Jaded Sage:

The fact that Obama traveled the world as a young man may not certify him as a presidential candidate but allows him to analyze the conditions of the globe in ways Bush was never capable of doing.

A Man at Home in the World

NEWSWEEK

He was just a college kid, vagabonding around the world. But Barack Obama says the weeks he spent traveling through Pakistan in 1981 shaped the views that he still holds today—and that he would bring into the White House. Obama remembers most vividly the desperation and hopelessness—"essentially a feudal life"—he witnessed in the countryside surrounding Karachi, a city that is today a hotbed of jihadist activity. At the tender age of 20, Obama suggested, he was already beginning to understand more about what ailed Muslim societies—what generated terrorism and fratricidal conflicts—than George W. Bush or John McCain do today. "Both as a consequence of living in Indonesia and traveling in Pakistan, having friends in college who were Muslim, I was very clear about the history of Shia-Sunni antagonism"—which is one reason why, as an Illinois state senator 21 years later, he opposed the war in Iraq, Obama told NEWSWEEK last week. "This notion that somehow we were going to be able to create a functioning democracy and reconcile century-old conflicts, I always thought was a bunch of happy talk from this administration."

Obama’s taken a lot of hits over his alleged foreign-policy inexperience—most notoriously from fellow Democrat Hillary Clinton, who suggested in a TV ad last month that he was the wrong man to answer the phone at 3 a.m. during a crisis. But last week Obama signaled that he’d had enough of these attacks. Not only did he not lack experience, Obama cockily told a fund-raising crowd in San Francisco, but "foreign policy is the area where I am probably most confident that I know more and understand the world better than Senator Clinton or Senator McCain."

If Obama wins the nomination and faces McCain, this will be a critical test of his candidacy: can he change the terms of the debate so that the traditional measures of foreign-policy experience don’t apply? Because the kind of experience he talks about so confidently is not what one typically associates with a presidential résumé. It’s not Ike leading the Allied Armies into Europe; it’s not JFK saving his shipmates aboard PT-109; it’s not George H.W. Bush running the CIA and serving as veep for eight years. (Or, for that matter, John McCain flying combat missions and getting shot down in Vietnam.) Nor was Obama alluding to his mastery of the Moscow Treaty on nukes or the subtleties of Mideast peace talks—though many of his Senate colleagues are impressed with his growing expertise in those areas.

Instead, it is the kind of bottom-up experience that comes from growing up in the muddy lanes of Jakarta, in a plain concrete house at No. 16 Haji Ramli Street. There Obama played hide-and-seek in the local mosque, dueled with bamboo sticks and learned dirty words in Indonesian. Friends and teachers recall his being picked on for his height and dark skin, but say that even amid an alien culture he was a leader and a peacemaker in the schoolyard. He always wanted the job of organizing the other kids into a line before class, says Fermina Katarina Sinaga Suhanda, his third-grade teacher, who had to urge him to take turns. "He always wants to be No. 1, to be at the front. Psychologically, he wants to be in charge," she says.

It’s a long way from homeroom monitor to commander in chief, of course. But it was in Jakarta that Obama came to appreciate both the powerlessness of his native companions and the status that came from having a white American mother, Ann, who worked for the U.S. Embassy. "He was at an age when you first begin to see what’s going on," says Ben Rhodes, one of his speechwriters. "And what he saw was that America had something other people wanted. Here he is in a majority Muslim country, in a poor neighborhood. And … he has this tie to America that affords him an immediate opportunity that no one else has." Both Obama’s Kenyan father—who abandoned the family—and his Indonesian stepfather, Lolo Soetoro, were eager to penetrate that Western world. They never fully succeeded, and Obama knew it.

That experience, aides say, turned Obama into both someone who identifies with those less fortunate abroad—and a true-blue patriot. "He understands he’s gotten where he is based on the fact that we have a system that opens up opportunity to smart and talented people," says retired Air Force Gen. Merrill McPeak, a top Obama adviser. McPeak, Rhodes and others claim that Obama’s upbringing gives him deeper insight into how to win the "hearts and minds" so crucial to success in Iraq, and in the global struggle against Islamic extremism. "Obama’s experience living abroad gives him a sense of that grass-roots life, which is so important in shaping why a terrorist is a terrorist," says Tony Lake, Bill Clinton’s former national-security adviser, who now is a top Obama adviser.

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Political Correctness, the Conservatives decry. I have heard this component of the Conservative consciousness for almost twenty years now. It is fine when someone from the right avoids PC language. For them it takes on some special meaning. As if by identifying the issue in its must blatant form indeed makes you more Conservative. According to most experts on the right, PC has Marxist roots.

So why will Fox run over and over and over again Obama’s statements he made concerning small town America hiding behind guns and religious issues as if the feelings of their constituents…errrr viewers are hurt? The reality is they don’t like the game played when the left moves away from PC and aims it at them. What happened when the rednecks screamed bloody murder the moment the assault weapons ban came up? Those damn commies are trying to take our weapons away!!!!! The 2nd Amendment is being stricken from the books!!!! Time to start another revolution!!!! Or how about hiding behind religion? What happened when the court ruled the Ten Commandments may not be allowed to hold monolithic proportions outside an Alabama courthouse? You would have thought the government took all the evangelicals’ Bibles away. Never mind the fact the courtroom serves Hindus and Buddhists just as it serves Christians. So when you hear Fox News put this in their nearly uninterrupted loop they call news, know they are a full bag of hypocritical dookie.  It seems the truth hurts Conservatives as well.

I like to compare the American involvement in Iraq to Thomas Jefferson’s take on slavery. The third president of the United States said of slavery:

“But as it is, we have the wolf by the ear, and we can neither hold him, nor safely let him go. “

As I listen to General Petraeus and Ambassador Crocker testify on the Hill these past two days I can’t help but shake my head at the complexity of the war. Beyond the presidential candidate’s questions that are posed to frame their stances in regard to the Iraq War there are the responses by the witnesses that reveal just how much the dynamics of the war can change. They change in ways that depict improvement in challenges that existed months prior (such as Al-Qaeda in Iraq) but  new tentacles grow out of the beast that pose significant new dangers (i.e. Shia conflict in Baghdad and in the south) that result in the inability of our military to make significant draw downs. In many ways Iraq has become the money pit. You might recall that awful Tom Hanks movie. As the nation’s economy wades into recession we find ourselves with an albatross. If you listen to the testimony on Capital Hill you will get the feeling despite the surge, there really isn’t much changing in Iraq. The country is so dysfunctional that when one ill seems to be resolved, another ailment pops up. Perhaps unlike the outcome of letting go of Jefferson’s wolf, the Iraq wolf is more apt to bite itself than the American’s that are holding it. As Petraeus was grilled repeatedly on the question of when will US troops be able to leave, he really must answer when is the right time to let go of the wolf’s ears?

The above was a quote by retired General Barry McCaffrey when asked about the future of Iraq. In the Fall I had the honor to attend a lecture in Kansas City initiated by the War College in Fort Leavenworth. The headliner for the event was General McCaffrey and it is was extremely informative. This week the General along with three other experts gave their assessments of the impact of the surge in Iraq and their idea where Iraq is heading in the immediate future. Their witness testimony was given before the Senate and provided the best insight into the war. Their bias-free view was refreshing. If you have three hours to kill I encourage you as a voting American to listen to their testimony. I believe everyone has this obligation. It is beyond the breadth of the bullet point driven media and free of political propaganda. To listen in it’s entirety click on the link at the end of the entry.

Gen. McCaffrey spoke first and gave his assessment. He led by saying the surge changed the nature of the struggle in Iraq. McCaffrey believes (and I strongly agree) the current commander in the Iraq theater (General David Patraeus) is the best military leader the US has had in 40 years. The other positive is the makeup of the Iraqi police is changing from thugs who had sectarian affiliations to a more professional force. McCaffrey, however, has much more to criticize than he does to praise. The Maliki government is completely dysfunctional and does not hold authority over any sector within Iraq, and that includes Baghdad. In other words the Maliki government is in fact totally useless. Corruption is breathtaking within the government and has added to the ineffectiveness. There is no doubt that a lot of the money being wasted is American tax dollars. In the meantime Iran is arming, funding and training the various Shia militias including the Mahdi Army and the Badr Brigades, et al. With our current troop strength, the US military can easily put down a Shia uprising but as we withdrawal, and we will withdrawal (as McCaffrey points out) not because of political reasons but because our military is overextended to the limit.

The US officers in the field are the defacto government in Iraq. Since the central government is absent in providing services, it is these officers that go around Iraq with hand fulls of dollars getting things done at the local level. McCaffrey stresses the US military is starting to unravel. The fourteen month rotations and the fact that some units are on their third and fourth tour is starting to grind them down. The weapon systems, including both air and sea assets, are deteriorating and in some cases becoming obsolete. Contractors in Iraq, both US and foreign have begun to play the roles traditionally done by regular service members in the past. Without these contractors the war would grind to a halt.

The situation that erupted in Basra over the past week underscores the obstacle for Iraq. Not only do they have to overcome a Sunni-Shia rift that has not even begun to be dealt with, never mind beginning to be healed but there is severe tensions within the Shia family which played out in south Iraq. With no effective government the only hope for Iraq is for the elections that will occur in the Fall to change the dynamic of government just like the surge did for the military component. But the US is almost done being the baby sitter. Soon Iraq will have to stand or fall on their own merits and this may depend almost as much on their neighbors as it does from within.

Senate Foreign Relations Cmte. Hearing on the U.S. Troop Buildup