Taylor Marsh – TaylorMarsh.com – News, Opinion and Weblog on Progressive Politics

BY TAYLOR MARSH

Here we go again.

“We don’t have enough capacity right now to deal with it — and it’s not just the troops,” Obama, D-Ill., told a crowd in Cape Girardeau, Missouri. Obama posited — incorrectly — that Arabic translators deployed in Iraq are needed in Afghanistan — forgetting, momentarily, that Afghans don’t speak Arabic. Obama Gaffes on Iraq and Afghanistan

Frankly, and it gives me no pleasure to say this, he sounds like George W.
Bush. Willing to pontificate even if he doesn’t know what he’s talking about.
Now, to be fair, I make my share of mistakes, and I know Obama’s tired, but
this is the sort of stuff a presidential candidate should have at his fingertips.
Especially a candidate like Obama who is saying he’s prepared to go up against
John McCain. We gave McCain holy hell for mixing up Shia and Sunni, as we should.
This blooper by Obama is just as bad.

“We need agricultural specialists in Afghanistan, people who can help them develop other crops than heroin poppies, because the drug trade in Afghanistan is what is driving and financing these terrorist networks. So we need agricultural specialists,” he said. So far, so good. “But if we are sending them to Baghdad, they’re not in Afghanistan,” Obama said.

So no sooner had he corrected his first mistake than he made another one. We
need to do a lot of things in Iraq, but send agricultural specialists there
isn’t one of them.

Now, of course, Obama’s team wasn’t very pleased with ABC’s analysis of the
event so Burton sent the reporter that wrote this story, David Wright, a
long explanation, spanking him for bad investigating. As he notes in rebutting
Obama’s team, there is no doubt that Iraq is draining Afghanistan of resources.
But is Arabic speaking translators really the problem?

As for the point about Arabic translators needed for Afghanistan, the Obama campaign points to the well-documented presence of foreign fighters there, many of whom do speak Arabic. However, these folks are mostly shooting at NATO troops, not talking to them.

If you want to really help the junior senator from Illinois I guess you could
give him a pass because his central point is important. However, even if you’re
going to make the case that Iraq is putting a strain on U.S. forces, including
our ability to maintain stability in Afghanistan, I’d say worrying about arabic
speakers in that country, while also fixating on sending agricultural specialists
into a country that relies a lot more on oil that crops isn’t the way to do
it.

Obama’s missteps and misstatements are adding up. That foreign policy is the
next stop for our “presumptive nominee”’s gaffe-fest is anything but
comforting. The Republicans love this stuff.