While Barack Obama is convincing Americans he is not scary, his critics are saying that he’s still not fit to be commander-in-chief. The Vets for Freedom have a new ad attacking Obama for refusing to recognize the surge’s success.
Meanwhile, John McCain continues to bond with military voters and veterans, giving a tough speech to the American National Legion Convention in Phoenix. He went right after Obama’s nonsense-filled Berlin speech:
My opponent had the chance to express such confidence in America, when he delivered a much anticipated address in Berlin. He was the picture of confidence, in some ways. But confidence in oneself and confidence in one’s country are not the same. And in that speech, Senator Obama left an important point unclear. He suggested that the end of the Cold War proved that there was, “no challenge too great for a world that stands as one.” Now I missed a few years of the Cold War, as the guest of one of our adversaries, but as I recall the world was deeply divided during the Cold War – between the side of freedom and the side of tyranny. The Cold War ended not because the world stood “as one,” but because the great democracies came together, bound together by sustained and decisive American leadership.
And he took issue with Obama’s moral equivalency arguments:
Just days after the Russian invasion of Georgia, Senator Obama had this to say about the crisis: “We’ve got to send a clear message to Russia and unify our allies. They can’t charge into other countries. Of course it helps if we are leading by example on that point.” End of quote. I guess we are left to figure out the rest for ourselves. It’s unlikely he was alluding to Afghanistan, the nation we liberated after 9/11, and continue to help despite Russian complaints about our related deployments in Central Asia. And he probably didn’t have Kosovo in mind either – although Russia didn’t care much for that military action, either. We and our NATO allies had to end the Serbian slaughter of civilians in Kosovo without UN approval, because the Russians blocked the effort in the Security Council.
If I catch Senator Obama’s drift, then, our failure to “lead by example” was the liberation of Iraq. And if he really thinks that, by liberating Iraq from a dangerous tyrant, America somehow set a bad example that invited Russia to invade a small, peaceful, and democratic nation, then he should state it outright – because that is a debate I welcome.
Read the whole thing. It is a powerful roadmap to the arguments he will likely make at the Convention and in the fall debates. And it is these arguments which Obama should be concerned about, not whether voters think his wife is nice. They can think the latter is true and still not trust him to be commander-in-chief.
