When Nancy Pelosi went to Syria earlier this year, she got reamed for it in the conservative mediasphere and blogs. The Confederate Yankee labeled it “propaganda coup that will be used by Syria, the terrorists they sponsor, and Islamists worldwide.” Michael Rubin writing in National Review Online wondered before the trip “if she will cede the Assad regime a propaganda victory, as did Sen. Arlen Specter?”

You remember the whole spiel. At the time, I think most liberals — and, indeed, most Americans — understood this to be both unfair and also reflective of a pretty weird and wrongheaded underlying worldview. And yet, this is pretty similar to what Hillary Clinton’s saying in her criticism of Barack Obama. There’s this similar notion that the US can be mortally wounded by perfidious leaders having their photos taken with important American politicians, or that engaging in high-level diplomacy with a country is a reward we offer for good behavior rather than a standard method of relating to the world.

UPDATE: John McCain agrees with Clinton.

This is interesting. One way of looking at the little Clinton-Obama exchange over talking to “enemy” foreign leaders was that Clinton was simply trying to underscore her experience level by adding a little nuance to the picture. That seems not to be the case, as she and surrogate Madeleine Albright are using the issue to hit pretty hard at Obama.

And, of course, if you construe what Obama said to mean that he intends to jet off to Pyongyang without any advance work having been done, I suppose that really would be “irresponsible and frankly naive,” but that hardly seems like a fair assessment. It’s strange for the front-runner to go on the attack like that, and especially odd given the political climate for her to be going out of the way to emphasize the idea that she’s substantially more hawkish than Obama.

UPDATE: And here’s the Obama campaign’s anti-Clinton memo.

Robert Farley points out that it’s not as if there was no US military involvement in Africa before the creation of a new Africa Command, it’s just that responsibility for Africa was divided up in a pretty nonsensical way between different theater commands. AFRICOM organizes things more sensibly, and sets up a situation where the military officers making decisions about Africa have some incentive to develop meaningful knowledge of the continent.

In the current Esquire, Thomas Barnett offers an enthusiastic look at the new Africa Command. Brad Plumer’s not excited nor is the Center for Global Development. A member of John Edwards team has waxed fairly enthusiastically to me about this sort of thing, but was also indicating that it would be better to develop less militarized methods of trying to do it like the “Marshall Corps” proposal he’s outlined.

I get a little queasy at the idea that we have meaningful national security interests in Africa (helping people not get sick and die is good, though) since by whatever definition we’ve decided the Horn of Africa is a strategically significant location everywhere is crucially important.

Michael Gordon reports that the Pentagon is planning on staying in Iraq at least through 2009 and, like the Cylons, they have a plan. The best part is when “the classified plan . . . calls for restoring security in local areas, including Baghdad, by the summer of 2008.” I wonder if the 2004-vintage plan called for the country to be mired in chaos by the summer of 2007? I’m guessing it didn’t, though. It seems to me that the tricky part is going to be less the planning to restore security than the actual restoring of the security.

Photo by Sergent Jacob Smith, US Army

The morning after, I’m reminded that the intriguing difference of opinions in the debate was Barack Obama saying he’d be happy to meet personally with the heads of Syria, Iran, whatever whereas Hillary Clinton emphasized that the Bush administration had sidelined diplomacy too much, but said she’d only go so far as to actually meet with these people as the end of a diplomatic process, lest the meeting become a propaganda coup. Dana Goldstein says “Edwards agreed with her,” though what I saw was him mostly equivocating.

At any rate, it’s not a very important issue as such, but perhaps a window into wider disagreements about national security. Clinton articulated a position of continuity with her husband’s administration, while Obama was hinting at a more drastic departure.