Time To Admit The Truth About Iraq, Obama
The Washington Post, probably America’s best left-leaning paper, has a pretty stinging editorial about Obama’s ‘lalalala, I can’t hear you!’ approach to Iraq.
He can’t continue to duck this issue forever. He was wrong on Iraq, and while he’s coming around to more sensible positions he’s still wrong. Time to take a stand and tell us exactly what you’re going to do, Senator, and I pray it isn’t “run away!” which has been your war cry for two years now.
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Is he coming around to a more sensible position? I thought so last week, but now he is a reasserting his 16 month timetable. Though he also says he will listen to commanders on the ground.
Seems to me that there is an obvious contradiction there, especially given that a 16 month withdrawal is logistically impossible… provided we don’t just want to leave all our equipment behind.
The more Obama speaks, the more he proves just how ill prepared he is for the White House.
You can cover your eyes and ears and pretend not to see or hear what is going on if you want.
Unless our goal is to make Iraq a colony of the US, then it is perfectly clear that the only people who can "win" in Iraq are the Iraqis themselves. All this talk about our plan for victory in Iraq is BS. We need to be asking what the Iraqis what their plan is. All the US can do is advise the Iraqis and help them to meet their goals.
Anyone who has been listening to the Iraqis knows that the Iraqi people want a timetable for US troops to leave Iraq. Whether that timeline is 16 months, 2 years, 3 years, …. is not that important, but 20 or 30 years is definitely the wrong answer.
The problem with US forces in Iraq is they are both a stabilizing and a destabilizing force. Obama recognizes that the only way there will ever be a victory in Iraq is for all US forces to leave and the Iraqi people take responsibility for their own country.
I agree with you Kevin, but I don’t think it matters. Four years ago, he was a junior state legislator with a long-shot bid to win the Illinois Senate seat, before his opponent’s political career unraveled with astonishing (to me) speed. Four years later, he’s the odds-on favorite to win the Presidency of the United States. He’s promising to change the world without enough political capital to change his parking space.
I believe it’s an outgrowth of the Reagan Phenomenon. Ronald was the original Teflon President. Democrats were amazed that nothing stuck to Ronnie. Then came Bill Clinton. He made Reagan look like flypaper. I still can’t believe we elected a dope-smoking, draft dodging, philandering war protestor as president. But we did, and nothing he did or said mattered either. People acknowledged his flaws and voted for him. Without term limits, I believe he would still be president.
Now comes Obama. He makes Bill look like contact cement. He brings no expertise as an executive, little political experience, a boat-load of questionable decisions and associations, and a political record that looks like the rice paper path from Quai-Chang Caine’s graduation ceremony. None of it matters. Slip-ups don’t matter, positions don’t matter, vacuous promises of “change ______” (voters please fill in the blank yourself) just do not matter.
Criticism of him is barely even tolerated in the national media, much less publicly considered on merit. I almost felt bad watching Hillary shadow-boxing with him during the primaries. Nothing she said or did could stick on anyone but her. It must have been terribly frustrating, but you can’t pin down smoke.
Unless the polls are just flat wrong, Obama will be elected the next President of the United States. May we all live in interesting times.
Mikeca,
No one is covering their eyes and ears, here.
The Iraqis - by which I mean the government of Iraq - does NOT want a 16-month timetable, nor do the U.S. military commanders. The number does matter as a precipitous withdrawal when the enemy is advancing is hugely different from an orderly withdrawal when the enemy has been defeated.
The recent announcement by Maliki (since debunked, or at least watered down) that got every one in a tizzy recently suggested a withdrawal date much later than 16 months from now, let alone 16 months from when Obama first got the 16 month fever.
Also, the nature of the presence of US forces is significant. After a certain point, it becomes silly to call US forces "occupiers." For now, they technically are in Iraq, but US forces in Japan, Korea, Germany, etc… are not.
Iraqis do not want to be indefinitely occupied. No one is advocating indefinite occupation, let alone colonization (where are the settlers?).
Negotiating the terms, pacing, timing, and extent of the drawdown of US troops is a greater example of Iraqis taking responsibility for their situation than Barak Obama’s "we’re leaving in 16 months whether you like it or not" approach.
Those jerks at MoveOn.org slandered General "Betray-us" when it mattered, and, sadly, Obama bet on the wrong horse.
The surge has worked, Barack.
HB
What the hell does that even mean? You sound like one of those global warming idiots that, should the temperature go up or go down, blame it on global warming. Nothing can change without you being right.
I’m sorry but you can’t have it both ways. You can’t say U.S. forces in Iraq are making things worse and that we should leave, and then say U.S. forces in Iraq are making things better and we should leave as if there’s some kind of logical thread connecting the two.
Had you read the article, this is the exact thing the author of that piece derided Obama over. To quote the relevant bit:
You’re doing the exact same thing. You want us out of Iraq. Fine. But don’t try to fool us by acting like you have the best interests of the Iraqis in mind. You don’t.
Last I checked, when things were going well, that was an argument to stay the course. You know, what you’re doing is working and you should keep it up.
You have a 2007 mentality about the war in Iraq. Try to catch up with the rest of us.
The U.S. is going to have a presence in Iraq for the next 30 years because it’s in our strategic interest to do so. We maintain bases all over Europe, the Pacific, and elsewhere. We will do the same in Iraq. Live with it.
Well regardless of the fact that it was probably a political move. I kind of like the 2 year deadline that was proposed by Iraq publicly. I for one agree with the fact that if we just bail out that it will not be good for the Iraqi people and we will have done something even worse then if we hadn’t invaded at all. On the other hand, if we can’t help straighten things out there in 2 years we should cut our losses and go. 2 more years should be enough time for the mightiest military to straighten things out to the point that the new government can support itself.
The U.S. is going to have a presence in Iraq for the next 30 years because it’s in our strategic interest to do so. We maintain bases all over Europe, the Pacific, and elsewhere. We will do the same in Iraq. Live with it.
The question is not whether I can live with it, the question is will the Iraqi people live with it. I think the answer is no, they will not.
There is a real difference in the mind set of people in Europe, Japan and Korea and in people of a former colony such as Iraq. Germany, Japan and Korea are countries with long histories and strong national identities. American troops occupied Germany at the end of WW II and stayed to protect West Germany from the very real threat of the Soviet Union. That threat is gone, but Germans are use to the US troops and bases now. Japan is different. There was a strong anti-war, anti-military sentiment in Japan. Japan has only a very small military and relies on US forces for a backup national defense. The US has bases in Korea because of the very real threat of North Korea. The US was forced to close bases in the Philippines, a former colony, because of popular opposition.
Iraq is a country that was created, rather arbitrarily, by the British after WW I. It became independent in the 1930s, but was re-invaded and reoccupied during WW II by the British. Iraq has struggled to establish a national identity as a legitimate country and not an artificial creation of the British empire. In Germany or Japan people would laugh in your face if you suggested that the American bases there made their country a colony of the US. In Iraq those kind of statements are taken seriously. Politicians are making those kinds of charges all the time. It is a completely different political environment. Those people who think that we can do the same thing in Iraq that we did in Europe or Japan after WW II are living in a dream world. They just do not understand.
And that is one of the major differences. Obama understands that Iraq is not Germany or Japan following WW II. I don’t think McCain does.
It’s pretty clear looking at what the Iraqi government officials say and what surveys of the Iraqi people say, they don’t want us to leave before things are calm, and it seems very likely that once they are calm they’ll want us to stay there with a base or two regardless. The Kurds damn well do up in the north, that’s for sure. Having a base nearby brings them jobs, after all.
And, it is not really the case that either Japan or Germany had particularly strong national identities prior to our being there. Hitler quite arguably was the first to create any real sense of a strong German national identity, and it was still never very clear if Austrians were a part of that identity or not even though Hitler was Austrian. The split between East and West Germany happened only a decade or so after Hitler’s nationalism kicked in, too, and they spent about a half century divided that way.
The Japanese, too, were basically a kingdom of feudal warlords with their own identities until they were united by a single Emperor in the 19th Century or so, and even then they had big time separatist movements, most especially in Okinawa. Indeed, many Okinawans never entirely forgave the Americans for not helping them establish their own independent state after World War II. They were denied mostly for practical and political reasons, most of them would have wanted independence (and not a few still do want it, although the fervor on that is much diminished).
Iraq has been a unified country for longer than either Germany or Japan were prior to World War II. And, most Iraqis have made it very clear that they want a unified Iraq and do have a strong sense of national identity. It seems to be mostly Westerners who condescendingly announce that they have no such sense of identity–most of them think pretty firmly that they do have such a national identity. That it was established by a foreign Empire isn’t really relevant; why would it be? You can’t find me a country anywhere in the Middle East where that didn’t happen some time in the last few thousand years.
We can’t leave Iraq any time soon. Because he’s such a jellyfish on the subject, I can’t trust Obama to do the right thing there and so can’t listen to him on much else.
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