Intelligent Discontent

• Written by: Bob FunkApril 24th, 2008
• Comments:2 Comments
• Category:'08 Election, Barack Obama, Democratic Party, Foreign Policy, Iraq War, John McCain
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Obviously, a major theme of the Democratic and Republican primaries has been Iraq. Most Americans want out of Iraq or are, at least, generally displeased with the war (a recent Rasmussen poll found that 65 percent of Americans want to see us out of Iraq within a year). McCain has said that he is willing to stay in Iraq indefinitely; no matter the cost, a stable, pro-American democracy must be established in Iraq. Clinton and Obama have a rather different take on Iraq: get out. However, there are caveats, but they are seldom mentioned, explored, or discussed. Who wants to hear a speech from Obama that starts like this, “We must get out of Iraq, but…”?

Because I truly think that Obama will be our nominee after the Democratic convention, I will primarily touch on his proposed Iraq policy and what it would mean if he were to be elected in the general.

Obama has been rhetorically unabashed about getting US troops out of Iraq within sixteen months of taking office. This is what Democrats want to hear, especially the activists of the party. No one wants to hear about being “responsible” or “practical;” people want to hear that we’ll be out fast and without much trouble.

Where does Obama really stand on Iraq? Of course, it will be difficult to know for sure until he is actually in office making the big decisions, but we can still manage a fairly coherent idea of what his plans are or how he would lead on Iraq in a post-Bush world (it is so close).

Once you look past the beautiful rhetoric of the Obama campaign, liberals will either see him as a realist or a traitor. I choose the former, although I may not agree with his proposed policy on all points.

Nonetheless, let’s examine what we know so far. The truth is that Obama, although opposing the war from the start (which he regularly touts), has not been especially enthusiastic about an abrupt withdrawl. In the July of 2004, Obama stated that “The failure of the Iraqi state would be a disaster… It would dishonor the 900-plus men and women who have already died. … It would be a betrayal of the promise that we made to the Iraqi people, and it would be hugely destabilizing from a national security perspective.”

During his run for the presidency, however, Obama has become more comfortable with fixed time lines, but not necessarily fixed policy. According to Obama:

I am not suggesting that this timetable be overly rigid. … The redeployment could be temporarily suspended if the parties in Iraq reach an effective political arrangement that stabilizes the situation and they offer us a clear and compelling rationale for maintaining certain troop levels. … In such a scenario, it is conceivable that a significantly reduced U.S. force might remain in Iraq for a more extended period of time.

Simply put, Obama’s plan for Iraq is “filled with caveats, ambiguities, and wiggle room–leaving open the possibility of maintaining anything from a token troop contingent by late 2010 all the way to a major force numbering many tens of thousands of American soldiers.”

Obama advocates leaving troops to defend the embassy, of course. Obama is also considering leaving a counter-terrorism force in Iraq, which is more questionable, but not completely unreasonable.

So, why has Obama been a rhetorical hardliner on immediate withdrawal? Just look at the people he is trying to get to vote for him:

This surface-level simplicity, however, is the product of a long, slow evolution. Committed antiwar activists say Obama was too slow to call for a U.S. exit–something he didn’t do until 2006. “We never had high expectations in regards to Senator Obama,” says Tim Carpenter, a leading antiwar agitator with the lefty group Progressive Democrats of America.

The more I explore Obama’s Iraq policy the more questions I have and the more skeptical I become, not because of the reasons that concern Tim Carpenter, but because I’m not sure I buy that his policy will work - it just seems a little scatterbrained.

However, I, for one, will be happy to have a Commander in Chief that looks at a multitude of perspectives and is able to workout effective and progressive policy for Iraq. But is Obama’s the best? Does Clinton have Obama beat on this issue? Honestly, I don’t know, but she loses to him on a multitude of other issues and she probably won’t win the nomination - we have to move on.

I do know this: I would much rather have Obama in the White House than McCain, because Obama knows things aren’t right in Iraq and wants to fix them. He doesn’t just want to “get out,” he wants to “get out and make it work.” McCain thinks that if we just stubbornly stay there, then, someday, things will work out and flowers of democracy will bloom across the globe. It’s new, thought-out policy versus the status quo, which is failing.

The sad part is this: even if Obama’s “responsible” withdrawal “works,” he is still going to be crucified by the activist crowd for betraying his promises to them. Sometimes, however, it pays to think before you act. But will Obama’s policy on withdrawal work? Is it smart to leave troops in Iraq or even Kuwait? Would such policy only compound anti-American sentiment nurtured by our military installations in places like Saudi Arabia?

Who knows, maybe Obama will withdrawal all troops from Iraq.

“I may be in the minority, but I actually think [full withdrawal] is likely what’s going to happen,” says one antiwar think-tanker with ties to the Obama campaign. “The conventional wisdom is that, once they get into power for whatever reason, they will change and adopt that strategy. I reject that conventional wisdom, because I think it is based on the proposition that we don’t have an alternative to victory. We do, and it’s called losing. We have been losing for a very long time.”

Maybe because Iraq isn’t stagnant, we, as voters, shouldn’t expect our candidates to be stagnant on the issue. Maybe we should vote for the person with the best judgment and then cross our fingers and hope that it all works out. Okay, I know that sounds a bit overly pessimistic, but isn’t that the best we can do with such a complicated issue?

I know I wouldn’t want to have a president that has viewed the war in the same light since it began and that’s why I’m okay with some “growth” on a candidate’s stance on an issue as long at it’s thought-out and well constructed (and I agree with most of it).

Obama’s policy on Iraq has some growing to do, but it has plenty of wiggle room to maneuver itself. Wouldn’t you want some wiggle room if you were trying to end a war? But wiggling doesn’t make someone especially comfortable when they go to the voting booths.

Like the war, it’s a mess.