believed that there was a likelihood that Saddam was about to obtain nuclear capability, he would have been wrong to oppose depriving that mentally unbalanced dictator of the opportunity to ever use them.
If you don't think Obama would consider running on as Hillary's running mate you are naive when it come to politics. Anyone of the other candidates would probably accept the number two spot on the ticket if it were offered.
By the way if, I were into using names to take pokes at the opposition, "obomba" sounds the same Obama but I will not even give it merit by capitalizing it even though I feel that as president Obama could bomb. One might have acquired the street smarts to survive in Chicago's South Side, but the ability to survive in what has become one of our many urban battlefields (and embarrassments) is not indicative of an ability to either function or survive in other environments.
What sense? Saying you must know you are going to get out of a war before going into one? While I agree there should be a plan before that is possible only if you are initiating the military action. If you are defending the only choices are to fight as best you can or surrender. Even if you have a plan wars rarely go as planned and knowing how you are going to get out is impossible until an end in sight.
I am not going to go into the length it would take to discuss the wars in Vietnam, and Korea, but I will point out that that we have never been engaged in a military conflict with Iran
Lastly as regards giving Bush the authority to invade Iraq, I doubt a single Senator who voted in favor of the resolution considered that given our overwhelming military advantage, the administration did not have a plan for securing the peace after the military victory was achieved and that is what happened. Actually, I am not too sure of that it didn't, but if it did have a plan, it was a plan based on the naive assumption that the Iraqis were going to welcome us as saviors, behave like good little boys and girls and begin rebuilding a country whose resources they no longer controlled. If that was their plan George and Company was even more naive than I think Obama would have been. Even I wouldn't have been that naive and while I have only a vague idea of how I would have preceded, I know that if I had been Commander-in-Chief I would have made sure there were plans to cope with looting, and plans to protect both Iraq's national treasures and infrastructure.
I also don't recall a single Senator asking what our plans were and how we were going to get out or a single one saying he/she opposed the resolution because they were not supplied with a plan of how we were going to get out of Iraq once we got in. Just as Bush had the duty to be honest about why we needed to go to war, those who opposed it owed us an explanation of why they thought the administration's reasoning was faulty and that also was not forthcoming.
We elect Presidents and other officials to make decisions for us because we know it is not possible for a President or the military to supply us with all information we would need to make such a decision and we assume that when they have made such a decision it based on all the resources available to them and they have used their best judgement in evaluating that information. Similar reason undoubted applied to why so many members of Congress voted to support the resolution without knowing the details of any plans. On top of that there was the information that was given to 75 Senators in closed session and the kindest thing I can say about that information after reading about it is to say it was misleading:
"In October, 2002, a few days before the U.S. Senate vote on the Joint Resolution to Authorize the Use of United States Armed Forces Against Iraq, about 75 senators were told in closed session that Saddam Hussein had the means of delivering biological and chemical weapons of mass destruction by unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) drones that could be launched from ships off the Atlantic coast to attack U.S. eastern seaboard cities. Colin Powell suggested in his presentation to the United Nations Security Council that UAVs were transported out of Iraq and could be launched against the U.S." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_in_Iraq#_note-37
Having learned the above I may change my mind about impeaching Bush and Cheney, but at this late date that may take more time than it is worth. Why those who have been arguing for Bush's impeachment have not brought up what appears to be an attempt to deceive Congress mystifies me.
While none of the info in the preceding paragraph was available to Obama in 2002 he probably has obtained it since and to now suggest that based upon the information that was available to them that it was naive for members for Congress to vote to give Bush the authority to take military action against Iraq, if necessary, is crass political manauver designed to mislead the electorate and we have enough
of being misled.
Given the wording of the resolution it was also not unreasonable to expect that the President would adhere to the terms of that resolution and it did not.
the funny thing is... the only difference between a winner and loser in history is, sometimes, who writes the history.
You may need to read a little behind the scenes in history. Nobody but an idiot goes out there with his arms flailing, guns drawn and no escape or exit plan.