Interesting op/ed about Obama

Sen. Barack Obama declared in Pennsylvania on March 27 that his foreign policy would "return" to that of George H.W. Bush and that Sens. John McCain and Hillary Rodham Clinton both had strayed from that model. Having served in the first Bush administration, as acting U.S. ambassador to Iraq in the run-up to the first Gulf War, and subsequently as ambassador to two African nations, I cannot fathom what Obama is asserting.

What would Obama have done differently in the first gulf war from what he claims he would have done in 2002 had he been in the Senate at that time? In 1990, Saddam was deemed a threat by the first Bush administration. Senior administration officials threatened military action while working toward a diplomatic solution. Congress was ultimately faced with a vote to support the president's approach. Some Democrats, including then-Sen. Al Gore, voted with the administration, while a majority voted against.

Obama claims that an antiwar speech he made while running for state Senate in the most liberal district in Illinois is proof of his superior intuitive judgment. But if Obama had been in Washington at that time, participating in the national debate, he would have come face to face with Secretary of State Colin Powell, the same Colin Powell who, as Gen. Powell, was chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in the first Bush administration, the one Obama wishes to emulate.

In fact, Obama's understanding of foreign policy is extraordinarily limited. He has had one job in the Senate Foreign Relations Committee: chairman of the Europe and NATO subcommittee. He has not held a single policy hearing in that capacity because, as he said in a debate, he has been too busy running for president. He has not even taken a fact-finding trip or provided any other oversight.

As to Obama's self-promoted "judgment," which judgment would that be? Would it be to follow the path of Bush 41: tough diplomacy backed by the threat of military action, as in the first gulf war? Would it be to ignore the rationale put forward by Colin Powell in the debate on the second gulf war? Would it be to vote exactly the same way Sen. Clinton did on war-related issues since he became a U.S. senator, which he has? Or is it simply to criticize from the sidelines with the benefit of never having had to face tough decisions with real consequences?