Obama parries on Iraq
Barack Obama, under fire from Republicans in recent days for supposedly changing his tune on Iraq, forcefully restated his bottom-line policy on the war in an opinion piece published today and plans to give what his campaign calls a "major policy address on Iraq and national security" Tuesday in Washington.
In the op-ed piece in The New York Times titled "My Plan for Iraq," the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee declares that the call by Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki for a timetable for withdrawing US troops "presents an enormous opportunity."
"We should seize this moment to begin the phased redeployment of combat troops that I have long advocated, and that is needed for long-term success in Iraq and the security interests of the United States," Obama writes. "....We can safely redeploy our combat brigades at a pace that would remove them in 16 months. That would be the summer of 2010 -- two years from now, and more than seven years after the war began. After this redeployment, a residual force in Iraq would perform limited missions: going after any remnants of Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, protecting American service members and, so long as the Iraqis make political progress, training Iraqi security forces. That would not be a precipitous withdrawal."
A drawdown in Iraq, Obama argues, would allow more troops to be sent to Afghanistan, which he has long argued is the real battlefront against Al Qaeda.
"We need more troops, more helicopters, better intelligence-gathering and more nonmilitary assistance to accomplish the mission there. I would not hold our military, our resources and our foreign policy hostage to a misguided desire to maintain permanent bases in Iraq," Obama writes.
Obama plans to visit Iraq soon -- for the first time since January 2006, as Republicans are fond of pointing out. John McCain, the presumptive Republican nominee, has been trying to press the argument that a withdrawal from Iraq would amount to surrender.
The McCain campaign issued a lengthy response, saying that the op-ed shows that Obama has no intention of allowing the facts on the ground in Iraq to get in the way of his journey to a politically convenient position on the war.
"On the one hand, Obama has made clear that he will never change course on Iraq, no matter the facts on the ground. In January 2007, he opposed the surge and said it would increase the violence in Iraq. In today's op-ed, he concedes that the surge has been successful 'in bringing down the level of violence' and that it has 'protected the Iraqi population.' Yet he says 'the same factors that led me to oppose the surge still hold true.' So he still opposes the surge, despite the fact that it worked, despite the fact that it has saved thousands of Iraqi and hundreds of American lives. If we'd followed Obama's policy in January 2007, American troops would have withdrawn in the midst of horrible violence and bloodshed and Iraq would have been abandoned to al Qaeda and Shiite militias. Iraq would have been a failed state and a breeding ground for terror. But Obama still thinks that was the correct course of action!
"On the other hand," McCain's campaign continued, "Obama continues to obscure and obfuscate the facts of his Iraq plan. He may be sticking to it, but we will have no idea what it is until he puts it into action. It's a secret plan to end the war, except it won't end the war because there will be a residual force of undetermined size that remains in Iraq for an unspecified amount of time and that will carry out an as yet undefined mission. But that's only the beginning of the double talk. While Obama says today in his op-ed that he will 'safely redeploy our combat brigades,' and that 'we must be as careful getting out of Iraq as we were careless getting in,' he told Fareed Zakaria yesterday that the withdrawal 'is going to be a messy affair.' Will our withdrawal be a humiliating disaster or careful drawdown that could leave 30,000 troops in Iraq for 10 years? One suspects Obama doesn't care so long as he wins 270 electoral votes on November 4."
As part of his tour of Europe and the Middle East, Obama plans to meet with Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas on July 23.
The Associated Press reports that word of the meeting came from Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat, who was in Paris for a Mediterranean summit.
"We welcome this meeting," Erekat said. If Obama is elected, he added, "we hope he will stay the course between Israel and the Palestinians in reaching peace and a two-state solution."
The Palestinians expressed satisfaction over the planned meeting, which comes months after McCain passed on meeting with the Palestinians during a brief visit to Israel, the AP said.
During the same visit, Obama is expected to meet with Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and other Israeli officials, the AP said. The Obama campaign declined to comment. The visit will be closely watched. The US is the key broker in Israeli-Palestinian peace efforts, and officials on both sides are trying to get a feel on whether Obama will change US policy in the region. President Bush is trying to broker a peace agreement before he leaves office.
If he was against the War, why did he vote to fund the War numerous times, and why did he vote to confirm Condi Rice to Secretary of State? These decisons would have taken political courage and would have been in alignment with the position he took to be elected Senator. Many, like MSN's Keith Olberman were frustrated by Democrats to not do what they were elected to do in 04 and 06, to end the War. Even though the people voted them in office to end the War, Democrats like Obama continued to vote to fund the War and to promote one of the biggest cheerleaders of the War, Condi Rice. Obama is trying to get into office on an "I told you so" argument. That is fine, but he wants us to forget his votes to fund the War.
At least McCain actually stood up and challenged Donald Rumsfeld and was asking for the troop levels necessary to achieve stability in the region. The Surge is working, and if we weren't seeing the political traction that Obama claims is missing, how did they come to the consensus to tell us to plan our withdrawl?
Both parties arguments are odd, Obama is qualifying that that Iraq is a soveriegn nation and is recognizing a position that this a democratic process has yielded, but won't admit that for them to get to this conclusion is evidence that our efforts to help them form a Democracy is a success. Obama can not admit that our Troops have created the opportunity for this Democracy to succeed. For them to ask us to leave is a great thing, it proves that they don't want us there and that they have the wherewithall to stand united as a Democratic Soveriegn Nation. I think Republicans don't want to see a bloodbath like what happened when we left Vietnam too quickly. When we left the first Gulf War too quickly, we pretty much allowed Saddam's people to mow down other countrymen from helicopters.
I hope that our political rivalries do not force us in positions where more lives have to be taken, including Iraqis.
First of all, whether or not the ESCALATION is "working" will not really be known until October, when Iraqis go to the polls. There are indications that Al Sadr's side could come out on top, despite Malaki's Mugabe-esque efforts to make sure that doesn't happen. This would give us a very sudden choice: we would have to commit more troops to what would at that point be undeniably a civil war, or bend to the ruling faction's wishes and pull out precipitously, both arguably bad options.
Next, let's get this straight, the only reason Malaki's demanding that withdrawl be part of the new security agreement is that not doing it would be political suicide for him. It's simply another step in his election-rigging process.
So while #1's hope will be realized, that's only because it won't be OUR political rivalries that get more people killed. It'll be the Iraqis' political rivalries, along with our feel-good ASSumption that "the 'surge' is working" which will be the source of the bloodshed.
The silver lining in all this? The October civil war in Iraq will get Obama elected, and by January we'll have the person with the better judgement in the Oval Office.
The reality is, once anyone becomes an elected politician, they are basically all the same. The differences are mostly cosmetic. The rhetoric of 'change' is just to appease the masses.
John P. makes some excellent points, well done. After reading Obama's piece, there are still lingering questions to a very vague policy articulation:
We are going to maintain American service members in Iraq to protect American service members in Iraq? What are we protecting them from?
What is the strategic interest in Central Asia? Clearly, Iraq is a strategic interest in the Middel East.
Is he planning to invade Northwest Pakistan? If so, what are we going to do for supply lines for Afghanistan when Pakistan cuts off roadways and rail to US supplies? Don't forget their nukes in the closet. We'd lose 130,000 soldiers in a day.
Does he truly believe that Al Qaeda and the Taliban are stronger today than October 5, 2001? Why does he continue to say that Al Qaeda is in Pakistan?
Who's word carries more weight for him: al- Maliki or General Petraeus (a name isn't mentioned in his piece)?
What is his plan if Iraq devolves into another Lebanon? Is he prepared for Iran's destabilization plan?
Obama is a very likable candidate. But he is dangerously wrong on this one. A full scale ground offensive along the Afghanistan/Pakistan border will make Iraq look like a Romper Room episode.
Let's have this debate he calls for in his letter. Is it possible to have it with a degree of reason and without the perpetual claim of victimhood by the Democratic candidiate? Obama has, in fact, flip flopped and opened a bigger can of worms than he can now close.
John P. makes some excellent points, well done. After reading Obama's piece, there are still lingering questions to a very vague policy articulation:
We are going to maintain American service members in Iraq to protect American service members in Iraq? What are we protecting them from?
What is the strategic interest in Central Asia? Clearly, Iraq is a strategic interest in the Middel East.
Is he planning to invade Northwest Pakistan? If so, what are we going to do for supply lines for Afghanistan when Pakistan cuts off roadways and rail to US supplies? Don't forget their nukes in the closet. We'd lose 130,000 soldiers in a day. How many soldiers is he prepared to lose going cave to cave?
Does he truly believe that Al Qaeda and the Taliban are stronger today than October 5, 2001? Why does he continue to say that Al Qaeda is in Afghanistan?
Who's word carries more weight for him: al- Maliki or General Petraeus (a name isn't mentioned in his piece)?
What is his plan if Iraq devolves into another Lebanon? Is he prepared for Iran's destabilization plan?
Personally, Obama is a very likable candidate. But he is dangerously wrong on this one. A full scale ground offensive along the Afghanistan/Pakistan border will make Iraq look like a Romper Room episode.
Let's have this debate he calls for in his letter. Is it possible to have it with a degree of reason and without the perpetual claim of victimhood by the Democratic candidiate? Obama has, in fact, flip flopped and opened a bigger can of worms than he can now close.
cuzinjo's comment identifies the primary political problem in almost every society and organization:
You root for your opponent to fail so that you look good. There is no silver lining to a Civil War as he describes. War is evil and to root for a Civil War to get someone elected here is not a deeply thought out position. That isn't inspired audacity of hopeful stuff, that is plain old politics. Obama talks about rising above political rivalries but he voted along party lines 97 percent of the time and he can't give credit to the Troops for their hard work and give any claim to success for their efforts.
Obama and his supporters seem to be playing the same game of root for failure in the Economy and the War. He is not trying to find common ground to build off of, he is being the typical politican who is pretending to be above the fray, but isn't identifying any value to his political opponents. Half of our country believed that there were reasons why Saddam Hussein was a threat and a wildcard that we should not absorb. I honestly think that many Americans sleep better knowing that Saddam Hussein is not around and potentially scheming with terrorists. Hussein was offering financial rewards to terrorists so when you weigh our two scenarios: no war with Hussein out there encouraging terrorism and potentially acquiring nuclear arms or what we have today, it is not clear cut as to what is entirely better. We have fanned the flames, it is hard if not impossible to promote peace and tranquility with overwhelming force, but Saddam Hussein was someone that responded to nothing other than overwhelming force.
Even Barack Obama with his grandiloquent, lofty speeches could not have penetrated Saddam Hussein and got him to see the light. Hussein was an evil man who tortured people and Obama couldn't "hope" him into submission like he can with left leaning idealists, college students, etc . Most Americans get that evil exists in our world and you need to stand up to it and fight sometimes. The Iraq War could have been fought better as McCain has always said, but if Obama presses his "I told you so" line, people will think more deeply and imagine an Iraq in 2008 WITH Saddam Hussein and that thought will weigh more on them than picking up the tab to trade an evil Dictatorship for a Democracy.
In the end, the majority of Americans will come to the position that we're glad Saddam Hussein is gone but mad that the War was mismanaged. That is John McCain's position. I think that position can have Obama as well, and I think if Obama admitted that an Iraq without Hussein is better he would win over more middle of the road voters.
I love the cover~
Obama is a dangerous man and if he is elected, he will try to turn this country into a European socialist nation~
Neither one of them love this country so why doesn't he go run for President of France?
The last straw was when he made the idiotic comment that American children should learn Spanish~ He doesn't get anything~
God help us if he gets elected. It's going to be hell on earth until he gets impeached.
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