David Axelrod, Barack Obama’s head strategist, pushed back Wednesday against Republican criticism that Barack Obama is inexperienced in foreign affairs by knocking Republican support for the Iraq war at the expense of operations in Afghanistan.
Axelrod was responding on MSNBC to attacks by two John McCain supporters. Former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani said Wednesday that Obama is “inexperienced and [isn’t] up to the job of president of the United States.” Former Central Intelligence Agency Director James Woolsey on Tuesday called Obama “a dangerous man.”
“Look, the bottom line is that the same folks who are leveling these charges were the ones who were enthusiastic supporters of this war in Iraq that diverted us from Osama bin Laden, diverted us from Afghanistan, where you can see now bin Laden’s resurgent and the Taliban’s resurgent, and we have an enormous problem,” Axelrod said. “So we can trade charges of naivete, but the facts are the facts.”