By JEFF EMANUEL
May 14, 2008

You could say that Barack Obama "pulled a John McCain" with his verbal gaffes regarding Iraq, Afghanistan, Arabic-speaking translators, and the War on Terror in his May 13 speech to supporters in Cape Girardeau, Missouri.

You could say that -- but you would be wrong.

“Conflating” Sunni and Shi’a?

Two months ago, pundits and politicians alike descended upon Senator McCain with accusations of confusion, a lack of touch, and even outright dishonesty when the Republican presidential nominee said that al Qaeda fighters in Iraq have been receiving funding, training, and equipment from Iran during the last year-plus of the Iraq War.

Mr. McCain "conflated" Sunni and Shi'a organizations, which clearly "represent opposing sides in the Iraqi civil war[sic]" crowed the liberal web site ThinkProgress (an outlet with its own track record of mixing up historical events).

In an ABCNews blog post entitled "Err-Jordan," reporter Jake Tapper wrote that McCain "seemed to step in it" with his assertion that Sunni al Qaeda and Shi'a Iran were working together, asking if the Senator was suffering from "jet lag." (Tapper, who has been one of the most solid reporters of this campaign season, later posted an opposing viewpoint, if not an outright correction.)

Susan Rice, then still a senior foreign policy adviser to Barack Obama (she was later relieved of the position for undermining Mr. Obama's claims that he would initiate an immediate withdrawal from Iraq if elected, and for referring to Hillary Clinton as a "monster"), called McCain's assertion "very bizarre," saying that "there is no body of evidence to suggest Iran is aiding Al Qaeda in Iraq" and noting that Mr. McCain had "made the same statement three times in as many days. Surely he must know, as Senator Lieberman reminded him, that Iran is not engaged with Al Qaeda in Iraq. I don't know if he is confused, or is he cynically trying to conflate Al Qaeda and Iran as Cheney and Bush did Al Qaeda and Iraq in 2002 and 2003?"

Iran and al Qaeda, Working Together

The dirty little secret of the entire McCain-al Qaeda-Iran affair was the fact that Mr. McCain was correct in his initial statement; al Qaeda has, in fact, been receiving funding, training, and equipment from Iran during the last year-plus of the Iraq War (and has been offering cross-border assistance to Shi'a militias for much longer). McCain's statement was entirely correct at the time; his only real mistake in that press conference was to listen to Joseph Lieberman, who whispered a correction that McCain incorrectly contradicted himself by repeating.

That Iran would interfere heavily in Iraq, aiding al Qaeda in the process, is a reality that has been borne out by both evidence and intuition. In July of last year, the New York Sun reported that "a senior leadership or management council for Al Qaeda meets regularly in eastern Iran, according to the classified portion of the latest national intelligence estimate on Al Qaeda." In December, the Long War Journal published an exclusive and exhaustive report on the "ratlines" via which Iran was funneling supplies, personnel, and money into Iraq. Both reports, and several others in the same vein, were largely ignored by a mainstream media apparatus that appears focused on avoiding all implications that Iraq's Persian neighbor is, and has been, actively interfering in that country by supporting and aiding America's enemies -- both Sunni and Shi'a.

The case that Iran and al Qaeda are cooperating against the coalition is also bolstered by intuition and common sense. The possession of a common enemy has historically been a key instigator in the formation of alliances between both individuals and nations (see, for example, the Hitler-Stalin nonagression pact, or the American-Soviet cooperation that closely followed the Nazi invasion of Russia). The adhesive that a common enemy provides between unlikely groups has been demonstrated time and again over the course of the last few years in Iraq, as well. While reporting from the front lines in that country, I have personally seen Sunni and Shi'a band together in Anbar Province and elsewhere as tribal and citizens groups against al Qaeda and other terrorist groups and networks. I have seen Sunni and Shi'a drive each other from their homes and slaughter each other, simply because of the killers' strange combination of sectarian hate and innate bloodlust -- but I have also seen Sunni and Shi'a working hand in hand to fight against the insurgency -- and I have seen them working hand in hand to fight America and to kill Iraqi civilians.

A Lack of International Understanding

Barack Obama's May 13 gaffe regarding Afghanistan and a lack of Arabic translators was far more fundamental, and far more of a mistake, than Mr. McCain's stumbling over an assertion he knew to be true at the time.

Bringing up Afghanistan -- a cause celebré of advocates of military withdrawal from Iraq who want to avoid the appearance of total opposition to the War on Terror -- at the Missouri campaign stop, Mr. Obama claimed that the U.S. simply "[doesn't] have enough capacity right now to deal with" the initial front in America's seven-year-and-counting Global War on Terror.

Part of the reason for this, said Obama, is that "Arabic translators deployed in Iraq are needed in Afghanistan."

"We only have a certain number of them and if they are all in Iraq, then its harder for us to use them in Afghanistan," he said.

This statement was a head-scratched for a pair reasons. The first is the fact that Afghans are neither ethnically nor linguistically Arabic; the second, that interpreters are almost 100% drawn from local populations, rather than deployed by the U.S. military.

Obama continued, saying that "we need agricultural specialists in Afghanistan," as well -- "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.

"But if we are sending them to Baghdad, they're not in Afghanistan."

“Zero-Sum Foreign Policy”

Besides apparently having the two entirely different cultures, languages, ethnicities, and agricultural specialties confused (one can almost picture him shrugging and saying "they all look alike to me"), Mr. Obama appears to be buying in to what might be called the "Nancy Pelosi school of zero-sum foreign policy." In April, Ms. Pelosi took to the floor of the House of Representatives to ask the question, "When we know that the real war on terror is in Afghanistan, how can we have that real effort with a sustained effort in Iraq continuing?"

The fact that the U.S. military and its associated teams of experts can operate in more than one place at a single time appears to be somewhat lost on Pelosi and on Obama -- much like the existence of a littany of differences between Iraq and Afghanistan. Further, the Obama campaign's heated response to ABCNews's initial report on the gaffe consisted, in part, of a defense of the call for Arabic translators in a country that speaks Pashtu, Farsi, and other Indo-European languages (as opposed to the Semitic Arabic language) based on the need to interrogate "foreign fighters in Afghanistan."

This assertion brings up another interesting point. It appears that, to Mr. Obama, the presence of "foreign fighters" in Afghanistan means that America needs to dedicate 100% of what he sees as being some of our most precious and scarce resources -- Arabic-speaking interpreters -- to that nation.

Interestingly, the same situation vis-a-vis foreign fighters in Iraq has caused Obama and his ideological allies on the Left to redouble their calls for a U.S. withdrawal. This appears to be a result of the belief that such an influx of terrorists into Iraq means that America is doing the wrong thing by remaining there to fight the enemy that the Global War on Terror was designed to combat, and whose members are still streaming into that country to all-but impale themselves on our soldiers' bayonets.

Mr. Obama's campaign platform includes securing America,and re-establishing her "degraded" standing in the world, in part by promising to unconditionally meet with hostile foreign leaders like Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (though, with so many Arabic translators apparently tied up in Iraq, it may be safe to assume that Obama is concerned that none will be free to facilitate his meeting with the leader of the Farsi-speaking Persian state). For someone who is building his case for the presidency on such a lofty, idealistic premise, Obama insists on maintaining a troublingly naive, inconsistent, and uninformed view of the world's cultures and of international events.

Willful Ignorance of the State of Afghanistan

When it comes to Afghanistan in particular, Mr. Obama's ignorance is both inexcusable and a circumstance entirely of his own making. After all, as part of the job that the American taxpayer is currently paying him to do, Obama serves as Chair of the Senate Subcommittee on Europe, the subcommittee that has jurisdiction over NATO -- which, in turn, is the military authority under which the majority of allied operations in Afghanistan are being conducted.

At their February debate in Cleveland, Ohio, Hillary Clinton, Mr. Obama's opponent in the Democratic presidential primary, pointed out that, though "NATO is critical to our mission in Afghanistan," Obama "has held not one substantive hearing to do oversight, to figure out what we can do to actually have a stronger presence with NATO in Afghanistan."

Obama responded to the jab by saying, "Well, first of all, I became chairman of this committee at the beginning of this campaign, at the beginning of 2007."

This provides a great deal of insight into Mr. Obama's priorities. Unlike Mr. McCain, who famously said in 2007, when his poll numbers were falling through the floor in part because of his continued support for the War on Terror, that he would "rather lose an election than lose a war," Obama's priorities appear to be structured roughly along the following lines: Campaigning for President takes the top spot, after which follows a host of ideas and projects (including occastionally showing up on the Senate floor to cast votes). That in turn supersedes doing his job as the chairman of the Senate subcommittee that oversees the Alliance responsible for military operations and reconstruction in Afghanistan.

Afghanistan is clearly very, very important to Mr. Obama. This is made clear by his repeated talk about how 25 million Iraqi civilians should be abandoned to the Islamic State of Iraq, Jaish al Islam, the Mahdi Army, and every other foreign and domestic militia and terrorist organization that is currently carrying out or attempting to carry out attacks in that country, so that we can bring some troops home and use the others to shore up our efforts in Afghanistan, where the "real War on Terror" apparently is, and where we are clearly incapable of effectively doing much of anything as long as we have military personnel anywhere else in the world, doing much of anything.

Afghanistan is clearly important to Mr. Obama.

It just ranks far enough below running for president, with the mass rallies and adulation that such a campaign involves, that Mr. Obama just hasn't been able to tear himself away from his pursuit of power long enough to hold one single meeting of his Senate subcommittee that is responsible for coalition efforts in Afghanistan.

Foolishness Borne of Inexperience

Had Mr. Obama the experience to know that he needed to do a bit of homework before preaching to his choir of the masses about international affairs (among other topics) -- and the honesty to represent the facts as such -- he likely would have found that the situation in Afghanistan, and its relation to the effort in Iraq, is entirely different than he seems to believe.

For example, contrary to popular "anti-war" opinion, America did not "abandon" the effort in Afghanistan when we opened a second major front in the War on Terror by invading Iraq. In fact, the U.S. has a similar number of troops on the ground in the former now that it did in 2001. The fact that a second major front was opened didn't necessitate an abandonment of the first; rather, it gave the international terrorists we were fighting two fronts to worry about.

Further, compared to seven years ago, Afghanistan is an amazingly improved place -- something Mr. Obama would have known had he read the report released in April by NATO, the organization his subcommittee is responsible for overseeing.

Entitled "Progress in Afghanistan," the NATO report lays out the changes in that nation's security and infrastructural situation since the Treaty Organization began operations there fiver years ago. Had Mr. Obama even read the opening paragraph to the report's Executive Summary, which says, "Set against the devastating effect of decades of conflict, these five years have witnessed substantial progress in all spheres of Afghan life from a reasonably stable security situation in most of the country to a massive increase in the number of health clinics and children in schools," he would at least have been prepared to avoid looking completely ignorant of the state of affairs there.

Mr. Obama would not have to claim that the situation in that country was entirely rosy in order to acknowledge the progress that has been made there; in truth, circumstances there are still far from ideal. However, to do so he would have to admit that the doom-and-gloom scenaro that has become conventional wisdom on the Left was not entirely accurate -- and his willingness to do that is highly doubtful at best. 

So, Obama restricts himself to the standard, politics-as-usual talking points when discussing the War on Terror: Iraq was a mistake, terrorists are only there because American soldiers are, the U.S. has sacrificed progress in Afghanistan in order to fight the illegal war in Iraq, and al Qaeda and the Taliban are regenerating and regrowing in Afghanistan without being challenged by coalition or Afghan forces.

The fact that very little of this is actually accurate rarely seems to affect the continuous repetition of the talking points. In fact, the resurgence of the Taliban and the renewed offensives against the coalition and the Afghani forces that is was supposed to bring with it, has never materialized in the way that the mainstream media and other doomsayers have been predicting for the past three years.

While it is true that Taliban and al Qaeda personnel are still operating in the region, the fact is that those holdouts find their safest haven in Pakistan and in the Waziristan region on the border of Pakistan and Afghanistan. This means that, regardless the number of troops and various "experts" that the U.S. has in Afghanistan at any given time, national borders will continue to effectively prevent full prosecution of these enemies. Thus, unless America plans on going to war in yet another nation in the near future -- something that Mr. Obama, amidst his calls for immediate withdrawal from Iraq, has said that he is willing to do in the case of Pakistan -- al Qaeda and the Afghan Taliban will continue to have in Pakistan a safe haven where they can rest and rearm ad infinitum.

Unlike John McCain's mistake in March -- which consisted of correcting his already correct statement regarding Iranian-al Qaeda cooperation -- Mr. Obama's repeated assertions and policy promises regarding America's activities on the various fronts in the War on Terror appear to be the result of willful ignorance, an attempt at blatantly dishonest pandering to his anti-American base, or a dangerous combination of both.

Regardless, the ignorance, lack of experience, and poor judgment that Mr. Obama continually reminds us he will, if elected, be bringing with him as he assumes the position of Commander in Chief and sole establisher of American foreign policy is a concern that should grow on American's minds every day as November approaches.

Jeff Emanuel, a special operations military veteran, is a columnist, a Pulitzer-nominated combat journalist, and a Director Emeritus of conservative weblog RedState.com.