McCain, Obama trade foreign policy jabs
WASHINGTON (AFP) — Republican John McCain traded foreign policy barbs Saturday with the campaign of his Democratic rival Barack Obama, who arrived on his first trip to Afghanistan as part of a regional tour.
"Senator Obama announced his strategy for Afghanistan and Iraq before departing on a fact-finding mission that will include visits to both those countries," McCain said in a radio address.
"Apparently, he's confident enough that he won't find any facts that might change his opinion or alter his strategy. Remarkable," he said.
"This is similar to the mistake Senator Obama made when he confidently declared that the surge in Iraq could not possibly reduce sectarian violence there, and might well increase violence," McCain said.
"He was so certain the surge would fail that he called for our troops to retreat as quickly as possible."
The Arizona senator noted that Obama's previous statements opposing the "surge" of some 30,000 additional US troops to Iraq last year have been removed from his campaign website.
"But we all remember quite well that he said the surge would fail, and today we know that he was wrong," McCain argued.
The Obama camp shot back, saying that McCain has actually shifted his positions on Iraq and Afghanistan to align more closely with those of his White House adversary.
"On the biggest foreign policy questions of the last eight years, Barack Obama has made the right judgment and John McCain has sided with (US President) George Bush in making the wrong one," the Obama campaign said in a statement.
"The failure of the McCain-Bush foreign policy has forced John McCain to change his position, and to embrace the very same Obama approaches that he once attacked," it added, arguing that McCain has begun to advocate "more troops in Afghanistan, and more diplomacy with Iran."
Obama's camp said McCain and Bush had until recently "ridiculed Obama's support for direct diplomacy with the Iranian regime," but on Friday US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice confirmed Washington had shifted position on diplomacy with Iran by sending a senior envoy to Geneva to participate in nuclear talks Saturday with Iran's top negotiator.
"Time has proven Obama's judgment right and McCain wrong," Obama's campaign said.
It also pointed to a report in German weekly Der Spiegel on Saturday that said Iraq's Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki backed Obama's plan to withdraw US troops from Iraq within 16 months of his election.
McCain said that while "the situation in Iraq is much improved, the war in Afghanistan has taken a bad turn that must be quickly reversed.
"Security in that country has deteriorated, and our enemies are on the offensive," he said.
"Sending more forces, by itself, is not enough to prevail. What we need in Afghanistan is exactly what General David Petraeus brought to Iraq: a nationwide civil-military campaign plan that is focused on providing security for the population."
Obama's campaign said McCain shifted position "for political reasons" over the past week, embracing Obama's call for more troops and non-military assistance in Afghanistan just a day after the Democrat restated it in a New York Times editorial.
If he wins the November election, Obama has said he plans to commit at least two more combat brigades, up to 10,000 men, to Afghanistan while downsizing the force in Iraq.
Obama arrived Saturday in Afghanistan, where he visited some of the 36,000 US soldiers in Afghanistan to assess efforts against extremist violence at the start of a major international tour.
Obama will meet Afghan President Hamid Karzai on Sunday, the Afghan government said.
He is due to travel to Iraq Monday and then to Jordan, Israel, Germany, France and Britain.
