Saturday, July 19, 2008
Obama, Timetables, and Iraq
The left is making quite the stink that Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki signaled to a German newspaper that he's in agreement with Sen. Barack Obama's declaration for withdrawal from Iraq in 16 months.
Let's look at what Obama has wanted. He wanted to cut and run. He opposed the troop surge. He said that the surge would not work. Now, after the Bush Administration and the US military did all the heavy lifting, he now wants to take credit and push for a withdrawal along timetables?
Taken together, Obama has not changed his position, but now is spinning his defeat and retreat withdrawal plan as some kind of victory for which he can take credit.
The only reason that the Iraqi government might consider any kind of a time table is because President Bush went ahead with the troop surge, listened to General Petraeus (called Betrayus by Obama's fellow travelers and supporters at Moveon.org and supported by the New York Times), and secured the country militarily so that the Iraqi government could press ahead with political gains and achieve nearly all of the 18 benchmarks set forth by the US Congress.
It is often said that victory has many fathers, but defeat gets blamed on one. Obama is now trying to take credit for the victory, even as he preached defeat and retreat on the same front and blamed President Bush for failure in Iraq.
Obama's withdrawal timetable is not based on anything other than his wishful thinking.
Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki's hope for withdrawal is based on the gains imposed by the US and Iraqi forces working together and shouldering a load that Obama previously said was unattainable.
The two have different views of why the timetables should be in place.
Timetables also provide a guideline to al Qaeda, insurgents, and their fellow travelers to lay low until the US leaves, before resuming operations. By purposefully keeping to a strategy that doesn't reveal when and how US troops leave, it actually further improves US operational security and keeps the insurgents and terrorists off balance.
The US and Iraqis are also trying to negotiate long term security arrangements that enable the US to retain bases in Iraq, from which they can defend not only Iraq against foreign forces, but further project US security and strategic interests. Such arrangements are not unlike those that see US forces in Germany, Italy, and Japan more than 60 years following the end of World War II.
Obama continues to think that the war in Iraq is somehow separate from the larger war against al Qaeda and the Islamists, even though the US continues to capture al Qaeda on the battlefields of Iraq, and Iraq stands as a bulwark against growing Iranian influence in the region. Iraq has enabled the US to use its power and technology to full advantage to eliminate al Qaeda - things that are more difficult to accomplish in Afghanistan. The kinds of assets needed in Afghanistan are different than those used in Iraq. The goal is the same - to defeat al Qaeda and their fellow traveler Islamists, but to accomplish the goal takes a combination of lessons learned in Iraq plus new and different techniques.
I guess the best one can say now is that Obama has come around to a position where he's no longer preaching defeat on Iraq, but that doesn't make him any less of a weasel when it comes to Iraq. He's saying what ever he thinks the majority of Americans want to hear - that we're going to bring the troops home. Instead of a precipitous retreat, he's now saying that we've accomplished the mission.
