The NY Post’s Amir Taheri questions the purpose of Sen. Obama’s trip in his latest column. Consider it today’s must reading. Let Mr. Taheri’s excoriation begin:

TERMED a “learning” trip, Sen. Barack Obama’s eight- day tour of eight nations in the Middle East and Europe turned out to be little more than a series of photo ops to enhance his international credentials.

“He looked like a man in a hurry,” a source close to Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki said last week. “He was not interested in what we had to say.”

Why am I not surprised to find out that Sen. Obama didn’t bother listening to the Iraqis? In fact, the better question might be this:

Shouldn’t we expect a man of Obama’s arrogance to be indifferent to listening?

Notice this exchange with Tom Brokaw on Meet the Press:

MR. BROKAW: When you get home and Michelle says to you, “Barack, what did you learn that surprised you? And did you change your mind about anything based on this entire trip?”

SEN. OBAMA: Well, I, I, I didn’t see a huge shift in the strategic policies that I’ve laid out throughout this campaign. It was clear to me that Afghanistan is the central front on terror, that the Taliban and al-Qaeda have reconstituted themselves.

Granted, this is only the first part of his answer but it’s verification of what Mr. Taheri is saying. He learned nothing. The trip was just verification that he was right all along. Stop after stop, Obama’s policies were verified in his mind. Why didn’t Sen. Obama ask Gen. Petraeus his opinion on his 16-month plan? Was he afraid he might get this response?

Petraeus said any timetable must have “a heck of a lot more granularity than the kind of very short-hand statements that have been put out. We occasionally have commanders who have so many good weeks, (they think) it’s won. We’ve got this thing. Well we don’t. We’ve had so many good weeks. Right now, for example we’ve had two-and-a-half months of levels of violence not since March 2004,” he said from his office at Camp Victory. Well that’s encouraging. It’s heartening. It’s very welcome. But let’s keep our powder dry…Let’s not let our guard down.”

TRANSLATION: Not so fast. There’s some serious questions that need answering before we start setting a timetable to leave.

It’s possible that Sen. Obama worried that Gen. Petraeus might say this to him:

“We know where we are trying to go. We know how we think we need to try to get there with our Iraqi partners and increasingly with them in the lead and shouldering more of the burden as they are,” Petraeus said.

“But there are a lot of storm clouds out there, there are lots of these possible lightning bolts. You just don’t know what it could be. You try to anticipate them and you try to react very quickly…It’s all there, but it’s not something you want to lay out publicly.”

Hearing that firsthand might force Sen. Obama to rethink things through, something that worldly messiahs aren’t comfortable with.

Considering the fact that Sen. Obama tried preventing the Surge from happening, why shouldn’t we expect him to think of his Iraq visit as nothing more than a photo op? Why should we think that he was serious about learning things that might challenge his opinion?

In fact, why shouldn’t we think that Sen. Obama is utterly incompetent with national security matters? Here’s what Sen. Obama said in 2006:

Dreams of democracy and hopes for a perfect government are now just that – dreams and hopes. We must instead turn our focus to those concrete objectives that are possible to attain – namely, preventing Iraq from becoming what Afghanistan once was, maintaining our influence in the Middle East, and forging a political settlement to stop the sectarian violence so that our troops can come home.
There is no reason to believe that more of the same will achieve these objectives in Iraq. And, while some have proposed escalating this war by adding thousands of more troops, there is little reason to believe that this will achieve these results either. It’s not clear that these troop levels are sustainable for a significant period of time, and according to our commanders on the ground, adding American forces will only relieve the Iraqis from doing more on their own. Moreover, without a coherent strategy or better cooperation from the Iraqis, we would only be putting more of our soldiers in the crossfire of a civil war.
Let me underscore this point. The American soldiers I met when I traveled to Iraq this year were performing their duties with bravery, with brilliance, and without question. They are doing so today. They have battled insurgents, secured cities, and maintained some semblance of order in Iraq. But even as they have carried out their responsibilities with excellence and valor, they have also told me that there is no military solution to this war. Our troops can help suppress the violence, but they cannot solve its root causes. And all the troops in the world won’t be able to force Shia, Sunni, and Kurd to sit down at a table, resolve their differences, and forge a lasting peace.
I have long said that the only solution in Iraq is a political one. To reach such a solution, we must communicate clearly and effectively to the factions in Iraq that the days of asking, urging, and waiting for them to take control of their own country are coming to an end.

This paragraph is one that Sen. Obama doesn’t want people to hear:

Iraqis were most surprised by Obama’s apparent readiness to throw away all the gains made in Iraq simply to prove that he’d been right in opposing the 2003 overthrow of Saddam Hussein. “He gave us the impression that the last thing he wanted was for Iraq to look anything like a success for the United States,” a senior Iraqi official told me. “As far as he is concerned, this is Bush’s war and must end in lack of success, if not actual defeat.”

That a “senior Iraqi official” would make such a statement is stunning. What type of man would rather have America lose a war than admit that his opposition to that war was wrong?

Let’s remember that Sen. Obama claimed to be this great post-racial, post-partisan politician. He’s nothing of the sort. If this Iraqi official is right, then he’s the exact opposite of a post-partisan politician. If this quote is accurate, that means that Sen. Obama is the most bitter of partisans in American politics.

Technorati Tags: Obama, Photo Ops, Listening Tour, Foreign Policy, Iraq, David Petraeus, John McCain, Election 2008

Cross-posted at LetFreedomRingBlog

1. So is it any wonder he didnt get a bigger bump up in the polls? And that Mc Cain even gained a few points in some blue states even.

   Sometimes maybe McCain should just keep quiet a while and let Obama do some of his work for him.

   This guy is just another know it all, an arrogant know it all at that, a smooth talking John Kerry. Maybe the American public isn’t as dumb as even I think it is, and saw through this magical mystery tour and the falling ass over tincup fawning of the press for what it was; a publicity stunt to verify his world view.

   Comment by T.A Gray — July 30, 2008 @ 9:26 am

2. Funny how, all of a sudden, all you want to talk about is Obama. Of course, when your guy is out there flip-flopping on every topic, agreeing with Sen. Obama on a timeline — he even used the word “timeline” twice! — being stranded by the criminal Bush, and having difficulty remembering what he said and when he said it, I can see why.

   Comment by Rocky — July 30, 2008 @ 5:57 pm

3. Your party is nominating this guy, over someone who at least has some foriegn policy and White House experience behind her. And YOU know it Rocky!

   Comment by T.A Gray — July 30, 2008 @ 6:18 pm

4. Obama talked to a crowd of Germans who waved the American flag instead of desecrating it. Obama was greeted with applause and cheer instead of mass protests decrying our policies. And not once did he denounce Bush while overseas, citing that “you don’t criticize a sitting president while overseas,” adding that “it’s very important” that U.S. foreign policy is presented “in one voice.”

   So if his polls didn’t improve because of his trip, America’s image abroad is that much better for his effort.

   Comment by Liem — August 1, 2008 @ 9:37 am

5. Problem for Obamessiah is that the Germans don’t have a vote in these United States. At least, not yet. Wonder what’ll happen to that if he’s elected prez? Will he suddenly become prez of the world? Will they have a vote on it, or will he jawbone his way there, or (gasp) will he create such a war that all people everywhere will gladly give up their sovereignty just to have the Obamessiah as their savior?

   Comment by Carlos — August 2, 2008 @ 11:18 am