Sarah Palin To Meet Karzai [Update]
By SusanUnPC on September 20, 2008 at 4:14 PM in Afghanistan, Qualifications, Sarah Palin
This presents a great opportunity for Gov. Palin to meet international leaders and visit the United Nations building, and it will probably also afford her an oportunity to be briefed in great detail on Afghanistan, Pakistan, and NATO.
Lord knows that Barack Obama passed up every opportunity to do HIS job as chairman, since 2005, of the European Affairs subcommittee of the U.S. Senate’s Foreign Relations Committee. Obama’s important subcommittee oversees NATO and its obligations in Afghanistan, yet Mr. Obama had more important things to do than worry about NATO, Europe or Afghanistan. He had to run for president.
Although Obama loves to flog the popular notion that the Republicans have overlooked Afghanistan because of the Iraq War, it is rather egregious that Obama himself has shown NO interest in Afghanistan or NATO when the opportunity was placed right in his lap. (Nor did Obama once spend any time in Europe or any European capital, or with any European leaders, during his tenure as chair of the European Affairs committee, until this summer when he attempted to stage a campaign rally in Berlin.)
[UPDATE: Here's a bone to chew on, especially after you read the quotes by Joe Wilson below the fold. What if Sarah Palin had been made Chair of the Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on European Relations? Do you think she would have held no hearings? Do you think she would have never visited Europe? Do you think she'd have not visited NATO headquarters? Do you think she'd have not conferred as often as possible with NATO commanders in Afghanistan? Do you think she'd have not made speeches and issued reports and findings on our relationships with Europe and NATO? You all KNOW the answer to all of these questions. You know that she would have torn into the job with the laser-focused attention, concerns, enthusiasm and healthy curiosity that she's brought to every position she has held. She would have considered the job as a serious commitment -- as part of her oath of office as a U.S. Senator to not only serve her constituents but also the well-being of all Americans. Yet, Barack Obama gets that important chairmanship and just "shines it on" -- and the media rarely, if ever, call him on the carpet for NOT DOING HIS JOB. It's unbelievably insulting that Obama gets away with dereliction of duty, for which most people would be fired on the spot. The more I write this, the angrier I'm getting. What a load of bull the American people have been sold about this guy who never bothers to lift a finger unless it's to win the next big job or cash in with his wealthy friends who are ripping off the taxpayers. Sometimes, the insanity that is that Barack Obama actually got the Democratic nomination gets to me, and I blow up. This is the latest blow-up. Now, back to my original article.]
From the Washington Post:
Republican vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin will meet next week with Afghan President Hamid Karzai in New York, on the sidelines of the opening of the U.N. General Assembly, according to Afghan officials in Washington.
The meeting is part of a broader effort to demonstrate the Alaska governor’s ability to handle foreign policy issues, at a time when she has come under fire for a lack of experience on the international stage. The opportunity to speak before the United Nations annually draws the world’s leaders to Manhattan, and the GOP presidential nominee, Sen. John McCain (Ariz.), plans to use the occasion to introduce Palin to those officials, McCain aides have said.
“It’s a great opportunity for Governor Palin to meet and interact with some of the world leaders she will deal with as vice president,” said one McCain adviser, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because her U.N. schedule had not been made public. “She’ll talk about the issues facing the world.”
Palin will meet with Karzai, and possibly other foreign leaders, during a midweek campaign swing through New York. …
When the subjects of Afghanistan and NATO come up, I like to quote what Joseph Wilson has written here at No Quarter.
From Joseph Wilson’s “Legitimate questions of judgment, experience,” May 4, 2008, republished from the op-ed pages of the the North Carolina News & Observer:
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. …
From Joseph Wilson’s “The Obama Campaign: Consent of, or Contempt for, the People,” April 17, 2008, republished from Huffington Post:
[I]n his professional capacity as Chairman of the Senate subcommittee responsible for Europe and NATO, he was in charge of ensuring Congressional oversight of the administration’s efforts to generate greater NATO support for operations in Afghanistan.
The fact that, by his own admission, he was too busy running for president to convene a single meeting of that subcommittee, should not absolve him of responsibility for acquiring at least some understanding of and respect for the work of career professionals who dedicate their lives to the service of their country. …
And — last but by no means least, as you will see — from Joseph Wilson’s “Obama’s Shallow Credentials on National Security Are Dangerous for the Country,” March 20, 2008, republished from Huffington Post:
Senator Obama is clearly a gifted politician and orator. I disagree profoundly with his transparently political efforts to turn George Bush’s war into Hillary Clinton’s responsibility. I was present in that debate, in Washington, from beginning to end, and Obama was nowhere to be seen. His current campaign aides in foreign policy, Tony Lake and Susan Rice, were also in Washington, but they chose to remain silent during that debate, when it mattered.
Claims of superior intuitive judgment by his campaign and by him are self-evidently disingenuous, especially in light of disclosures about his long associations with the Rev. Jeremiah Wright and Tony Rezko. But his assertions of advanced judgment are also ludicrous when the question of what Obama has accomplished in his four years in the Senate is considered.
As the Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee subcommittee on Europe, he has not chaired a single substantive oversight hearing, even though the breakdown in our relations with Europe and NATO is harming our operations in Afghanistan. Nor did he take a single official trip to Europe as chairman. This is the sum total of his actions in the most important responsibility he has had in the Senate. What are his actual experiences that reassure us that when the phone rings at 3 a.m. he will know what to do, which levers of power to pull, or which world leaders he can count on?
Obama has stated that he will rely upon his advisers. But how will he know which ones to depend upon and how will he be able to evaluate what they say? Already, one of his chief foreign policy advisers, Samantha Power, has been compelled to resign for, among other indiscretions, honestly revealing on a British television program that Obama’s public position on withdrawal from Iraq is not really his true position, nor does it reflect what he would do. Her gaffe exposed a vein of cynicism on national security. How confident can we be in his judgment? In fact, the hard truth is that he has no such experience.
Obama has tried to have it both ways on the issue of national security. On the one hand, he claims his intuition somehow would make him best equipped to handle the difficult challenges that face the next president. On the other hand, he tries to ridicule and dismiss as relatively insignificant the idea that actual experience with and intimate knowledge of foreign affairs and leaders, the U.S. military, the intelligence community, and the intricacies of diplomacy matter. He has even suggested that talking about the problems of national security amounts to exploitation of “fear.” One of Obama’s fervent supporters, a Harvard professor named Orlando Patterson, who has no expertise in foreign policy, wrote absurdly in a New York Times op-ed that the 3 a.m. ad wasn’t about national security at all, but really a subliminal racist attack. Delusions aside, sometimes a discussion about national security is about national security.
There will, in fact, be 3 a.m. phone calls for the next president. They are not make believe. I have been there for such calls. The next president cannot be afraid or hesitant of handling the enormous national security crises that President Bush will leave behind. One thing is certain — the calls will come. Obama has only an abdication of his chief senatorial responsibility as a basis for assessing what his judgment might be if and when the phone rings. Which of his shifting coterie of volatile advisers would he turn to? Will it be the one who repudiated his withdrawal plan, exposing his real intention, prior to being forced to resign? Or will it be those advisers who remained silent until politically convenient — several years and several thousand lives after the shock and awe invasion, conquest and disastrous occupation of Iraq?
The calls are real and experience is real, too. The campaign might be treated as a game by the media, but those calls are serious, deadly serious.
Sarah Palin may well have much left to learn about international policy.
But I have no doubt that, when she is GIVEN the opportunity to learn, she will give these issues her full concentration and all of her effort, whereas Obama squandered his greatest opportunities to learn enough to be qualified to be president.
by Ronald Scott
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