I think this is well-said. I suppose I'm pessimistic that the actual point -- that a timeline for withdrawal is the right strategy for America -- will get heard over additional controversies over whether or not this constitutes a flip-flop.
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Obama's Iraq Op-Ed
14 Jul 2008 10:22 am
Comments (19)
It's an excellent op-ed. I don't get the flip-flop attacks--to me he seems to be saying the same thing that he was saying back in December, and February.
But it will be drowned out by The New Yorker cover controversy, not the flip flop one.
Yeah, I also don't get the flip-flop argument here. He's pretty much always said that you have to do a timed withdrawal over a period of months. He's pretty much always said that the timing would be about 18 months. The only thing that ever changes is when the withdrawal starts. Congressional efforts to force the withdrawal to start have failed, so we now have to wait for President Obama to start it in January.
Seriously, there is no flip-flop here at all.
that a timeline for withdrawal is the right strategy for America
I'm not sure if it is or is not the right strategy now.
It was the right strategy immediately after we deposed the Hussein regime. If we had a robust, workable de-Baathification program that normalized the Iraqi civil service (and didn't result in a lot of out of work folks whose only crime was doing what they had to do under Saddam Hussein to get jobs) coupled with a time-line for progress and hence our leaving, those who wanted us interlopers out would have felt confident we'd leave if they'd just play along.
Nu? They would have played along and things would have went a lot better.
But ... the war was about getting our bases out of Saudi Arabia (where they were pissing off Al Qaeda) and moving them to Iraq. Why the media continues to ignore this, I'm not sure ...
It is an excellent op-ed except for all that nonsense about Afghanistan. We need to get our soldiers out of there too.
The flip-flop argument has always come from a certain type of reading based on conventional wisdom.
There is a group in Washington that believes that anyone who is anyone knows that we will never leave Iraq. I can understand what conservative war supporters think that, after all the alternative is recognizing the disaster they supported in Iraq. It is a little more puzzling from moderates who consider themselves democrats.
So everybody giving withdrawal plans must be either naive or pandering. And so the only thing they look for in Obama's statements are the evidence of pandering. So they expected him to pander in the primaries and so focused on the 16 momths. Now they expect him to move to the center and so they focus on the "not set in stones" aspects. The fact that they were both there then and now is missed in this kind of creative reading.
Ah ha he is preparing us for the shift that everybody knows must take place after the election. Meanwhile, the Iraqi government is moving towards the Obama position. And these deep thinkers simply ignore that.
Obama is finally calling the McCampaign on their lies this radio ad.
Obama has had a clear plan for the past several years. Nobody knows how long McCain wants us there. McCain won't even accept the word of multiple figures, from the Iraq government, including Maliki, that they require a time table.
Mr. Straight Talk has wandered straight off into weeds, and he'll remain lost until somebody from the home comes to find him.
Obama ought to just give an Iraq speech from 2007 and see if the media still calls him a flipflopper.
obama is going about things very carefully. i'm sure when he speaks with the commanders on the ground, he'll be able to make adjustments to his talking points without seeming to "flip-flop. it's clear that this administration's "plans" have not worked because diplomacy was never an option. As Obama has stated time and time again, you must talk with your enemies. it is not "appeasement" to see what it is that will bring out from the brink of confrontation; if we could get a press that will present all of the facts, we could have a better informed public. It would make this election a "slam dunk" and maybe we can get about the business of bringing America from the brink of depression.
obama is going about things very carefully. i'm sure when he speaks with the commanders on the ground, he'll be able to make adjustments to his talking points without seeming to "flip-flop. it's clear that this administration's "plans" have not worked because diplomacy was never an option. As Obama has stated time and time again, you must talk with your enemies. it is not "appeasement" to see what it is that will bring out from the brink of confrontation; if we could get a press that will present all of the facts, we could have a better informed public. It would make this election a "slam dunk" and maybe we can get about the business of bringing America from the brink of depression.
Right now the biggest danger to Obama is the 'flip-flop'perception taking hold, as well as the 'arrogance' perception. Another "refinement" on Iraq in an OpEd won't help matters, to say the least, on the flip-flop charge. And if he follows that up with an unlikely impersonatation of Jack Kennedy and Ronnie Reagan at the Brandenburg Gates it won't help with the arrogance charge.
impersonation*
Still funny to see that Obama refuses to admit that, with respect to the most important foreign policy issue during his time in the Senate - the surge - Obama was completely wrong and McCain and Bush completely right.
Well, I guess I can see why Obama refuses to admit that. In any case, Obama appears to be one of the extremist dead-enders who are unable to recognize that the surge was a success, and those who opposed the surge were completely wrong (and, in so, showed that they had extremely poor judgement on foreign policy matters).
The Surge was a complete success! Gen. Petraeus has no need of an armored Humvee! Therefore we must occupy Iraq forever, regardless of the wishes of the Iraqis or their government!
You can keep repeating "the surge is a success" as much as you want, but that doesn't mean it will ever be true. Sorry. Saying it is so doesn't make it so.
I'm pretty sure any smidgeon of gains in Iraq at the expense of rolling back progress in Afghanistan isn't really a successful policy, now is it?
You can keep repeating "the surge is a success" as much as you want, but that doesn't mean it will ever be true. Sorry. Saying it is so doesn't make it so.
I'm pretty sure any smidgeon of gains in Iraq at the expense of rolling back progress in Afghanistan isn't really a successful policy, now is it?
Al: Surge is a success, repeated often with no reference to George W. Bush's own definition of success.
GAO: Surge has not produced success in the benchmarks set forth by George W. Bush prior to the surge, backed by large amounts of data and analysis.
Hmmmmm. Who to believe, the GAO or Al?
Michael O'Hanlon, as of today, is literally foaming at the mouth against Obama's Op-Ed ( http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/07/14/AR2008071401853_pf.html ):
" 'To say you're going to get out on a certain schedule, regardless of what the Iraqis do, regardless of what our enemies do, regardless of what is happening on the ground is the height of absurdity,' said O'Hanlon, who described himself as 'livid.' 'I'm not going to go to the next level of invective and say he shouldn't be president. I'll leave that to someone else.' "
Which is certainly interesting, since (to quote Obama's piece):
" The call by Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki for a timetable for the removal of American troops from Iraq presents an enormous opportunity...
"Lt. Gen. James Dubik, the American officer in charge of training Iraq’s security forces, estimates that the Iraqi Army and police will be ready to assume responsibility for security in 2009...
"As I’ve said many times, we must be as careful getting out of Iraq as we were careless getting in. We can safely redeploy our combat brigades at a pace that would remove them in 16 months. That would be the summer of 2010 — two years from now, and more than seven years after the war began. After this redeployment, a residual force in Iraq would perform limited missions: going after any remnants of Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, protecting American service members and, so long as the Iraqis make political progress, training Iraqi security forces. That would not be a precipitous withdrawal.
"In carrying out this strategy, we would inevitably need to make tactical adjustments. As I have often said, I would consult with commanders on the ground and the Iraqi government to ensure that our troops were redeployed safely, and our interests protected. We would move them from secure areas first and volatile areas later."
Not exactly what O'Hanlon accuses him of. And that's to say nothing of O'Hanlon's total failure to mention the fact that what the Iraqis are "doing" right now is demanding flatly that we get out completely by 2012 (apparently because al-Maliki knows that making that demand is the only hope he has of beating the Sadrists in the October elections). But then, as we all know by now, O'Hanlon doesn't read -- or reason -- so good. (Witness that previous speech in which he made the epic statement that "what we're doing right now isn't working, but we can't do anything else.")
As for the American people, the same WP article that quotes O'Hanlon quotes a new poll showing tha they're back to being totally uncertain as to whether or not they support continuing the war -- they're split literally 50-50 on Obama's and McCain's positions. So at the moment Obama is maintaining his slim lead in the polls entirely on domestic issues, although I suspect that this may change after the outcome of the October Iraq elections.
Obama: "Ending the war is essential to meeting our broader strategic goals, starting in Afghanistan and Pakistan, where the Taliban is resurgent and Al Qaeda has a safe haven."
Which, Senator, you can't do fuck all about, regardless.
"Iraq is not the central front in the war on terrorism, and it never has been. As Adm. Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, recently pointed out, we won’t have sufficient resources to finish the job in Afghanistan until we reduce our commitment to Iraq."
And you never will have the resources because it is impossible to "finish the job in Afghanistan."
"As president, I would pursue a new strategy, and begin by providing at least two additional combat brigades to support our effort in Afghanistan."
Waste of money. Waste of troops. Waste of time.
"We need more troops, more helicopters, better intelligence-gathering and more nonmilitary assistance to accomplish the mission there."
No - you need to get the fuck out of there.
Try reading this, Senator, and get a fucking clue:
Taliban conflict 'cannot be won' in Afghanistan
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,23996698-2703,00.html
"Coalition forces are winning every battle but losing the war," a private security consultant told me. "You can go out and kill Taliban all day long. You kill 20,000 - and there's another 20,000 that will follow them."
The shattered Indian embassy is not far from the compound housing NATO's International Security Assistance Force, which has 52,700 troops - including more than 1000 Australians - on the ground. Inside ISAF headquarters, there is no triumphalism such as the "Mission Accomplished" rhetoric that followed the invasion of Iraq.The senior ISAF commander who briefed me there last week was forthright. The conflict, as it's being fought, cannot be won. He cites two reasons: the safe haven enjoyed by the militants and their al-Qa'ida sponsors in neighbouring Pakistan; and the rampant corruption in Afghanistan itself. "We can reduce the physical insurgency and hand over to Afghanistan," the commander says. "It is containable, but while those two things remain, it's not solvable. The insurgents will never beat us. We can contain it, but we can't solve it."
He says the best they can hope for is to "reduce it to a stalemate favourable to our side".
While this assessment is too simple - and contains an element of blame-shifting - the fact that the conflict is unwinnable is clear. Out-numbered and out-gunned by NATO, the Taliban and their allies have mostly abandoned what ISAF calls "force on force" fighting in favour of a guerilla-style war. There has been a "huge increase' in the use of mines and improvised explosive devices, which now account for 80per cent of ISAF's casualties, double the rate of a year ago.
Suicide bombings, previously unheard of in Afghanistan, have also become routine. ISAF refuses to release statistics, saying they are "classified". But by one recent estimate, they have increased fourfold since 2005.
The commander relates the story of a 12-year-old boy assigned as a suicide bomber, who was captured and interrogated before he could carry out his mission. "He had been told, 'When you push this button, it will spray flowers'."
(My observation that this sounded like an apocryphal story met a curt response: "If you think I'm telling you apocryphal stories, we will terminate the interview right now. It was from a debrief.")
Another factor in the war's intransigence is the complex nature of the insurgency. This is neither a foreign-based terrorist movement as the Afghan Government likes to claim - "garbage", says the commander - nor a simple "Taliban insurgency". Instead, it is "a number of parallel insurgencies".
The players include the so-called "southern Taliban" led by Mullah Mohammed Omar, who ruled the country from 1996 to 2001; and the "northern Taliban", led by Beitullah Mahsud, suspected of masterminding the assassination of Benazir Bhutto. Mehsud is reported to have an army of 20,000 men, including countless would-be suicide bombers, at his disposal in South Waziristan, in Pakistan's Federally Administered Tribal Areas (a misnomer, as they are clearly out of Islamabad's control.)
This group is closely affiliated with the network of warlord Jalalludin Haqqani, based in the eastern city of Khowst. Another player is the wily mujahed, Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, a 30-year veteran of the jihad, whose shelling of Kabul during the civil war of the early 1990s left the city in ruins. Hekmatyar has aligned himself with the Taliban, in an example of the murky and ever-shifting alliances that dominate the country's political landscape.
Supporting all of them is al-Qa'ida, which, thanks to the sanctuary provided in Pakistan, has been able to successfully re-locate its headquarters after the destruction of its bases in Afghanistan. As the ISAF commander explains it, al-Qa'ida now operates as a "facilitating network", providing money, ideology, training, recruits and weaponry to its allies.
The fast-deteriorating security situation compounds the growing pressure on President Harmid Karzai, the urbane and charismatic leader who was heralded in 2001 as a unifying force, but is now widely viewed as weak and ineffectual.
"This Government is completely failing. This Government should resign," says Ahmad Shah Amadzai, the leader of one of about 90 political parties vying for support in Afghanistan. "The Afghan Government has no authority. Karzai's Government is a puppet government, it has no power, it just represents the Western interests."
Like so many players, Amadzai is a 30-year veteran of the conflict. He was deputy leader of one of the mujaheddin parties that fought and defeated the Soviet army in the 1980s. His party was among those bankrolled to the tune of several billion dollars by Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and the US. Amadzai is cynical about the West's current hand-wringing over the resurgent Taliban. "Who supported the Taliban? Pakistan. And who was behind Pakistan? America and the Saudi. Now they're crying, 'the Taliban are terrorists'."
Critics such as Amadzai are fortified by growing public anger over the rising toll of civilian casualties. In the latest incident, 27 civilians were reported killed - most of them women and children - when air strikes hit a wedding party in Nangarhar province on Sunday, taking the civilian toll since the start of the year to nearly 700.
Amadzai claims Afghanistan was better off during the Soviet occupation. "The Russians came as occupiers but they respected the culture, the religion and traditions of the country. NATO do not have any respect for any human being or human rights. It's like (being invited to) a friendly dinner where they poison you. The Russians were not killing innocent men, women and children and old people. If they were fighting, it was fighting face to face. Now NATO and the Americans are bombarding villages, and they don't care who is killed."
His view is echoed among members of the international community in Kabul. "The foreign forces were seen two years ago as liberators; now they're seen as occupiers," says an non-government organisation worker who has been in Afghanistan for more than a decade.
The rising discontent is exacerbated by soaring food prices and the Government's failure to translate the billions of aid dollars into factories, jobs or economic opportunities for ordinary Afghans.
Demonstrations have occurred around the country. Apparently unable to find solutions, Karzai is now widely viewed as part of the problem.
The criticism is compounded by the growth of corruption and nepotism in Karzai's Government. Members of the President's family hold plum official posts, and run lucrative businesses in the country's booming aid-fuelled economy. There are persistent though unproven rumours that one relative is involved in the opium trade.
The ISAF top brass is privately scathing of the Karzai regime. "They couldn't organise chaos in a sinking ship," the man from ISAF told me. "Provincial governors and police chiefs are actively involved in the drug trade, either growing and trafficking poppy themselves, or taking a cut of it for looking the other way."
While some ministers and their departments are doing a good job, others such as the ministries of interior and power and water are "incapable and rotten", while counter-narcotics is "a joke".
Despite the Taliban's own reliance on poppy money and the carnage inflicted in recent bombings, the Government's failings allow the militants to project themselves as a viable alternative. It was, remember, their image as incorruptible "cleanskins" who, if nothing else, could enforce security that propelled the Taliban to power back in 1996.
Ahmad Shah Amadzai, a former sworn enemy of the Taliban, says anything would be better than the status quo. "We were all driven out by the Taliban, but right now we are all convinced the Taliban regime is much better than the current regime. Because we want security. There is no security. It's not possible for NATO to defeat the Taliban. If NATO wants to go the way they're going, this war will never have an end to it."
Amid the turmoil, there is growing debate over what was once unthinkable - negotiating a settlement with the Taliban. Amadzai believes there is no alternative. "There must be negotiations with the Taliban. We must stop the fighting and killing. It is a shame for the whole civilised world."
While the thought might horrify Western politicians, the military hard-heads on the ground are open to the idea, mindful that the ethnic Pashtun warriors who dominate the insurgency have defeated all previous foreign invaders.
"There is no insurgency (anywhere) that has been politically resolved without a political deal," the man from ISAF says. "It's for the Afghan Government. The insurgency is entirely Pashtun. It's not solvable by us; it's only solvable by them."
Is peace achievable among enemies who have been fighting each other for 30 years? Is it possible to impose a new system of government, fight an insurgency and rebuild a shattered country, all at the same time?
No one has the answers, but everyone agrees the task is grim.
"It's a tribal society, it's rural, everybody's armed, always has been," the ISAF commander says. "It's a violent society. The question is whether the violence can ever be suppressed enough to allow a life of normality. And that will only happen when the leaders decide more is to be gained by stopping the fighting."
Comments closed July 28, 2008.
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Heads in the Sand
From the article:
But for far too long, those responsible for the greatest strategic blunder in the recent history of American foreign policy have ignored useful debate in favor of making false charges about flip-flops and surrender.
That strikes me not only as a jab against Bush/McCain but also the media. One they'll surely ignore.
I can almost hear Wolf Blitzer asking one of his guests tonight on The Situation Room if this constitutes a "flip-flop". This will be followed by Lou Dobbs asking one of his guests why Obama didn't write the op-ed in Spanish.
Posted by Jake | July 14, 2008 10:35 AM