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Audacity of Truth
"Change" You Can Believe In:
"Nixon didn’t try to do that. They couldn't control (the media). They didn’t try. [...] What the hell do they think we are, puppets?"
- Liberal opinion writer Helen Thomas, describing the Obama admin's penchant for heavily scripting public appearances & press conferences - 7/1/09
Obama’s position on withdrawing all combat brigades from Iraq w/in 16 mos.: Just words?
Fox News reports that The Chosen One’s public position on withdrawing all combat bridgades from Iraq might be kinda like his public position on the evilness of NAFTA and his rhetoric on wanting to heal racial and religious divides: just words (via ST reader NC Cop) – emphasis added:
As Barack Obama continues to criticize John McCain for saying he’s willing to keep a 100-year troop presence in Iraq, another Obama adviser has suggested U.S. forces could stay in Iraq longer than the Democratic candidate initially thought.
Adviser Colin Kahl wrote in a policy paper for the Center for a New American Security that the United States should transition to an “over-watch” force of between 60,000 and 80,000 troops by the end of 2010, according to an article Friday in the New York Sun.
That appears to be at odds with Obama’s public position of removing all combat brigades from the country within 16 months of taking office.
Kahl told the Sun his plan would still keep the U.S. “out of the lead” and mainly in a “support role.” He said the plan had nothing to do with the campaign.
The Obama campaign said in a statement: “The writing of Mr. Kahl, one of hundreds of outside advisers to the campaign, is not representative of Barack Obama’s consistent policy position on the Iraq war.”
But Kahl’s plan seems to jibe with other advisers’ statements that Obama’s withdrawal timetables are more a goal than a firm policy commitment.
Foreign policy adviser Susan Rice, for instance, told reporters in February that Obama’s plan to end the war in 2009 is not absolute, and that he reserves the right to revisit troop levels in Iraq upon taking the oath of office.
Former foreign policy adviser Samantha Power told the BBC that Obama’s 16-month plan is a “best-scenario” and that the reality is he will try to withdraw troops “as quickly and responsibly as possible.”
Her comments were actually a little more detailed that that. Here are her full remarks:
Power downplayed Obama’s commitment to quick withdrawal from Iraq on Hard Talk, a program that often exceeds any of the U.S. talk shows in the rigor of its grillings. She was challenged on Obama’s Iraq plan, as it appears on his website, which says that Obama “will remove one to two combat brigades each month, and have all of our combat brigades out of Iraq within 16 months.”
“What he’s actually said, after meting with the generals and meeting with intelligence professionals, is that you – at best case scenario – will be able to withdraw one to two combat brigades each month. That’s what they’re telling him. He will revisit it when he becomes president,” Power says.
The host, Stephen Sackur, challenged her:”So what the American public thinks is a commitment to get combat forces out in 16 months isn’t a commitment isn’t it?”
“You can’t make a commitment in March 2008 about what circumstances will be like in January of 2009,” she said. “He will, of course, not rely on some plan that he’s crafted as a presidential candidate or a U.S. Senator. He will rely upon a plan – an operational plan – that he pulls together in consultation with people who are on the ground to whom he doesn’t have daily access now, as a result of not being the president. So to think – it would be the height of ideology to sort of say, ‘Well, I said it, therefore I’m going to impose it on whatever reality greets me.’”
“It’s a best-case scenario,” she said again.
It’s nuanced, you see.
More from the Fox News piece:
Obama later affirmed that he would bring the war “to an end in 2009.”
Both Clinton and Obama have talked about keeping some U.S. presence in Iraq after withdrawing the bulk of American troops, but it’s unclear how broad that presence would be. Obama’s Web site states that “some troops” would stay in Iraq to protect U.S. embassies and diplomats and carry out targeted strikes on Al Qaeda if the organization tries to keep a base in Iraq after U.S. withdrawal.
Obama talked about keeping a “strike force” in the region Monday. That drew questions from McCain who asked, “Where are they based? What do they do? Now I’m intrigued. He has said he will pull out all troops before. How do you reconcile those two?”
Here’s the NY Sun piece, for the record.
So how many combat brigades is he going to withdraw, and in what time frame? Does he even have a clue? Yeah, I know the answer to that: It’s “hell no.”
Here we have another example of Barack Obama engaging in the “politics of the past” he so often decries in other politicians. He looks you in the eye and says one thing in public, over and over again in order to win over voters, but when you look at the fine print – or listen to what his key advisors are telling people, what he’s saying isn’t as clear cut as he’s made it out to be. Or in the case of McCain’s 100 years in Iraq comment, Obama knows he’s flat out lying, but he asserts the lie anyway again and again, purposely trying to mislead people about McCain’s position on leaving combat forces in Iraq, when it’s become more and more clear from his advisors that his own position would leave a significant number of combat brigades in Iraq – not just a few hundred for his “strike force” but possibly thousands – for longer than he’s telling his supporters. By his own logic and repeated falsehoods about McCain’s position on staying in Iraq, leaving that amount of forces in Iraq is tantamount to “wanting” to keep the Iraq war going, isn’t it? Will severely disillusioned anti-war supporters of BO start calling him a “warmonger” now?
And for anyone who thinks, “Hey, if this is true, it means Barack Obama isn’t planning on cutting and running after all,” just think of all the shifting positions he’s taken on the issue of the war in Iraq, in particular since he started running for president, and tell me with a straight face that you believe anything he says about it anymore. Not only that, but even if he did carry through and leave a number of combat brigades in Iraq til 2010 (assuming they are still needed), do we really trust this guy to be the Commander in Chief? The same guy who has said more than once that the deaths of our troops were “wasted” deaths all because of a “lie,” who believes the war was a “mistake,” and who routinely downplays the victories we’ve seen in Iraq since the start of the surge? Back in 2004, I expressed a similar belief about Obama supporter John Kerry:
Yes, we’ve got problems in Iraq and they’re being addressed and will continue to be. However, any President, as a Commander in Chief, must stay resolute and not waver in tough times. While acknowledging there are serious situations in Iraq to be dealt with, this President (along with Allawi) also has appropriately presented to the American people the positive side of what’s happening in Iraq because we need to hear both sides of the story. We generally only get one side of it in the mainstream press. John Kerry has given us his plan for how he’ll handle the situation in Iraq should he be elected President. Fine. But the face he puts on any comments he makes about Iraq is the face of someone who really wishes he’d never voted in favor of the war resolution, and would rather walk on hot glass barefooted than to have to deal with the consequences of it. Our troops, and the Iraqi people and the terrorists they face there, MUST see strength in a Commander in Chief, not pessimism and certainly not weakness.
This is not the time for jello spines from our world leaders, in particular, a US President. Our men and women (alongside the coalition and the people of Iraq who are fighting with us) are in the fights of their lives there right now and the last thing they need is a shaky CIC who regrets voting to send them there in the first place who’ll do little more than the bare minimum required there to get them out, rather than seeing the goal of democracy come to fruition in a place where it would do such good, not only for the people who live there, but for the region, and in fact the world. The sacrifices our troops have made, and continue to make, should not be made in vain for purposes of expediency. The President understands that. In my opinion, John Kerry does not.
And neither, in my opinion, does Barack Obama.
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GWR-
Why do you guys keep putting words in my mouth? I haven’t ascribed any “malevolent intent” to McCain. I’m just saying he’s wrong. Or confused. I’m not arguing that he wants 100 years of death and destruction in Iraq. I’m arguing that a stated policy of indefinite presence and/or permanent bases might just lead to it. Big difference.
I would have thought it obvious that I was making an analogy, but I digress. The point being that when the success of a policy affects and is affected by the opinion of the people that the policy is directed at, you might want to gauge that opinion somehow and alter the policy accordingly (especially when that opinion is literally a matter of life and death i.e. support for attacks on our troops).
Now, you can certainly argue that polls conducted in a war zone may be tainted or unreliable. I’ll concede that point, and we can debate to what extent that may be true. Perhaps that extent would be taken into consideration. But the belief that we’re going to put down an insurgency without paying attention to what the heck is pissing the Iraqis off just doesn’t seem based in logic IMO, and if the aforementioned poll has even half validity, one has to think that just talking about permanent bases at this point is a bad idea and counter-productive to what we’re trying to accomplish over there. This isn’t a “left wing” or “right wing” idea either:
It’s a tactically sound idea.
McCain is wrong. That’s it.
What would you like ChenZen a casualty number at which time we will pull our troops out? Perhaps McCain should say “If we lose 5,000 soldiers we will pull out of Iraq.” That certainly wouldn’t cause any problems would it?
Perhaps a date: “We will leave by June of 2009.” Then Al Qaeda and the rest of the insurgents will sit around amassing weapons and making plans just waiting for the withdrawal, instead of getting killed by the thousands like they are now. Great idea.
How about a price tag? “We will leave if we have to spend another $100 billion.” I guess the bad guys wouldn’t use that against us either.
So the purple car thing was one of them thar analogies, you say? Thanks for dumbing it down for us, I appreciate it.
I think the analogy of comparing building purple cars to a subject as complex as foreign policy, international terrorism, and rebuilding a nation is a bit childish.
Not to mention the fact that Bush’s predecessor, Slick Willie, pretty much governed by public opinion. He did whatever he thought would make him more popular, not what was the right thing to do. He had several chances to kill Bin Laden before 9/11 ever happened, but he was afraid it would cause “problems” so he ignored the problem. Thanks, Bill!!
Governing by opinion polls is dangerous. Clinton was wrong. That’s it.
So in any nation that we have troops, if people start suddenly blowing up things demanding that we leave, we should turn tail? If groups in Poland, Japan, Germany, Korea, Kuwait, etc start demanding we leave, even if their government isn’t, we should retreat?
So your proposal is to give every two bit dictator and terrorist a perfect blueprint on how to defeat the U.S.? Brilliant again!! I certainly don’t see any problems arising out of that.
After reading many of the articles against permanent bases, I’m not completely convinced that it’s the best idea, I will admit. I believe McCain was trying to say that we will support the Iraqis and not abandon them, rather than trying to put a dangerous timetable on our withdrawal.
I know from personal experience, not a poll, that the Iraqis have been afraid of our withdrawal since 2004. I can’t blame them since all the dems have been screaming since 2004 is “WITHDRAWAL!! WITHDRAWAL!!”.
They’re afraid that we are going to leave and the bad guys are going to start filling mass graves with those that befriended or worked with the Americans. And then you wonder why the Iraqis haven’t stepped up more? Priceless.
I really have been loath to enter this discussion, but sadly I must. ChenZen, I am sorry but we have permanent bases in the Middle East, and the countries that host those bases don’t feel like we are occuping them. It is idiotic to believe that once Iraq has a stable Government, and Military, that we will need to keep a very large force there. But to assume, as you do, that this is going to last 100 years is blantantly foolish. 1 John McCain won’t be alive in 100 years, and the next President will most likely not have the same feelings as John. So your point is moot at best. 2 I don’t think the Iraqis are going to allow that to happen, before they break up into 3 seperate countries. 3 If that happens, we are going to be spending way to much time in Kurdistan as a peace keeping force between the Turks and Kurds to care what happens in the rest of Iraq, which means we will be there 100 years later. 4 Reason #3 gives us a good reason to see our present course thru to completion. So McCain’s comment is correct, and to add/assume anything else than what he said is just vapid leftie rhetoric.
Thinking this thru clearly shows that no matter what, our futures are tied to the Middle East. Let’s add that there is a good chance once bin Laden dies, that AQ will break up and become a footnote in history. Most of his senior leadership is dead or captured, there is just going to be no one who cares enough to continue carrying the torch for this movement. Especially once Iraq becomes more prosperous, which, with it’s natural resources, it will be soon enough.
No matter how you slice this tho, the very fact that so much time has been spent trying to stick words in McCain’s mouth, that he clearly didn’t intend, is pure foolishness. You would be better served to just agree to disagree than carry on your point. But whatever. – Lorica
And that’s where you’re putting words in McCain’s mouth. I didn’t see him say anything about remaining indefinitely, or remaining if the Iraqis (once they’ve had the time to establish a stable government and be reasonably free from terrorist interference) ask us to leave. You know you’re misrepresenting his stance, and you persist in it. That’s dishonest no matter how you try to spin it. And it’s really rich to hear a supporter of Obama, who has no substance at all, argue that McCain hasn’t been specific enough.
What was pissing the Iraqis off was AQ’s brutality when it moved into some of the provinces. The surge worked in large part because of willing cooperation from the local sheikhs and population. The belief that everything will be serene if we pack up tomorrow and leave those brave people to the tender mercies of the islamofascists and Iran isn’t based in logic at all. Fact is, people like you are AQ’s last best hope.
As for your absurd idea of governing by poll numbers, NC Cop’s pointed out where that can lead you. Not much to add to that. He’s right. You’re wrong. That’s it.
Which is one of the reasons I’ve wondered if the Surge would have worked if we tried it earlier. Sometimes things have specific times when they will work, and in this case I’m not sure it would have until the local population got a full and good taste of AQ’s tender mercies. Nothing will make you look less like an evil occupier than the occupation by other, far worse actors, which apparently has woken up the people to reality.
That’s the beauty of fighting Islamofascism over in Islamic countries. As long as it’s just Israel and “The Great Satan” getting their noses bloodied, you won’t get squat out of the rest of the Islamic countries for help, mainly lip service. Once their noses get rubbed in it and their societies see just how loving and tolerant these people are, we are finding a lot more allies. This is going to be a multi-generational war, and the more up close and personal it is for them, the harder it will be to sit on the sidelines and stay uninvolved or remain unhelpful. Misery not only loves company, it demands it.
As SEV has written, sadly the logic and understanding mode that holds true for the Iraqi people is the same as in America and blood will have to run in the streets again for them to rejoin the reality aspect of fighting the AQ’s and other allied efforts that also seek for American destruction.
Willful ignorance is the worst kind and as we are being sabotaged from within our own political and judicial structures, there is much more to follow before true Americans get the upper hand.