{"id":12543,"date":"2007-08-14T17:00:02","date_gmt":"2007-08-14T21:00:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/archives\/12543.html"},"modified":"2007-08-14T17:00:02","modified_gmt":"2007-08-14T21:00:02","slug":"another-foreign-policy-flap-for-obama","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/another-foreign-policy-flap-for-obama\/","title":{"rendered":"Another foreign-policy flap for Obama"},"content":{"rendered":"

This seems to have become a weekly occurrence. Obama offers some commentary on U.S. foreign policy, the right pounces, and the facts show that Obama’s right and the GOP is wrong. The latest in the series came this afternoon<\/a>.<\/p>\n

There’s what Obama said:<\/p>\n

“We’ve got to get the job done [in Afghanistan] and that requires us to have enough troops so that we’re not just air-raiding villages and killing civilians, which is causing enormous problems there,” Obama said.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

There’s what the GOP said:<\/p>\n

A spokesman for Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney said the comment showed Obama’s lack of experience for the job of commander in chief. “It’s also an entirely inaccurate condemnation of the efforts of the men and women of the United States military who are serving in Iraq and Afghanistan,” spokesman Kevin Madden told the Washington Examiner.<\/p>\n

The Republican National Committee simply repeated the comment as one of their “They Said It!” series used to highlight statements by opponents that supposedly put them in a bad light.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

And then there’s the fact-check.
\n
\nFrom the AP:<\/p>\n

A check of the facts shows that Western forces have been killing civilians at a faster rate than the insurgents.<\/p>\n

The U.S. and NATO say they don’t have civilian casualty figures, but The Associated Press has been keeping count based on figures from Afghan and international officials. Tracking civilian deaths is a difficult task because they often occur in remote and dangerous areas that are difficult to reach and verify.<\/p>\n

As of Aug. 1, the AP count shows that while militants killed 231 civilians in attacks in 2007, Western forces killed 286. Another 20 were killed in crossfire that can’t be attributed to one party.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

In other words, what Obama said was right. Again.<\/p>\n

What’s annoying to me as a political observer is that the questions themselves become self-fulfilling. The media now reports that Obama has had some “trouble” with foreign policy, or perhaps he’s had some “gaffes,” which reinforce the agreed-upon inexperience-narrative.<\/p>\n

But to date, the truth is a) nothing Obama has said has proven to be wrong or unpopular; and b) far more obvious mistakes from Republican candidates have gone entirely overlooked, in large part because the campaign narrative is that foreign policy is a GOP “strength.”<\/p>\n

It’s another reminder: it’s going to be a long campaign.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This seems to have become a weekly occurrence. Obama offers some commentary on U.S. foreign policy, the right pounces, and the facts show that Obama’s right and the GOP is wrong. The latest in the series came this afternoon. There’s what Obama said: “We’ve got to get the job done [in Afghanistan] and that requires […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12543","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12543","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12543"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12543\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12543"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12543"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12543"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}