Sen. Obama’s remarks on foreign policy sound like, well, someone who just a few months ago was a local official of some sort. A few days after outlining a possible plan to invade nuclear Pakistan, he now saysof Afghanistan (the text is under dispute and has been reported in several different contexts): “We’ve got to get the job done there and that requires us to have enough troops so that we’re not just air-raiding villages and killing civilians, which is causing enormous pressure over there.” Why do Democratic presidential candidates (cf. Kerry’s 2005 remarks about U.S. troops: “And there is no reason, … that young American soldiers need to be going into the homes of Iraqis in the dead of night, terrorizing kids and children, you know, women, breaking sort of the customs of the — of — the historical customs, religious customs.”) seem to assume that our soldiers are serially killing or terrorizing civilians, rather than protecting them from terrorists while killing the latter? In the case of Obama, one or two more of such pronouncements will either ensure Clinton the nomination (and that he is not on the ticket), or make him painfully aware that anything he says extemporaneously about foreign policy will be a disaster, and therefore he won’t say anything.