Now that John Edwards and Barack Obama have weighed in as warrior chieftains, the conventional wisdom seems to be that they have made Hillary Clinton look sane, sober, and reasonable. I beg to disagree.

Regardless of the merits of Edwards' and Obama's respective wargame strategies, I think Hillary Clinton's on-again, off-again support for the war in Iraq only proves what many have been saying all along: that she is a finger-to-the-wind politician. A finger-to-the-wind, test-the-waters foreign policy strategy was what the Clinton administration was all about, and I think history shows that it emboldened the terrorists. If the Clinton past and the Clinton present are any indication, I think Hillary Clinton has clearly demostrated that she plans a return to a finger-to-the-wind strategy that worked so well in preventing Mogadishu, Khobar Towers, Kenya, Tanzania, the U.S.S. Cole, and more....

So, I don't especially enjoy the way she gets credit for being "reasonable" simply because Edwards and Obama have offered unreasonable ideas.

I know this will sound strange, even bizarre considering the conventional wisdom, but there is someone whose war policies Edwards and Obama have made look eminently reasonable.

I refer to everyone's favorite punching bag -- the much-maligned George W. Bush.

I'll start with the Edwards proposal to "get tough" with the Saudis. I do not know of anyone who detests the dysfunctional, corrupt Saudis more than I do. They are the absolute worst "ally" we have ever had, and as I'm pretty sure I've said before, with "friends" like the Saudis who needs enemies? However, the ties and economic interdependency between the U.S. and Saudi Arabia are so deep, and go back so far that treating them as an enemy state is all but impossible. It might even have the effect of replacing the monarchy with an even worse Taliban-like state. The problem is, there's no way to go to war against the Saudi government, yet most of the terrorists are Saudi-inspired. (I've called them "suicidal Saudi Salafists" because that's exactly what they are.) Knowing this, the best strategy is go to into a country next door, a country the Saudis dislike anyway, in such a way as to draw the suicidal Salafists out of their country and into it so that they can fight and die against the Americans. By entering Iraq, Bush has done this, and I've long believed that because of the nature of the Saudi realities, it's a brilliant strategy. Edwards says he would "require" the Saudis to "shut down the movement of terrorists across its borders." How? This is completely unrealistic, as the Saudis have less control over their borders than we do. It is a far better idea to kill the terrorists in Iraq, where U.S. soldiers await them. By highlighting the issue of the documented flow of terrorists from Saudi Arabia, Edwards has (whether he realizes it or not) only demonstrated the practical realism of the Bush strategy.

The Obama plan to invade another dysfunctional "ally," Pakistan (analyzed by Victor Davis Hanson, link via Glenn Reynolds), is even more foolish. Unlike Saudi Arabia, the bastards in Pakistan have the Bomb. (You know, "the bomb, Dimitri... the hydrogen bomb!") And so does their worst enemy India. A U.S. invasion could ultimately trigger a genuine worldwide nuclear war, with China quite possibly siding with Pakistan. Even if it didn't set off a worldwide nuclear conflagration, an invasion of Pakistan might very well cause Pakistani religious hardliners to take power. Then they'd have the bomb. Any idea what they might do with it? I don't want to find out. (I worry that Obama might be forgetting the lessons of World War I.)

In response to the worst attack ever perpetrated against American civilians, Bush began the response in Afghanistan, and Iraq was next. I don't think he could have selected better targets or a better order of battle.

Edwards' and Obama's wargame musings only show how right the Bush strategy was, and (in my view at least) still is.

I'll say this for Obama and Edwards; at least they came up with actual, original ideas. However, much as I disagree with them, I don't think they have made Hillary's waffling war record look good.