Obama's Strategic Vision

By Harold Meyerson
Washington Post
Wednesday, July 23, 2008

Maybe the symbolism of Barack Obama giving a major speech this week at Berlin's Victory Column -- a 19th-century monument to Prussia's military triumphs -- isn't as incongruous at it might seem. After all, it was Frederick the Great -- the 18th-century Prussian monarch who transformed his kingdom into the dominant German state -- who once advised his generals, "He who would defend everything ends up defending nothing."

You can't deploy everywhere in strength, Frederick was saying, and that's a lesson Obama seems to understand a lot better than John McCain does. At a news conference in Jordan yesterday, Obama reiterated his belief that Afghanistan, not Iraq, is "the central front in the war against terrorism" and that confronting that reality requires drawing down the number of U.S. forces stationed in Iraq.

Obama has been making this case for many months. But it was not until last week that McCain acknowledged that our war in Afghanistan was not going well and would require additional forces. Unlike Obama, however, McCain does not favor reducing the number of U.S. troops in Iraq by any timetable and has yet to stipulate where our overcommitted military will find the forces to send to Afghanistan.

Good thing McCain wasn't one of Frederick's generals. He would have been cashiered.

(Continued here.)