Barack Obama has been an opponent of the war and very consistent in his remarks about immediate pull-out of troops until he recently softened his position on troop withdrawal prior to his Middle East trip in July. He recently commented on Bill O'Reilly that “I think that the surge has succeeded in ways that nobody anticipated,” Obama said while refusing to retract his initial opposition to the surge. “I’ve already said it’s succeeded beyond our wildest dreams.” Analysts later criticized his remarks, saying in essence that there was nothing surprising about the success of the surge. It was from the beginning a sound strategic move (No, I don't have quotes...Google it if you want to find that specific response).
To me, it appeared that Obama was trying to 'save face.' His previous position on the war was, in essence, wrong. He was wrong, but he won't admit that he was wrong, he'll barely admit that the surge was a success. The US is in negotiations for a timeline for troop withdrawal from Iraq. Yay! Everybody wins...safer Iraq, troops coming home. Everyone should be happy, right?
Wrong, apparently. Because according to some sources, Obama headed over to the Middle East and had some lovely closed-door chats with high Iraqi officials in which he tried to get them to delay the troop withdrawal until the new US administration was in. I am not making this up, see the below links. IF this is true, which I believe it well could be, it would pretty much be treason. Completely unacceptable to try to undermine the diplomatic relations of the current Commander-in-Chief. But, this is unsurprising to me. Because now that the Democrats have egg on their face regarding the surge, there's only one thing left to do...buy time so that it can happen on Obama's watch (if he's elected) and he can take the credit for it. He talks about how now is a time for action, to put politics aside...and then tries to basically sabotage the welfare of American soldiers and the independence of an entire nation. Nice.
http://elections.foxnews.com/2008/09/15/obama-camp-denies-he-tried-to-delay-withdrawal-agreement-of-troops-from-iraq/
http://www.nypost.com/seven/09152008/postopinion/opedcolumnists/obama_tried_to_stall_gis_iraq_withdrawal_129150.htm
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2 comments:
This would be an excellent point, if it wasn't for the fact that the Post article you cite wasn't refuted by several people--including members of the Bush administation and Republican Senator Chuck Hagel of Nebraska.
http://blogs.abcnews.com/politicalpunch/2008/09/undermining-mcc.html
In addition, it's funny that you mention "egg on the face" when both the Bush Administration and Iraqi officials have recently been supporting a withdrawal plan roughly equivalent to what Obama proposed several months ago. A withdrawal plan that McCain has opposed for a long time.
I also find it interesting that when Republican pundits talk about withdrawal, they strategically omit a discussion of whether it was a good idea to go in there in the first place. On that count, I think Obama had it right long before either McCain or Clinton.
As far as the surge goes, I think the majority of the success is attributable to the change in strategy implemented by Patreus--opening talks with Sunni leaders and militants to bring them on board with the new government. Nobody knows how much it actually helped to have more "boots on the ground", and speculation about whether Obama was right or wrong about the surge is fruitless.
-S-
I think you're wrong spence. At first I thought the Iraq war was a huge mistake, taking soldiers to fight a war we couldn't win. But now I see that we have won. We found Saddam Hussein, one of the worlds most infamous dictators, got him out of his rule, and help the Iraqi's create a sovereign democracy by and for the people. I agree that the reasons we went in were wrong, but if we hadn't, Hussein would still be terrorizing the people of Iraq.
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