Pat Caddell & Doug Schoen discussing Obama’s Announcement that U.S. Will Not Use Nuclear Weapons, Even In Defense

WHY should this not come as a shock??  Consider the words of then Senator Obama to The Washington Post back in 2007:

Sen. Barack Obama ruled out using nuclear weapons against Osama bin Laden or terrorist cells in Afghanistan and Pakistan on Thursday, a promise that quickly became part of the escalating debate among Democratic candidates over national security.

“I think it would be a profound mistake for us to use nuclear weapons in any circumstance,” Obama said, when asked if there were any circumstance in which he would use nuclear weapons against Afghanistan or Pakistan. He then added that he would not use such weapons in situations “involving civilians.”

“Let me scratch that,” he told an Associated Press reporter after emerging from a meeting on Capitol Hill. “There’s been no discussion of nuclear weapons. That’s not on the table.”

The response to the above from prominent democrats:

Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, Obama’s main rival for the Democratic presidential nomination, responded quickly with a warning against categorical statements about the use of nuclear weapons.

“Presidents should be careful at all times in discussing the use and non-use of nuclear weapons,” Clinton said. “Presidents since the Cold War have used nuclear deterrents to keep the peace, and I don’t believe any president should make blanket statements with the regard to use or nonuse.”

Asked specifically whether she agreed with Obama on this specific approach, Clinton declined to address the question. “I’m not going to answer hypotheticals.” Asked if she believed his approach was irresponsible – the word she used in a foreign policy spat with Obama last week over whether to meet with hostile foreign leaders – Clinton said she had said all she would say.

Obama has been toughening his approach to foreign policy; delivering a highly publicized speech on Wednesday declaring that he would approve targeted incursions inside Pakistan if the American government learned the whereabouts of terrorists on the other side of the border. Sen. Joeseph Biden of Delaware, another Democratic candidate for president, this morning called him “naive.”

“In order to look tough, he’s undermined his ability to be tough, were he president. Because if you’re going to go into Pakistan, which is already our policy, by the way, if there’s actionable intelligence, you need actionable intelligence from moderates within Pakistan working with you,” Biden said on NPR’s ‘Diane Rehm Show.’ “It’s a well intended notion he has, but it’s a very naïve way of figuring out how you’re going to conduct foreign policy.”

Sen. Chris Dodd of Connecticut added to the criticism of Obama in a statement he issued Thursday afternoon. “Over the past several days,” Dodd said, “Senator Obama’s assertions about foreign and military affairs have been, frankly, confusing and confused. He has made threats he should not make and made unwise categorical statements about military options.”

Next was this Speech in Prague in April of 2009

Then there was  this from Esquire Magazine in May of 2009:

Last month in Prague, President Obama declared his country’s “moral responsibility to act” in transforming our planet into one free of nuclear weapons. He called for a global summit and a treaty to end nuke development, then signaled his seriousness back home by axing the Pentagon’s much-needed Reliable Replacement Warhead program. Speaking before tens of thousands of Czechs on the day North Korea tested a long-range missile, Obama may have sounded like Martin Luther King (“This goal will not be reached quickly — perhaps not in my lifetime”), but his concept of a nuclear-proof world is patently unattainable, potentially dangerous, and inherently wrong. “I’m not naïve,” the president said. “But we go forward with no illusions.” But he is, and he has.

George W. Bush had his “axis of evil,” while Obama seems to find nuclear weapons to represent a kind of natural evil unto themselves — no matter who possesses them. Now the twentysomethings in Prague may have cheered his invocations of “hope” and “change,” and others may be jumping on board, but I’ve discovered something in my years of global-strategy analysis, and it’s not the deadly fatalism Obama describes — it’s the modern realism he ignores: Nuclear weapons are the single best thing that has ever happened in mankind’s long history of war.

So is it really such a surprise that now, in 2010, Obama has taken this stance?

Obama has been telling us all along who he is and what he is going to do – Americans just weren’t paying attention.

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