June 10, 2008
IN his address to the American Israeli Political Action Committee last week, Sen. Barack Obama discarded some of his most dangerous positions.
Of Iran, for example, he said: "The Iranian regime supports violent extremists and challenges us across the region. It pursues a nuclear capability that could spark a dangerous arms race and raise the prospect of a transfer of nuclear know-how to terrorists. Its president denies the Holocaust and threatens to wipe Israel off the map. The danger from Iran is grave, it is real, and my goal will be to eliminate this threat."
Except for the politically correct phrase "violent extremists" instead of the more accurate "terrorists," those words could have come from President Bush.
All who've supported the Bush Doctrine should welcome this dramatic change. No longer does Obama claim that talk of a threat from Iran is an "obsession instead, he recognizes the danger of nuclear proliferation - and acknowledges the Islamic Republic as something more than a "tiny" challenger.
He has also "evolved" on Iraq. He no longer shares Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid's belief that America has already lost the war. And he's discarded his pledge to pull US troops out in the first year of his presidency. He now talks of "a responsible and phased withdrawal" - exactly what Bush is committed to.
More important: He no longer says "there are no good options in Iraq now, "there are not many good options" - which means there are some.
In the Middle East, many see this transformation as a bid to woo the Jewish vote. Unlikely: American Jews always vote Democrat by three to one.
Perhaps the change simply reflects the shift from the primaries, which Obama won in part by courting the virulent anti-war groups, to the general-election campaign, when he must appeal to the electorate at large. That is, he must tailor his message for the majority of Americans who think Iran is a threat, and the growing plurality are starting to see that Iraq isn't a quagmire after all.
