If this photo of Senator Obama meeting with a tribal leader in Anbar province is supposed show Presidential level foreign policy gravitas--then I have a little of that gravitas as well.

Because here I am with the interim leader of the Jumali Tribe.

What else gives me the image of foreign policy gravitas? 

Helicopter ride over Baghdad--I've done that.
 
Walked across the tarmac at Baghdad International Airport--done that a bunch of times.
 
Sip the tea with tribal leaders--but only three cups per sitting.
 
And a lot of other people have that Presidential foreign policy gravitas.  People like Michaely Yon, Michael Totten, Bill Roggio, Jeff Emanuel, Bill Ardolino, Col. GI Wilson, Bing West, Mario Loyola and hundred of Army and Marine officers and NCOs.  (If  photos of  Iraq lend Presidential qualification--I'm gonna angle for a position in the Yon administration!)

But those were not photo ops.  They were not one-time discussions during a campaign.  I lived with the Jumaili tribe.  The Marine and Army officers work with the tribal leaders every day.

Some of us embeds have cut a large swath through Iraq we know Sheiks and tribal leaders in multiple provinces.

More importantly, we did it back when body armor was a requirement--not an option.  I was doing it up and down the Euphrates river valley before a lot of people realized what the Anbar Awakening was.

One newspaper column declared Obama's trip as "unprecedented."

But the chair he sat in for his photo op in Ramadi has held many men before Obama.

The Blackhawk that ferried him from BIAP to the Green Zone has carried thousands of others.

Hundreds of thousands have walked the tarmac at BIAP.

Obama's trip to Iraq is a novelty not because the trip is so rare--but because it is so rare for Obama.  And that rarity is a clear sign not of foreign policy gravitas--but the absence thereof.

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