After months of enduring repeated accusations that he lacked policy substance, Barack Obama now faces the opposite problem. In recent weeks, as the Illinois senator has fleshed out his foreign policy agenda, he has encountered increasing criticism from across the political spectrum. Liberal bloggers suspect Obama is a closet neoconservative, while conservative pundits declare him unsuited for the presidency. He has lately been called naive, irresponsible, unpredictable, confused and reckless - among other, less diplomatic labels.
In reality, most of these attacks have little substantive basis, and they simply represent the standard political give-and-take found in all presidential campaigns. But beyond that, the attacks are rooted in a basic misunderstanding of Obama's unconventional approach to politics and policy. In essence, they reveal something fundamentally unique about Obama's political character and his worldview.
Substantively, the specific questions about Obama's foreign policy proposals are not exactly unimportant, but they are off base. In a Democratic presidential candidates debate several weeks ago, Obama expressed his willingness to meet with unfriendly foreign leaders, such as those from Iran and Venezuela. Contrary to charges of "naivete" by Sen. Hillary Clinton, he actually made no commitment or pledge to hold such meetings. Forced into a political battle by Clinton's attack, however, Obama fought back, portraying his unvarnished emphasis on diplomacy as transparent, sensible and entirely uncontroversial. Indeed, each of Obama's fellow Democratic candidates has stressed a need for greater diplomacy throughout their respective campaigns, albeit in hazier terms. Obama's position, then, was notable more for its tone than for its substance, which itself was a relevant distinction. In politics as in diplomacy, style often is substance.
In a speech outlining his anti-terrorism proposals a week later, Obama suggested that he would attack high-value al Qaeda targets in Pakistan, if that country wouldn't do so itself. This assertion was welcomed with attacks from the political left, which seemed to confuse Obama's opposition to the Iraq war with an opposition to fighting al Qaeda. On its merits, Obama's statement was hardly scandalous. The area in which Osama bin Laden is suspected of hiding - in the rough terrain bordering Afghanistan - is a veritable no-man's land, nominally part of Pakistan, but in reality beyond any state's control. For more than a decade, U.S. policy has held that al Qaeda targets in such regions were fair game for attack. President Bill Clinton launched cruise missiles against al Qaeda targets in Afghanistan and Sudan in 1998, and President Bush used a missile-carrying drone to destroy a vehicle carrying an al Qaeda leader in Yemen in 2002. Obama's position, then, was more sensible than revolutionary, as the subsequent concurrences of his fellow Democratic candidates only confirmed.
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2007/08/07/EDL4RDO2J1.DTL
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