TJP

Obama has Demonstrated Sound Judgment

Byron A. Ellis

October 24, 2007

Pundits, and Hillary Clinton, have made the claim that she has more experience than Barack Obama. But, what is experience?

Experience is knowledge or skills or observation gained through involvement or exposure and the ability to transfer it into good decision-making.

Thus, if someone claims that they are experienced in a subject matter, but are unable to evaluate situations and arrive at correct outcomes, their claim has no value.

Dick Chaney, for instance, claimed that the United States would be viewed as liberators in Iraq. Obviously, his experiences did not lead to the correct outcome.

Additionally, the administration claimed that a preemptive attack on Iraq would prevent Saddam Hussein from deploying weapons of mass destruction. When weapons of mass destructions were not found, they claimed that the invasion would reduce terrorism. Both claims have proven to be false, demonstrating that Chaney’s experience did not result in sound judgment.

Hillary’s experience parallels Chaney’s, she supported the ill conceived invasion of Iraq and recently voted to label forces within Iran as terrorist, given the administration a potential excuse for another war.

Experience uncoupled from validated outcomes is a nebulous concept. It is wrong to correlate experience with years in a given position; rather experience is sound judgment. And, Barack Obama has shown sound judgment. He understood the consequences of the ill conceived Iraq invasion and has recently warned against an invasion of Iran.