In Defense of Barack Obama

I'm tired of hearing how inexperienced Obama is to be President. The job is bigger than any man or woman. Every President we've had has brought strengths and weaknesses to the job. Its a job that requires vision, strength of character, discipline, understanding, compassion and restraint. A laundry list of jobs and titles and credentials mean little if the candidate is lacking in the aforementioned departments.

We come to Barack Obama. I'm tired of hearing he's just a one term senator. Obama was born in Hawaii in 1961. His parents separated when he was two and his Kenyan father went back to Africa where he was killed in a car accident. Obama's mother remarried and the family moved to Indonesia. Obama lived overseas from age 6 to 10.

After finishing high school back in Hawaii, Obama attended Occidental College for two years. Then he transferred to Columbia University majoring in Political Science with a specialization in International Relations.

After receiving his B.A., he worked for a year for Business International Corporation. Then he moved to Chicago, Il. He worked for a non-profit helping churches put together job training programs.

He attended Harvard University and became the first black editor of the Harvard Law Review in the college's history. He graduated with a law degree Magna Cum Laude.

From Wikipedia:

On returning to Chicago, Obama directed a voter registration drive.^[29] As an associate attorney with Miner, Barnhill & Galland from 1993 to 1996, he represented community organizers, discrimination claims, and voting rights cases.^[30] He was a lecturer of constitutional law at the University of Chicago Law School from 1993 until his election to the U.S. Senate in 2004.^[31]

State legislature

Obama was elected to the Illinois State Senate in 1996 from the state's 13th District in the south-side Chicago neighborhood of Hyde Park.^[32] In 2000, he made an unsuccessful Democratic primary run for the U.S. House of Representatives seat held by four-term incumbent candidate Bobby Rush.^[33] He was overwhelmingly reelected to the Illinois Senate in 1998 and 2002, officially resigning in November 2004, following his election to the U.S. Senate.^[34][3

But the reason Barack Obama needs defending is this from CNN today:

In an interview with the Associated Press on Thursday, Obama was asked if he would use nuclear weapons to defeat terrorism and Osama bin Laden. “I think it would be a profound mistake for us to use nuclear weapons in any circumstance, involving civilians,” Obama said to the Associate Press. “Let me scratch that. There’s been no discussion of nuclear weapons. That’s not on the table.”

New York Sen. Hillary Clinton criticized his comments at a press conference. “I don’t believe any president should make any blanket statements in respect to the use or non-use of nuclear weapons,” she said. She and Obama had an ongoing fight last week over how to handle diplomacy with rogue countries like North Korea, Iran and Venezuela.

Connecticut Sen. Chris Dodd sent out a statement attacking Obama. “Over the past several days, Senator Obama’s assertions about foreign and military affairs have been, frankly, confusing and confused. He has made threats he should not make and made unwise categorical statements about military options,” Dodd said.

Across the board, most of his opponents came out swinging against his major counter-terrorism speech on Wednesday.

“It is dangerous and irresponsible to leave even the impression the United States would needlessly and publicly provoke a nuclear power,” Dodd said in a statement. “I disagree with his plan to leave troops in Iraq indefinitely. We still would be militarily overextended,” New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson said in a statement. And Delaware Sen. Joe Biden called Obama’s talking points a “Johnny-come-lately position.”

These political whores running for the Democratic nomination know for a fact that as President, they're not ordering a nuclear strike against Osama Bin Laden. They know it and our enemies know it. The only thing more destabilizing than an Al-Qaeda attack is the use of nuclear weapons. They know that the U.S. is only going to use nuclear weapons as a last resort, in a retaliatory strike against a country that has attacked us with nuclear weapons or sponsored an attack on us with nuclear weapons. But it's time to try to score cheap political points by ganging up on Obama.

Most of these people have been in government prior to and after 9/11. What did they do to stop Al-Qaeda before 9/11?

Too many act as if time spent in Washington is a prerequisite to the Presidency. Maybe time spent in Washington is the problem. Obama has been out there among real working people trying to make a difference in their lives. I'm not telling people to support him. I'm just saying that the man should not be discounted on a supposed lack of experience.

Anyone reading his 2002 Iraq war speech should be able to tell that this man is ready for the world stage. Here is that speech. Judge for yourself.

Good afternoon. Let me begin by saying that although this has been billed as an anti-war rally, I stand before you as someone who is not opposed to war in all circumstances.

The Civil War was one of the bloodiest in history, and yet it was only through the crucible of the sword, the sacrifice of multitudes, that we could begin to perfect this union, and drive the scourge of slavery from our soil.

I don’t oppose all wars.

My grandfather signed up for a war the day after Pearl Harbor was bombed, fought in Patton’s army. He saw the dead and dying across the fields of Europe; he heard the stories of fellow troops who first entered Auschwitz and Treblinka. He fought in the name of a larger freedom, part of that arsenal of democracy that triumphed over evil, and he did not fight in vain.

I don’t oppose all wars.

After September 11th, after witnessing the carnage and destruction, the dust and the tears, I supported this Administration’s pledge to hunt down and root out those who would slaughter innocents in the name of intolerance, and I would willingly take up arms myself to prevent such a tragedy from happening again.

I don’t oppose all wars. And I know that in this crowd today, there is no shortage of patriots, or of patriotism. What I am opposed to is a dumb war. What I am opposed to is a rash war. What I am opposed to is the cynical attempt by Richard Perle and Paul Wolfowitz and other arm-chair, weekend warriors in this Administration to shove their own ideological agendas down our throats, irrespective of the costs in lives lost and in hardships borne.

What I am opposed to is the attempt by political hacks like Karl Rove to distract us from a rise in the uninsured, a rise in the poverty rate, a drop in the median income – to distract us from corporate scandals and a stock market that has just gone through the worst month since the Great Depression.

That’s what I’m opposed to. A dumb war. A rash war. A war based not on reason but on passion, not on principle but on politics.

Now let me be clear – I suffer no illusions about Saddam Hussein. He is a brutal man. A ruthless man. A man who butchers his own people to secure his own power. He has repeatedly defied UN resolutions, thwarted UN inspection teams, developed chemical and biological weapons, and coveted nuclear capacity.

He’s a bad guy. The world, and the Iraqi people, would be better off without him.

But I also know that Saddam poses no imminent and direct threat to the United States, or to his neighbors, that the Iraqi economy is in shambles, that the Iraqi military a fraction of its former strength, and that in concert with the international community he can be contained until, in the way of all petty dictators, he falls away into the dustbin of history.

I know that even a successful war against Iraq will require a US occupation of undetermined length, at undetermined cost, with undetermined consequences. I know that an invasion of Iraq without a clear rationale and without strong international support will only fan the flames of the Middle East, and encourage the worst, rather than best, impulses of the Arab world, and strengthen the recruitment arm of al-Qaeda.

I am not opposed to all wars. I’m opposed to dumb wars.

So for those of us who seek a more just and secure world for our children, let us send a clear message to the president today. You want a fight, President Bush? Let’s finish the fight with Bin Laden and al-Qaeda, through effective, coordinated intelligence, and a shutting down of the financial networks that support terrorism, and a homeland security program that involves more than color-coded warnings.

You want a fight, President Bush? Let’s fight to make sure that the UN inspectors can do their work, and that we vigorously enforce a non-proliferation treaty, and that former enemies and current allies like Russia safeguard and ultimately eliminate their stores of nuclear material, and that nations like Pakistan and India never use the terrible weapons already in their possession, and that the arms merchants in our own country stop feeding the countless wars that rage across the globe.

You want a fight, President Bush? Let’s fight to make sure our so-called allies in the Middle East, the Saudis and the Egyptians, stop oppressing their own people, and suppressing dissent, and tolerating corruption and inequality, and mismanaging their economies so that their youth grow up without education, without prospects, without hope, the ready recruits of terrorist cells.

You want a fight, President Bush? Let’s fight to wean ourselves off Middle East oil, through an energy policy that doesn’t simply serve the interests of Exxon and Mobil.

Those are the battles that we need to fight. Those are the battles that we willingly join. The battles against ignorance and intolerance. Corruption and greed. Poverty and despair.

The consequences of war are dire, the sacrifices immeasurable. We may have occasion in our lifetime to once again rise up in defense of our freedom, and pay the wages of war. But we ought not – we will not – travel down that hellish path blindly. Nor should we allow those who would march off and pay the ultimate sacrifice, who would prove the full measure of devotion with their blood, to make such an awful sacrifice in vain.

Barack Obama hasn't made any statement or done anything for me to question his judgement since then.