[Peace-discuss] Traditional foreign policy...

[C. G. Estabrook]

	Obama Aligns Foreign Policy With GOP
	DEVLIN BARRETT | March 28, 2008 11:41 PM EST | AP

GREENSBURG, Pa. — Sen. Barack Obama said Friday he would return the
country to the more "traditional" foreign policy efforts of past
presidents, such as George H.W. Bush, John F. Kennedy and Ronald
Reagan.

At a town hall event at a local high school gymnasium, Obama praised
George H.W. Bush _ father of the president _ for the way he handled
the Persian Gulf War: with a large coalition and carefully defined
objectives.

Obama began a six-day bus tour through Pennsylvania, the largest
remaining primary prize in the contest with Sen. Hillary Rodham
Clinton for the Democratic nomination. Sen. John McCain is the
Republican nominee-in-waiting.

"The truth is that my foreign policy is actually a return to the
traditional bipartisan realistic policy of George Bush's father, of
John F. Kennedy, of, in some ways, Ronald Reagan, and it is George
Bush that's been naive and it's people like John McCain and,
unfortunately, some Democrats that have facilitated him acting in
these naive ways that have caused us so much damage in our reputation
around the world," he said.

Obama faced criticism in January from Clinton and then-challenger John
Edwards for saying Reagan had changed the trajectory of American
politics _ and that Republicans had been the party of ideas for the
last decade or more.

In one of the more heated moments of the Democratic debates, Clinton
challenged him directly on the topic, saying those GOP ideas were "bad
for America, and I was fighting against those ideas."

In his speech Friday night, the Illinois senator charged that Clinton,
for all her criticism of the current President Bush, has too often
gone along with his decisions.

"I do think that Sen. Clinton would understand that George Bush's
policies have failed, but in many ways she has been captive to the
same politics that led her to vote for authorizing the war in Iraq,"
he said. "Since 9/11 the conventional wisdom has been that you've got
to look tough on foreign policy by voting and acting like the
Republicans, and I disagree with that."

McCain spokesman Tucker Bounds said Obama "represents an absolute
departure" from Reagan and other presidents "whose strength in the
face of an outspoken and determined enemy won the greater peace for a
generation."

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