Obama Grows a Pair

Obama promises that, as president, he will do it all -- visit on an unconditional basis with five of the world's worst dictators in his first year; get out of Iraq and fight harder in Afghanistan and, maybe, Pakistan; rebuild old U.S. alliances and establish new ones; and double U.S. foreign aid and improve U.S. intelligence-gathering while abandoning nasty means like warrantless wiretapping.

He will "not hesitate to use force, unilaterally if necessary, to protect the American people or our vital interests whenever we are attacked or imminently threatened." And he also would use force "beyond self-defense ... to support friends, participate in stability and reconstruction operations or confront mass atrocities."

And that's not all. He also will get control of the world's loose nukes, reach out to the Muslim world in his first 100 days, close down Guantanamo Bay and give full constitutional rights to enemy combatants, rally the world to address global climate change, and kill and capture terrorists anywhere on the globe, but never, ever kidnap or torture any.

Of course, it's perfectly legitimate for a presidential candidate to lay down a broad foreign policy vision, as Obama did in his terrorism speech Wednesday and in a Foreign Affairs article earlier this year.

But completely missing from Obama's breathtaking agenda is any sense of priorities, limits, difficulties -- or humility. His pronouncements exude hubris and inexperience.