Let’s play a game called bursting the bubble.
First, the bubble: The bubble is that Barack Obama has been “backing away” from his previous campaign promise to pull the vast majority of U.S. military forces out of Iraq within 16 months.
It’s a popular bubble, especially among John McCain’s surrogates.
Here’s Tony Blankley on NBC’s Race to the White House on July 3.
“There’s always a little fudge in anything that politicians say. But it was clear what (Obama) was saying in the past, and it’s clear that he’s moving away from it now. And to quote a famous man, he’s going to be as careful getting out of his policy as he was reckless getting into it.”
Here’s McCain buddy Senator Lindsay Graham on CBS’ Face the Nation on July 3:
“I guess what disturbs most of us here is that during the primary season, (Obama) was as hard-over as you could be about leaving Iraq, ending the war now. We’ve been hard-over about winning the war. John McCain has come up with a strategy called the surge, Bob, that worked. Senator Obama said not only it wouldn’t work, it would make things worse. He’s had a position on Iraq that has been a strong political calculation. That is that I’m going to align myself with MoveOn.org, I’m going to let everybody on the left know I’m going to end this war. Two weeks ago, he meets with a foreign minister in Iraq, the minister begs him not to implement this irresponsible plan, and announces to the world that after talking to Senator Obama he thinks Senator Obama and McCain are on the same sheet of music. He holds a second news conference, after everybody jumps on him about changing his position about listening to commanders. … So I don’t know what he’s going to do. He’s in a box. He ran hard to the left during the primary. The surge he said would fail has worked. He’s now going to Iraq after two-and-a-half years, and he’s in a box. If he comes back from Iraq and says this thing hasn’t worked, you need to pull all the troops out, he will look irresponsible, and he doesn’t know how to handle that.”
Here’s Bill Kristol on Fox News Sunday on July 6:
“Yeah, I think (Obama’s) move to the center on Iraq shows how radical the Democratic Party’s position on Iraq has been for the last year and a half. Really, unprecedented, almost, in American history, for a party to vote in Congress consistently to pull the plug on a war effort in the middle of that effort. I mean, the Democrats turned against Vietnam, but that was late, and they never could actually vote to actually cut off, you know, support for U.S. troops fighting in the field. The Democrats were- Once the surge started to work, once the way to end the war became to win the war, the Democratic Party’s position was untenable. Obama sees that it is untenable, and he is not going to stick to it, I think. And I hope. I mean, I just can’t believe he’ll come into the office as President of the United States, and seriously say, ‘I don’t care about the facts on the ground,’ ‘I don’t care whether leaving 50,000 troops there with minimal casualties could help trans-, could help, uh, complete a devestating victory against Al Qaida, could help complete a repudiation of Iranian influence in the region, could help advance U.S. interests throughout the Middle East — all of our allies want us to stay there, but I don’t care! I’m pulling out.’ I don’t believe Obama would do that as President, in all honesty. And I think he’s signalling that now, and I think he’s smart to, because it’s his biggest vulnerability. Is he ready to be commander in chief? That’s what Hillary Clinton gained ground against him on in the primaries, that was the issue she used against him. And he’s trying hard to not let McCain have that advantage against him in the general election.
So here are three enemies of Obama working as hard as they can to blow up this beautiful bubble, this sparkling set of deliberate lies, that is now out there for the American people to contemplate. This bubble has several components.
– Pulling out of Iraq is highly irresponsible, and Barack Obama knows it.
– Obama took the position that he wanted to withdraw only to win the support of irresponsible liberals in the Democratic primary.
— Now that Obama is running against McCain, he can’t possibly maintain his position that’s he’s going to pull out immediately, as that would be irresponsible and would make Obama look like he’s willing to sacrifice our national interests just to win an election.
Now, let’s burst the bubble by reminding ourselves of what most Americans know in their gut:
— Staying in Iraq as McCain recommends would be dangerous and irresponsible. There will be no stability in Iraq, and no stability in the Middle East, as long as thousands of American troops are occupying Iraq, effectively taunting the Arab world with an unecessary occupation that most Arabs — and indeed, most human beings on the planet — believe is motivated almost entirely by our desire to steal Iraqi oil and launch a war against Iran. More occupation of Iraq fuels terrorist recruiting and increases the likelihood of another terrorist attack on American soil. And Obama knows it. This is a “dumb war,” as Obama said, long ago, before it was popular.
— In the primary campaign, Obama took the position that we need to withdraw quickly from Iraq because he knew it was the right thing to do, and because he predicted — accurately, as it turned out — that the American people would rally around this position. Many Americans initially supported this war because they thought Bush might not be incompetant. They refused to accept that a man smart enough to be president could be stupid enough to fight an unnecessary, self-destructive war. Now we know different.
– Obama’s enemies are trying to scare us into thinking pulling out would be irresponsible. Obama’s ability to win this election will depend, at least in some small measure, on how successfully he cuts through the fear campaign and communicates his belief that pulling out of Iraq — so we can focus on winning the War on Terror — is in our national interests and will make us safer.
So we have a bubble of lies blown up by Obama’s enemies, and we have the truth. And what evidence do these enemies of Obama use to support their claim that he’s (gasp!) flip-flopping on Iraq?
Here it is, as reported in The New York Times by Michael Cooper and Jeff Zeleny (quoting Obama):
“I’ve always said that the pace of withdrawal would be dictated by the safety and security of our troops and the need to maintain stability,” (Obama) said. “That assessment has not changed. And when I go to Iraq and have a chance to talk to some of the commanders on the ground, I’m sure I’ll have more information and will continue to refine my policies.”
Mr. Obama has long spoken of consulting with commanders in the field as part of his plan for a phased withdrawal, but his shift in emphasis in the way he spoke about the situation on Thursday — after weeks in which Republicans and even an outside Iraq policy adviser to his campaign argued against a withdrawal along the lines he had proposed — fueled speculation that he might not be wedded to his timetable.
So the Obama campaign scheduled a second news conference to try to clarify his remarks. “We’re going to try this again,” Mr. Obama said. “Apparently, I wasn’t clear enough this morning on my position with respect to the war in Iraq.”
Obama is a smart man, and he’s still committed to withdrawal from Iraq. He just believes in refining his policies after talking to experts. In other words, he’s the kind of guy who likes to learn and improve. It’s an approach to policy-making that some of Obama’s older supporters may remember from the Clinton years … the Bush Sr. years … hell, even the Reagan years… It’s just not something that Bush Jr. does, at least not until thousands of American soldiers have died and his polling numbers are down the tubes… And it’s not an approach McCain seems particularly interested in, either…