The Obama Diary

Michael Shear (NYT): In a speech almost 18 months before he assumed the presidency, Barack Obama issued a blunt warning to President Pervez Musharaff of Pakistan: “If we have actionable intelligence about high-value terrorist targets and President Musharraf won’t act, we will.”

The line was eerily prescient, as it turned out. In his late-night statement on Sunday announcing the death of Osama bin Laden, Mr. Obama said that the United States had acted inside Pakistan to capture or kill the Al Qaeda leader on just that kind of actionable intelligence.

…But in the middle of 2007, when Mr. Obama gave the speech it instantly provided his Democratic rivals an opportunity, which they seized aggressively … The criticism was part of an effort by Mr. Obama’s rivals to cast the young senator as naïve and inexperienced when it came to national security and foreign policy. Months later, Mrs. Clinton ran a hard-hitting campaign ad that asked whether people would feel comfortable with Mr. Obama in the White House when the phone rings at 3 a.m.

Senator John McCain picked up the criticism. On several occasions, Mr. McCain paraphrased Mr. Obama incorrectly, saying that the Democrat had promised to bomb Pakistan. “Will we risk the confused leadership of an inexperienced candidate who once suggested invading our ally, Pakistan?” Mr. McCain asked during his victory speech in the Wisconsin Republican primary in February 2008.

…Now, however, it may be more difficult for the Republicans to make that case stick. Not only did Mr. Obama achieve what his predecessor, former President George W. Bush, fail to accomplish for nearly seven years, but he did so by following his own advice from long before he was in office.

In a statement late Sunday night, Mr. McCain praised the man he once called “confused” and “inexperienced.”

Full article here