Legitimate questions of judgment, experience
By Joseph Wilson on May 4, 2008 at 10:52 AM in Barack Obama, Commander in Chief, Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, Iran, Iraq, Joseph Wilson, NATO, National Defense
Published today in the North Carolina News & Observer, May 4, 2008 || Reprinted with express permission
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SANTA FE, N.M. - In recent weeks Americans have been subjected to a litany of outrageous statements from Sen. Barack Obama’s pastor of 20 years, Rev. Jeremiah Wright. While Obama was finally compelled to distance himself from his radical preacher, the relationship raises legitimate questions about Obama’s judgment and naivete.
Obama, after all, wants to be president of the United States, and in that quest has proposed unconditional summit meetings with some of our country’s most determined enemies, including Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
Obama’s campaign has been built upon his supposed transcendent qualities and intuitive judgment. His foreign policy experience is limited to having lived in Indonesia between the ages of 6 and 10, and having traveled overseas briefly as a college student.
He further claims that a speech he gave against the war in Iraq six years ago to extremely liberal supporters in a campaign for state senator in Illinois is sufficient proof of his superior judgment in national security matters and qualifies him to be president and commander-in-chief of U.S. Armed Forces at a time when we are fighting two extraordinarily difficult wars. As with his relationship with Wright, a closer examination is warranted.
In the U.S. Senate, to which he was elected in 2004, a year after the launching of Operation Iraqi Freedom, he has done little to act on his asserted anti-war position, and has said repeatedly that had he been in the Senate at the time of the vote on the authorization for the use of military force he doesn’t know how he would have voted.
As chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations subcommittee on Europe, with jurisdiction over NATO, he has held not a single oversight meeting because, as he admitted, he was too busy running for president, even though NATO’s presence in the Afghanistan war is critical to success in that venture.
Obama repeats the incorrect and politically irresponsible mantra that Sen. Hillary Clinton voted for the war and that therefore he is more qualified to be president. Unlike Obama, as the last acting U.S. ambassador to Iraq during the first Gulf War, I was deeply involved in that debate from the beginning.
President Bush and Secretary of State Colin Powell made it clear publicly and in their representations to Congress that the authorization was not to go to war but rather to give the president the leverage he needed to go to the United Nations to reinvigorate international will to contain and disarm Saddam Hussein, consistent with the resolutions passed at the time of the first Gulf War.
With passage of the resolution, the president did in fact achieve a U.N. consensus, and inspectors returned to Iraq. Hans Blix, the chief U.N. inspector, has said repeatedly that without American leadership there would have been no new inspection regime.
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SADDAM WAS A SERIAL VIOLATOR OF HUMAN RIGHTS, had started two wars in the region in the previous decade, continued to threaten his neighbors, including Israel, which he once said he would destroy with weapons of mass destruction. We may not have fully understood how little remained of his WMD arsenal, but were we really willing in the aftermath of 9/11 to give him a free pass, as Obama’s rewriting of history suggests he might have done?
The approach of tough diplomacy backed by the threat of military action was the correct one and it yielded exactly the desired results, a unanimously passed U.N. resolution and the capitulation of Saddam when he readmitted the inspectors.
The betrayal occurred not when the president was given the tools he needed to secure international support for inspections, but rather when Bush refused to allow the inspectors to complete their work and decided preemptively to invade, conquer and occupy Iraq.
That decision and power was his alone — not the Congress’ and certainly not Hillary Clinton’s. Obama is wrong to turn Bush’s war into Clinton’s responsibility. And Obama is dangerously na•ve in failing to understand the need in international crises to blend tough diplomacy with the other foreign policy tools at our disposal to achieve a strong national security posture.
Judgment and leadership in foreign policy are not intuitive. They are learned through experience. Obama’s long and close relationship with the anti-American hate-monger Wright, his inattention to his responsibilities in the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and his careless approach to Iraq all suggest that he would benefit from more experience. We should ask whether we want those lessons to be learned in the White House.
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(Joseph C. Wilson IV is a former diplomat and U.S. ambassador. He was senior director for African Affairs in the Clinton administration. In 2003 he wrote a New York Times opinion piece, “What I didn’t find in Africa,” challenging the Bush administration’s use of intelligence to justify the war in Iraq.)
(small, medium and large sizes; for both dogs and cats)
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Thank you Joseph Wilson. People, open your eyes NOW!!!!! We will all have to pay for his inexperience.
Very good article.
Unfortunately Obama’s media army and the so called “wise pundits” have closed their mind on this issue. Hope the electorate realize that electing a president who has a pattern of making bad judgements is very scary… especially during dangerous times.
There goes Ambassador Wilson again making sense. Imagine, the audacity of making sense…
I see the genesis of a new campaign slogan for Hillary in your words - the Audacity of Common Sense
QUIS CUSTODIET IPSOS CUSTODES ?
( Who will watch the watchers themselves ? )
Looks like it’s Joe Wilson…..Every time you post his articles a GIANT smile spreads across my face…..Thanks…..
Bingo! I want to have Mayor Nutter and Joe Wilson over for dinner!
His supporters don’t care about his lack of qualifications and experience. Go back 6 months and look what he had on his campaign web site, it was mostly empty rhetoric with little policy detail.
People flocked to him not because of his policies or experience, but his personality, skin color and speaking ability.
Folks then project all their hopes and aspirations onto a man who has done everything to appear as a blank slate.
This isn’t a political campaign, its a cult of the personality movement that has a strong appeal to several demographics in this country.
We’re going to be in for a rough period if this greenhorn is elected.
It is amazing what a childlike view so many people have of leadership.
You wouldn’t entrust your life to a neophyte surgeon, but you would entrust your country to a newbie with little record, and a smooth personality.
Precisely. And I would ask Obamabots and undecideds: Would you prefer a surgeon with three years of experience or seven years of experience?
Good News - while reading Joseph Wilson’s excellent editorial I received an update from Hillary Rapid Response Team. The Oregon Statesman Journal endorses Hillary for the primary.
Yaay! Thanks for sharing that, Bert. Good news is always uplifting.
My ex-pat friend now in the UK is from Oregon and I have been sending her news…this will make her happy!
Thanks!
Two things that can cause fear is listening or reading Senator Obama’s stance of National Security and Foreign Policy. I am tired of listening to him and his supporters repeat he had the good judgement nonsense over and over again. He is not commander in chief material and it shows. Especially here were I am located on Fort Bragg.
Senator Clinton gets it..but not only that she has a DETAILED plan on her future military force that she outlined in detail when she came here to give a speech. If he thinks talking about hopes and dreams and dreams of hope will cut it, he has alot of catching up to do. This is not a person I want doing on the job training on day one.
BO is dangerously inexperienced in a tough and dangerous world. McBush is experienced but just plain wrong. Although not my first choice (Biden and Richardson), HRC is the only correct choice for CinC and Leader of the Free World. It is not an on the job training position!
I don’t particularly like any of the remaining candidates. But of the three, Clinton is clearly the best of the lot. McCain would be a bad choice. Obama would be dangerous. So I support Clinton.
Thank you Ambassador Wilson, you are one of my heroes and are a great patriot and true leader. Your sacrifices to America do not go unnoticed and I am eternally grateful to you and your wife.
Sorry for the OT but this is important. Activists may wish to send along this information to the MSM.:
There is a way to force the MSM to be more objective and its with our wallets: A la carte television channel purchasing. Under such a system I would not purchase MSNBC and I would not be forced to. We can eliminate the anti-free-market practice of bundling and its even more nefarious dark side of the “news” channels shilling propaganda for the corporate boardrooms of the oil companies and arms merchants. Watch how fast MSNBC would moderate their neo-liberalism when people refuse to support their extremist nonsense any longer by paying for it. Bye bye Andrea Mitchell.
The demise of The Fairness Doctrine should give us a clue when the propaganda shilling began. We can bring it back in spirit and real conservatives will support the use of the free-market in doing so. It would be easy to form a broad political spectrum alliance to end bundling. By the way, the argument of “Bundling saves consumers money” can be easily refuted especially considering the weight of our very liberties and freedoms being threatened.
Those who wish to dominate us forget their palace is no sanctuary — they share the same Earth with us. And the free flow of information without bias is critical to our shared survival as a species. If the MSM wishes to continue to be part of the very fabric of our nation they will stop trying to enable societal suicide by enabling wars and candidates that clearly don’t have the people’s best interests at heart.
Many of us see the MSM as becoming irrelevant extinct fossils if they continue down the path they are on…
And to remind folks: Bush’s staged war was enabled by the MSM. The same MSM has been ramming Obama down our throats. And of course other more subtle propaganda techniques…
If the MSM wishes to persist in their dangerous game, regulations could be proposed to stop them. However, a Free-market solution will be easier to employ since any First Amendment claims become moot.
AMB Wilson’s analysis and writing style once again does credit to all Gauchoes!
ya gotta love someone who organizes arguments so beautifully and writes with such clarity. This will do it. Obama is hash to everyone who reads it.
Logic is so REFRESHING…..and comforting too…..No ?
GNG said: Thank you Ambassador Wilson, you are one of my heroes and are a great patriot and true leader. Your sacrifices to America do not go unnoticed and I am eternally grateful to you and your wife.
Hear, hear! What a brave couple. I hope they have a prominent place in Senator Clinton’s administration.
I think that BO has not convened a Senate Foreign Relations Subcommittee meeting because he doesn’t give a shit. Just as he is bored with the campaign, and said “Shoot me” during some Congressional hearing, he could care less about what happens to Afghanistan. He’s a morally corrupt moron who shouldn’t be running for dogcatcher, much less the highest office in the land. Someone needs to give him a clue. Soon. Hopefully he’ll get one on Tuesday - maybe even two :-J.
I would like to add in agreement that if he was on CSPAN he would not look good discussing Foreign Policy…..
” Awe c’mon they think I should have a meeting or something…”
Barry to Axelrove
” It would be on CSPAN…..not a good idea…..”
Axelrove to Barry
Succinct, factual, and just plain perfect. Joseph Wilson always nails it. Another persuasive argument against Obama as Commander in Chief.
I’ve tried so many times to explain to Obamabots that Hillary did not authorize the war, and she sure the hell didn’t vote alone for the Resolution. I have zero credentials in foreign policy, but even I understood that the IWR was not a war authorization. The Obamabots cannot simultaneously call the Iraq war “illegal” and accuse Hillary of “authorizing the war” Bush usurped the authority of Congress and the UN by chosing to invade, and not letting the UN finish their work.
Nice to see Obama’s supporters taking Bush’s side in all this… by claiming that Hillary authorized the invasion, they have legitimized Bush’s end-run. Since Obama doesn’t have much skill with foreign policy and military matters, I don’t expect his followers would, either.
Oblamer was on Meet the Potato Head this AM and referring to Hillary Clinton and others he actually said “her and …”!
This is how you can speak and be on Harvard Law Review?! WOW!
How many “firsts” should be handed over because he reads well?
I find it impossible to believe that he writes well.
He sure can’t speak well unless it’s AxelRove.
Off-script he’s abysmal.
hmm and he never wrote for the harvard law review either. interesting!
Be ready for an Old Media bomb to be dropped on Hillary today or Monday. Another fabricated allegation or outright lie ala the You Tube Indiana video.
As to GNG’s alacarte suggestion, I setd those emails out long already. I told them I objected to being forced to give financial support to cable channels that had morally objectionable programming.
Send them again.
Obama only became a state senator in 2003.
His experience is pitifully limited.
He’s at intern level.
MSM has really pulled the wool over the eyes of the public. With help from the senate gentlemen’s club.
Joe,
Bravo! I agree with everything you said. I thank you for speaking out. Please continue to regardless of the outcome of this primary. I am a great admirer of you and your wife.
Best
Susan
Thank you, Joseph Wilson, BRILLIANT!
With a husband serving in uniform right now I really can’t afford for a President to learn lessons about foreign relations in the real world AFTER he is President. Thank you once again for a measured and reality based writing. I fear and dread after these years of occupying Iraq, therefore I blog grasping for and gasping for REAL HOPE and not just pretty words spoken rythmically well.
Thank you for his services and your families’ sacrifice. I was going to say more but words just don’t cut it. Neither will Obama’s training wheels.
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Judgment and leadership in foreign policy are not intuitive
Amb. Wilson, is it that the facts, in a particular dynamic, are separate from intuition in the final?
I see a set of facts and may draw a “conclusion” about them, but it tickles when I make an overt attempt to leave out intuition from the equation. Why is that?
The economy of your words highlight what a simple, straight forwared interview Obama is for the job of POTUS. He won’t make the cut for a second interview, so why pretend the first one was any better? You point this out so painfully well,thanks.
OMG, OMG, OMG…I feel like bawling!
Is this America? is this parody of an “unbiased” press really the USA?
I was delighted, as always to read an article by Mr Wilson, but isn’t it heart-rendering to realize what a screwed up system we live in?
I read a couple of Joseph Wilson’s articles on Huffpo, and I really felt sorry for the man AND the nation. It was like casting pearls before swines….the huge “skunky” rats came out of their holes hurling rotten eggs and insults at him. None so blind as he who would not see! But even more dire is the intellectual state of a nation, that glorifies hate, that drinks at the tap of presentation, good looks and sweet sounding words rather than serious substance, truth, and rational critique.
BO came out of nowhere, with inordinate chutzpah and blind ambition, trying to set up new rules of the game that would dare anyone to examine HIM, at the risk of being called old politics, divisive! Fact is he KNEW that his past was at best shadowy, at worst surely very unpatriotic. A true Manchurian candidate.
He manipulated the race card, I call it “reverse racism,” to glean overwhelming support among the parched and desperate black community, and make whites feel racial guilt; and when he least expected it, the very tactic he was employing came back like a boomerang and hit him full force in the face, that in the person of his very own pastor of 20 years. Would that he could blame that too on Hillary. All along the way, shielded by the MSM, while they were beating up on and disparaging Hillary to the utmost. Little did he know that the campaign would last this long, with every day new layers of the onion unfolding around him.
Let’s not talk about the role of the DNC and partisan interests within the party, let’s not talk about the opportunists and Judases in search of their respective pieces of silver!
In the meanwhile, this farce that should never have been is trying to tear the party apart, threatening blood if the “affirmative action” light weight spoilt brat does not have his toy.
When could anyone have even imagined the day when trueblood Democrats would be turning to FoxNews for fair and unbiased reporting? Even shutting out fat and bullying Tim Russert on Sunday morning.
I am sick to my soul! The third arm of Gov’t which should serve the people by thorough and unbiased reporting should now be impeached or stripped of all privileges.
After the fiasco of the elections of 2000, 2004 and the monumental enabling of the Bush lies with the complicity of the MSM, do we need a French style revolution of 1789 to set things right?
Or could the Internet and blogs correct the seemingly irreparable?
The only consolation is that : Maybe this is indeed the will of God…you know: the rise and fall of Empires thing!!!! God bless America!
Mr Wilson, my hats off to you and your wife.
This article originated in New Mexico?
GOOD - that will stick it to a certain stooooopid Gov.
What’s he gonna do when Hillary wins and his shot at GREATNESS evaporates with Obama’s ill wind?
What EvA Bill Richardson. Crazy Carville is right about you! (grr)
[...] Legitimate questions of judgment, experience (by former ambassador Joseph Wilson) SANTA FE, N.M. - In recent weeks Americans have been subjected to a litany of outrageous statements from Sen. Barack Obama’s pastor of 20 years, Rev. Jeremiah Wright. While Obama was finally compelled to distance himself from his radical preacher, the relationship raises legitimate questions about Obama’s judgment and naivete. Obama, after all, wants to be president of the United States… Judgment and leadership in foreign policy are not intuitive. They are learned through experience. Obama’s long and close relationship with the anti-American hate-monger Wright, his inattention to his responsibilities in the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and his careless approach to Iraq all suggest that he would benefit from more experience. We should ask whether we want those lessons to be learned in the White House. [...]
[...] Legitimate questions of judgment, experience (by former ambassador Joseph Wilson) SANTA FE, N.M. - In recent weeks Americans have been subjected to a litany of outrageous statements from Sen. Barack Obama’s pastor of 20 years, Rev. Jeremiah Wright. While Obama was finally compelled to distance himself from his radical preacher, the relationship raises legitimate questions about Obama’s judgment and naivete. Obama, after all, wants to be president of the United States… Judgment and leadership in foreign policy are not intuitive. They are learned through experience. Obama’s long and close relationship with the anti-American hate-monger Wright, his inattention to his responsibilities in the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and his careless approach to Iraq all suggest that he would benefit from more experience. We should ask whether we want those lessons to be learned in the White House. [...]
Exactly and Right On! For anyone interested the Congressional Records have the speech Hill gave on the Senate Floor when they did the vote. I’m sorry I don’t have the link but all you savy folks can find it I’m sure. The point is she is brilliant in cautioning Pres. Bush to use the authority wisely and with caution… using all diplomatic means available. Unfortunately, Bush had his own agenda.
Excellent article. Thank you.
Obama wants everyone to believe that he never saw Rev Wright behave in a radical, anti-American, bigoted manner, or knew that he behaved this way during a twenty year relationship which Obama himself has said was very close and personal.
Now, if we were to believe that this is true, like Obama wants us to believe, then this utterly destroys the notion of Obama having not only “superior” judgment, or even “good” judgment. It shows that Obama has extremely poor judgment for either willingly associating with these kinds of undesirable people, or extremely poor judgement for being associated with an undesirable person and not being able to recognize such undesirable personality traits in someone for over twenty years.
If Obama willingly associated with the undesirable Rev Wright, or if he really did have no idea that Rev Wright displayed such undesirable personality traits during a twenty year relationship, how can anyone in their right minds ever trust Obama’s judgment when he is dealing with the world’s despotic leaders such as Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Kim Jong-il? Or radical terrorist groups such as Hamas and Hezzbullah?
If Obama thought Rev Wright was a good man for twenty years, then how are we to know that he doesn’t also think that Hamas, Hezbullah, Ahmadinejad and Kim are good, even if he now says they aren’t?
Thank you, thank you, thank you Mr. Wilson, so good to have real information from an adult. Loved your wife’s book by the way and now I’m ordering yours as well. Keep up the fight, we need you now more than ever.
it gives me hope to see sanity with larry and ambassador wilson. oh, and i can forget the great posters here either. (smile)
Thank you Ambassador Wilson, as always, you are a beacon of truth. I am eternally grateful for your courage and wisdom.
[...] Joseph Wilson’s “Legitimate questions of judgment, experience,” May 4, 2008, republished from the op-ed pages of the the North Carolina News & [...]
[...] “Legitimate questions of judgment, experience” by Joseph Wilson, May 4, 2008 As the Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee [...]