Refocusing On the Problem

Barack Obama gave a speech today in which he says that, if he is elected President, our national focus will return to the real al Q'aeda threat in Pakistan, rather than the made-up al Q'aeda threat in Iraq. He says he will cut off the free money to Musharaf. Further, if Pakistan's dictator doesn't put the kibosh on the Taliban and al Q'aeda, the United States will. In a quick review of Obama's speech at Swampland, under the title "Obama: The Toughness Primary, Continued", Karen Tumulty writes:

That's tougher than anything we have seen from the Bush Administration--which is not necessarily a good thing, as far as the liberal blogo[s]phere is concerned.(emphasis added)

First of all, this is just stupid. It assumes that (a) the "liberal blogo[s]phere" is some monolithic creature taking its orders from on high, shrieking with one voice; (b) all liberals are reflexively anti-war; (c) Obama is being "tough" to the wrong constituency.

The first is just ludicrous on its face.

On the second point, I think that Tumulty misses something that digby wrote about yesterday. This is not just a problem for Democrats, but for the nation as a whole - there needs to be a renewed focus on the reality of Islamic extremism and the real threats (and the way those threats have been made worse over the past six years) rather than the phony War on Terror rhetoric and the accompanying "Iraq Forever" mentality of the Bush Administration. I think Obama's assertions have the merit of drawing attention back to the source of the problem; there may be reasons to discuss and debate certain points, such as the role of the UN, the whole issue of Pakistan (unlike Iraq) possessing nuclear weapons, the possibility of an unstable Pakistan should the US take any military action there unilaterally, etc. However, this is one liberal blogger who welcomes both the speech and the possibility of returning our national discussion to the real world, rather than the fantasies of war-bloggers and our Commander-in-Chief.

This leads directly to the third point, which shows that Tumulty frames the entire speech incorrectly. This is not an issue of "being tough" (as if running for President wasn't proof of a certain amount of personal toughness). This is about the substantive issue of how we deal with very real threats that exist, and how we move from where we are to where we should be. I assume there are Democrats and liberals who will criticize Obama's speech. I have certain reservations myself. On the whole, however, I believe this is not just a good first step, but a nice stroll down a path to reality that we need to have as a country if we are going to face up to the fact that Osama bin Laden is still out there, and thanks to George W. Bush's invasion of Iraq, there are a whole lot more people willing to kill Americans (and a whole lot less of the rest of the world who will sympathize if it happens) than was true on September 10, 2001. For that, he should be thanked.