Obama camp responds to McCain speech
Posted: Monday, June 02, 2008 4:11 PM by Mark Murray
Filed Under:
Security
From NBC/NJ’s Athena Jones
The Obama campaign has two questions for McCain: 1) how will his foreign policy be different from George Bush’s, and 2) if it is not different, why should anyone expect better results than Bush has achieved?
So asked California Rep. Adam Schiff (D) during a conference call held this afternoon to McCain’s remarks at the AIPAC meeting in Washington today.
The 13-minute call continued what has become a common tactic of the Obama campaign -- linking Bush to McCain in several policy areas, a bid to portray a McCain presidency as a third Bush term.
"Unfortunately, [McCain] continues to cling to a foreign policy that’s failed to make the US or Israel safer. Iran’s nuclear program has continued during the course of the last several years, without abatement,” Schiff said. “Hamas and Hezbollah have grown stronger not weaker. This has not only threatened our security, but Israel’s as well. The only thing that appeared at all new in Sen. McCain’s remarks was a adoption of a divestment policy, a sanctions approach, which ironically was something Sen. Obama has been championing for some time.”
In his speech to the powerful lobby this morning, McCain criticized Obama for his openness to engaging in direct diplomacy with Iran; for his opposition to the Iraq troop surge; for his desire to end the war; and for being opposed to a 2007 amendment that classified Iran's Revolutionary Guard as a terrorist organization. Obama has said he opposed other language in that measure -- not the terrorist label -- which Denis McDonough, Obama’s senior foreign policy adviser, repeated today, adding that the senator had co-sponsored a bill to make that point clear.
McDonough continued the theme of what the campaign sees as Bush’s poor track record on foreign policy asking similar questions to Schiff: “"I think that if you just tick through a series of simple questions after reading this speech, you come to a pretty stark conclusion: First, is Israel safer today than it was before the Bush administration policies? Is U.S. influence in the region greater or less than it was….Is Hezbollah stronger? Is Hamas stronger or weaker? Is Iran dramatically closer to its goal of perfecting this illicit nuclear technology? And has the war in Iraq strengthened or weakened Iran? I think that we know what the answers are to those questions are as a result of this administration’s policies.”
