Brian Katulis’ rejoinder to Michael O’Hanlon — “O’Hanlon Mourns That Obama Was Right On Iraq” — is pretty amusing reading. The charge that O’Hanlon is “angling for influence,” though probably accurate, seems a bit unfair since I think Katulis is angling for influence, too. The difference is that Katulis having influence over an Obama administration would be a good thing, while O’Hanlon having influence over a Clinton administration would be a bad thing.

For the “using Republican talking points” watch, Hillary Clinton warns that terrorists will devour your children if Barack Obama is elected president.

Ari Berman takes a good long luck at the different groups of foreign policy advisors around Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. If you read the piece, you may find yourself frustrated that it doesn’t come to a more clear-cut conclusion. My experience trying to explore this same issue, though, is that it’s simply very difficult to reach a clear-cut conclusion as there’s a good deal of overlap. That said, insofar as there are indications of daylight between Clinton and Obama, the daylight certainly seems to be in Obama’s favor:

Today, advisers like Tony Lake point to a number of “significant differences” between Obama and Clinton. On Iraq, Obama not only opposed the war but has said he would withdraw all combat troops within sixteen months of taking office. On Iran, Obama rejected the Kyl-Lieberman resolution (though he missed the vote while campaigning) and has proposed a broader engagement strategy to lure Iran into the community of nations. On nuclear weapons, he has not only promised to reduce US nuclear stockpiles, as has Clinton, but advocates a world free of nuclear weapons. On Cuba, Obama went to Miami and said the ban on family travel and remittances to the island nation should be lifted, a policy Clinton opposes.

At any rate, you really ought to read the whole piece because there are a lot of nuances here. What’s more, assembling a “foreign policy team” for campaign purposes isn’t really the same as assembling an actual foreign policy team to govern with, so it’s a bit uncertain how much any of this matters.

I think Barack Obama just won the Michael O’Hanlon primary. Everyone’s favorite expert on everything explains that the problem with Obama is that he “seems contemptuous of the motivations of those who supported the war.” Oh dear! We learn that, after all, he “had used chemical weapons against his own defenseless people.”:

Sanctions limited his funds for military programs, but the sanctions were eroding fast in the years before the invasion. Saddam’s links to al Qaeda were overdramatized, but Saddam’s own record of atrocities against his own people, Iranians and Kuwaitis, as well as his support for anti-Israeli terrorists, were heinous enough.

Yet Mr. Obama consistently accuses those who supported the war of political motivations — and unsavory ones at that. On Dec. 27, for example, Mr. Obama said in Des Moines, Iowa, “You can’t fall in line behind the conventional thinking on issues as profound as war and then offer yourself as the leader who is best prepared to chart a new and better course for America.”

Now I think you’ve got to draw a distinction. Given the large number of people who supported the war in some form or another, a viable politician obviously can’t have help for each and every person who did so. But a politician who has contempt for the opinion leaders like O’Hanlon who helped sell the country on the war seems like exactly the sort of person you want in the White House.

From the standpoint of foreign policy doctrine, this has been a frustrating primary to watch. The candidates have debated the main issues of domestic policy at a high level of detail, despite (or perhaps because of) everyone agreeing that they share the same basic approach. On national security issues, it’s always been far less obvious how big or small the disgareements really are. And yet, few broad issues have really been mooted and everyone’s quite vague. Instead of hearing thing straightforwardly, we’re left in the position of trying to assess the contenders’ likely conduct by judging the shadows. But this shadow definitely points in Obama’s favor.