statement presidential candidate Barack Obama directed at U.S. military personnel fighting al Qaeda and Taliban remnants in Afghanistan. The AP story, “Obama Gets Warning From Friendly Voter,” reported that “voter” Maggie North of Claremont, New Hampshire, warned Obama that he needed to avoid public disputes and nasty exchanges with his Democratic rivals if he wanted to be considered different or a “fresh” alternative to the usual political nastiness associated with Washington DC. All but one paragraph of the AP story dealt with Obama’s verbal exchanges with opponents, how campaigns “thicken a candidate’s skin,” and the evil influence of Washington lobbyists.The one paragraph that should have stood out to readers and received the most attention was not analyzed at all in the AP report or challenged in any way as to its accuracy by the news organs that published it. It contained a slap in the face to U.S. troops in Afghanistan but was effectively obscured by the report’s focus only on the naïve and ill-advised confrontations Obama has engaged in with his party rivals.
Obama has frequently criticized the war effort in Iraq, claiming that he would pull troops out of Iraq and redeploying them in Afghanistan or sending them into Pakistan in pursuit of the Taliban and al Qaeda. His Democratic rivals and conservatives alike rightfully repudiated his stated intent to send troops into Pakistan with or without Pakistani President Musharraf’s approval. Yet during a campaign stop in Nashua, NH yesterday, Obama made a specious claim against U.S. troops in Afghanistan, accusing them in John Kerry-esque manner, of murdering innocents in a foreign land. When asked about pulling troops out of Iraq to fight elsewhere, Obama made the following comment about Afghanistan:
We've got to get the job done there and that requires us to have enough troops so that we'renot just air-raiding villages and killing civilians, which is causing enormous pressure over there.
The question that reporters and potential voters who speak to Obama on the campaign trail should be asking is, “Where do you get your information about what our troops are doing in Afghanistan?” The oft-repeated and never proven claim that our troops are bombing and killing civilians in Afghanistan or Iraq are mainstays of anti-American news sources such as Al-Jazeera, but do not match U.S. military reports of daily actions in either of those countries. On this issue perhaps more than any other, Obama demonstrated knowledge starvation while a virtual feast of front line data was available to him from those actually doing the fighting.
It is no small thing for a presidential candidate to accuse the military of killing civilians and fanning the flames of anti-Americanism in Afghanistan, but the AP apparently felt his comments about lobbyists and having “thick skin” during a campaign were more newsworthy than the knife he plunged into the backs of our troops on the front lines in the War on Terror. Perhaps such daggers have become so common from Obama’s party that certain news organizations no longer consider them unusual or significant enough to cover properly. Our troops, on the other hand, have long memories and do not suffer lightly such accusations or blatant disrespect.
John Kerry “swift-boated” his own 2004 presidential campaign by opening his
mouth in 1971 and falsely accusing his fellow Vietnam servicemen of committing atrocities against, and killing, civilians. That well-documented testimony to Congress was replayed throughout 2004 on conservative talk radio and served as a constant reminder to potential voters of Kerry’s true feelings toward the military and those who served in the Vietnam War far longer and with more honor than he did. Obama’s false accusation that our troops are now killing civilians in Afghanistan should likewise hang as a proverbial albatross around his campaign’s neck throughout his presumptuous run for the presidency.Technorati Tags:
Barack Obama, Afghanistan, US Troops, Redeployment, Civilian Deaths, John Kerry, War Crimes, Swift Boat Veterans, US Military, Presidential Candidates, New Hampshire
