California Conservative

According to this NY Times article, John McCain intends on painting Barack Obama as being soft on Hamas.

For his part, Mr. McCain has taken pride in the enmity with which he regards Hamas. “I think that the people should understand that I will be Hamas’s worst nightmare,” he said late last month in a conference call with conservative bloggers.

Conversely, he has tried to portray Mr. Obama as sympathetic to Hamas.

“I think it is very clear who Hamas wants to be the next president of the United States,” Mr. McCain said to the bloggers. “If Senator Obama is favored by Hamas, I think people can make judgments accordingly.”

It isn’t surprising that the NY Times is ‘reporting’ that Sen. McCain has implied Sen. Obama is “sympathetic to Hamas.” Sen. McCain is simply suggesting that Sen. Obama’s policies towards Hamas won’t be as effective as Sen. McCain’s will be.

Obama, meanwhile, will point out that he’s spoken out against Hamas in harsh terms. The problem for Sen. Obama is that he’s been less than harsh in dealing with Iran, which is training Hamas terrorists:

TEL AVIV, March 5 — The chief of Shin Bet, the Israeli internal security service, said Monday that the Islamic movement Hamas had sent dozens of men from Gaza to Iran for military training.

“We know that Hamas has started to dispatch people to Iran, tens, and a promise of hundreds,” the intelligence chief, Yuval Diskin, told a small group of correspondents here in a rare on-the-record briefing. The training would last months, perhaps years, he said, adding, “I see this as the strategic danger, more than any weapons smuggled into Gaza.”

The thing to be drawn out of these articles is the fact that Barack Obama is committed to meeting with Iranian President Ahmedinejad, which finances Hamas. The question I’d want answered is this: How would a President Obama apply pressure on Hamas when he’s meeting with Iran, one of Hamas’ biggest supporters?

Ahmed Youssef, an adviser to Ismail Haniya, the Hamas-backed Palestinian prime minister, responded from Gaza by telephone that Hamas “has not sent anyone to Iran,” and that Mr. Diskin’s comment was “propaganda, to hurt a new government.”

Mr. Youssef said there “are attempts to send some men from the Executive Force,” a Hamas-led parallel paramilitary police force, “to Arab countries for police training.”

Does anyone honestly think that Hamas is interested in training a police force to keep the streets of Gaza violence free? Let’s also notice that the man who made that claim is also the man who made this statement:

The McCain-Obama dispute about Hamas began last month, after Ahmed Yousef, a political adviser to the group’s leadership in Gaza, made complimentary remarks about Mr. Obama in an interview with WABC radio in New York. After initially complaining that “everybody tries to sound like he is a friend of Israel” when out on the campaign trail, including Mr. Obama, Mr. Yousef shifted tone.

“We like Mr. Obama,” Mr. Yousef said, “and we hope that he will win the election.”

“I do believe that Mr. Obama is like John Kennedy, a great man with great principles,” he continued. “He has a vision to change America, to make it in a position to lead the world community, but not with domination and arrogance.”

Isn’t it interesting that the same man that “made complimentary remarks about Mr. Obama” is the same man that said “some men from the Executive Force” have been “to Arab countries for police training”? Isn’t it fair to ask why a propagandist like Mr. Yousef would speak glowingly about the man who might be the next American president? Shouldn’t we ask if Mr. Yousef’s comments were tinted by their desire to see Sen. Obama be the next president?

Terrorist organizations like Hamas might be ruthless but their moves are calculated for maximum impact.

I’d just tell Sen. McCain that the louder Sen. Obama screams about going negative, the more I’d exploit the issue that drew the dramatic, whiny response.

If you can’t stand the heat, stay out of the kitchen.

Technorati Tags: Hamas, Obama, Foreign Policy, Iran, Terrorism, John McCain, Election 2008

Cross-posted at LetFreedomRingBlog

This entry was posted on Saturday, May 10th, 2008 at 1:38 am and is filed under Author: Gary Gross, Election 2008, Foreign Policy, Iran, McCain, Obama, Terrorism. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.