WATERTOWN, S.D. – Sen. Barack Obama responded sharply yesterday to attacks on his foreign policy, linking President Bush and Sen. John McCain as partners in “the failed policies” of the past seven years and criticizing them for “hypocrisy, fear-peddling, fear-mongering.”
Confronting a major challenge to his world view, Obama tried to turn the tables on his critics, saying they were guilty of “bluster” and “dishonest, divisive” tactics. He cited a litany of what he called foreign policy blunders by the Bush administration and accused McCain, the presumed Republican nominee, of “doubling down” on them.
“George Bush and John McCain have a lot to answer for,” Obama said at a midday forum here, listing the Iraq war, the strengthening of Iran and groups like Hamas and Hezbollah, Osama bin Laden's being still at large and stalled diplomacy in other parts of the Middle East among their chief failings.
“If George Bush and John McCain want to have a debate about protecting the United States of America,” Obama said, “that is a debate I am happy to have any time, any place.”
His defiance and disdain for Bush's record appeared to be a signal that he will push back against efforts to define him or his record as weak on terror or accommodating to foreign foes, a strategy Republicans used successfully against Sen. John Kerry in 2004.
The appearance also signaled that the campaigns are pivoting swiftly toward the general election, with the two sides already in full attack mode.
Consistently throughout his comments about foreign policy, Obama yoked Bush and McCain as an entity, mentioning their names in the same sentence 10 times in barely 10 minutes. He portrayed them as being not only inflexible but also “naive and irresponsible,” the characteristics they ascribe to him.
The remarks were made a day after Bush, addressing the Israeli parliament, spoke of what he called a tendency toward “appeasement” in some quarters of the West, similar to that shown to the Nazis before the invasion of Poland.
Bush also said he rejected negotiations with “terrorists and radicals,” implying that Democrats favored such a position. Obama said he found the remarks offensive.
“After almost eight years, I did not think I could be surprised by anything that George Bush says,” Obama said, criticizing Bush for raising an internal issue on foreign soil. “But I was wrong.”
McCain had endorsed Bush's remarks, saying, “The president is exactly right,” and adding that Obama “needs to explain why he is willing to sit down and talk” with President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran.
“In the Bush-McCain world view, everyone who disagrees with their failed Iran policy is an appeaser,” Obama said.
Other Democrats accused McCain of hypocrisy Friday, saying the certain GOP presidential nominee had previously said he would be willing to negotiate with the militant Palestinian group Hamas.
McCain, speaking to the National Rifle Association in Louisville, Ky., said he welcomed a debate with Obama over national security and threw the naive description back at Obama.
“It would be a wonderful thing if we lived in a world where we don't have enemies,” McCain said. “But that is not the world we live in, and until Senator Obama understands that reality, the American people have every reason to doubt whether he has the strength, judgment and determination to keep us safe.”
