Noting the “call by Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki for a timetable for the removal of American troops from Iraq,” Barack Obama writes in op-ed in the NYT today that a continued U.S. presence in Iraq “runs contrary to the will of the Iraqi people, the American people and the security interests of the United States. That is why, on my first day in office, I would give the military a new mission: ending this war.” This is an encouragingly unambiguous reaffirmation of one of Obama’s core campaign platforms: withdrawal from Iraq within 16 months and an unambiguous affirmation that “we seek no presence in Iraq similar to our permanent bases in South Korea, and would redeploy our troops out of Iraq and focus on the broader security challenges that we face.” I take this to mean that there will be not a single U.S. military base inside Iraq and that the bases that are currently under construction will be dismantled if Obama is elected. I am not sure what this means about the status of the Green Zone and the mammoth U.S. embassy (which is practically a base and as big as Vatican City) that is being built in central Baghdad. In my view, the Green Zone must revert to full Iraqi control, and our embassy needs to be just an embassy, not a crypto-military base.
In the same op-ed, however, Obama calls for “at least two additional combat brigades to support our effort in Afghanistan.” Translation: Obama wants to deploy at least 7,000 extra combat soldiers to Afghanistan. Are these troops necessary? Do combat brigades help us better catch terrorists? Is Obama in favor of building permanent bases in Afghanistan? I don’t know the answer to these questions, but I wonder if he has justified this increase in other speeches and writings. Anyone know? We should also of course note that Obama sees further continued uses for American troops inside Iraq: “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.” All these points ought to be clarified, lest they dilute the core message: out, now. I mean, are we talking about incursions from Kuwaiti bases? Will there be US soldiers guarding the embassy who might be targets and who might be regarded as de facto occupiers? Does Obama reserve the right to re-invade Iraq or would doing so require re-authorization by Congress? Etc. etc. You can’t have “withdrawal from Iraq except when we feel like going back in.” Out means out. Once we’re out we no long have the right to go back in without express Congressional and Iraqi approval. Democracy, all that.
Still, despite all the detailed follow-up questions that must be asked, this is a winning platform for Obama. This op-ed suggests that he will stick to it. This is what the majority of the American and Iraqi people want. Full withdrawal, ASAP, is the best strategy for keeping the US safe, not to mention the most moral path. It’s within our grasp, and we need to ensure that this is what happens, though I think we are also obligated to pay massive reparations to the Iraqis for what we’ve done to them, Marshall-Plan-level investment in the country. When I vote for Obama, I will be voting for a pro-withdrawal Obama, along the parameters outlined here. There are some areas where Obama is not fully clear, which I have noted, but if he wants his views to reflect the democratic consensus of the American and Iraqi people, he will stand behind all of the following with no ambiguity: full US withdrawal from Iraq, no military bases, Iraqi control of the Green Zone, de-militarizing our embassy, and full Iraqi sovereignty (i.e. no authority to re-invade on a whim). We should strive for nothing less.
Obama has been completely clear all along about his intention to pull troops out of Iraq
Comment by Ian — July 14, 2008 @ 8:52 pm
I assume Obama always reserves the right to adjust his views. He seems not to have, despite strong pressure from “liberal interventionists” like George Packer to “move to the center” on Iraq. The question I’d most like Obama to answer, if he hasn’t already, is whether he thinks he would need Congressional authorization to re-invade the country on the sort of missions he considers “legitimate”: attacking “Al-Qaeda in Mesopotamia,” etc. Have we ended the occupation if we withdraw troops only to go back in whenever we feel like it?
Comment by Lee — July 14, 2008 @ 9:05 pm
I had a weird computer thing happen. Anyway.
Obama has been completely clear all along about his intention to pull troops out of Iraq. He’s said it, like, a million times. So why is it “encouragingly unambiguous” when he says it for the 1,000,001th time?
If you didn’t trust Obama the first million times he promised to withdraw from Iraq, why are you so suspicious now?
Perhaps you’re suspicious now because you’ve seen Obama break campaign promises on campaign financing and FISA, so you’re nervous that he’ll break his word on the war as well.
Here’s my response to that: Obama changed his mind on campaign financing because he wants to win this election, and he didn’t want to tie his hands.
I think he was right to be concerned about the possibility that the right-wing will spend oodles of cash this fall trying to attack him in underhanded ways. McCain’s campaign may not have as much money as Obama’s campaign, but the Republican Party’s campaign war chest is about 10 times larger than the Democratic Party’s war chest right now. And the Republican Party has already started running pro-McCain, anti-Obama ads. Remember that ad in North Carolina during the primary, the ad that attacked two Democratic gubernatorial candidates for supporting Obama — the ad that showed pictures of Obama and Rev. Jeremiah Wright smiling at the camera together? The possibility that right-wing groups unaffiliated with the McCain campaign will barrage voters with dirty fear messages in the weeks leading up to election day was doubtless on Obama’s mind when he made the difficult decision to forgo the spending limits that come with federal campaign financing. Obama wants to make sure he can aggressively respond to his enemies’ lies and distortions when they emerge. I support Obama’s decision to forgo federal financing, because I’m unwilling to take the risk that Obama won’t have enough cash in the end to fight the right-wing attack machine.
Regarding the FISA bill, I really think Obama’s harshest critics are ignoring the political risk he would have taken if he’d opposed it, thereby allowing it to become a campaign issue and dominate the news for days and possibly weeks. If Obama had opposed the bill, his enemies would have said the bill’s passage was necessary to protect the American people. Obama’s enemies would have said Obama’s position shows Obama is soft on terror, and beholden to the left-wing. You may think Obama could have fought that battle and won — or at least, he might have been able to avoid losing it. But it would be another huge risk, and Obama bears a huge burden of responsibility now that he is the Democratic nominee.
The fact that left-wing activists in this country are so passionate in their opposition to the FISA bill and it still passed with 69 yes votes in the Senate just shows how impotent left-wing activists are in this country.
So anyway, I believe these are the reasons Obama took the position that he did on campaign financing and FISA. Because he wants to win. Period. We may not like it when Obama changes his position post-primary, but we can at least acknowledge that his decisions make political sense.
So here’s a question: Where’s the political sense behind changing his position on the war? If Obama backed away from his commitment to withdraw from Iraq, do you honestly think it would help him win this election? I believe it would infuriate his supporters — and not just the left-wing activists, but the millions upon millions of ordinary supporters who love Obama precisely because they want this war to end — and it would also make him look like a conniving idiot to swing voters. The stupidest thing Obama could do, politically, would be to abandon his commitment to withdraw from Iraq.
Furthermore, it would be bad for the country if Obama backed away from his commitment to withdraw troops from Iraq.
So whether you think of Obama as the pure messiah, or whether you think of him as a manipulative, ego-driven politician, the conclusion you draw is the same: Obama will not back away from his commitment to withdraw from Iraq. And when he is president, he will withdraw the troops, because it will make him look good and because it’s the right thing to do.
Am I wrong? Am I missing something? If Obama is feeling pressure to back away from his commitment to end the war, where is that pressure coming from? The right-wing beat the hell out of him for flip-flopping on the war even when he hadn’t actually flip-flopped on the war — so what makes you think Obama would benefit if he did flip-flop?
The idea that Obama secretly believes in prolonging the Iraq War is a right-wing lie that you’re buying into, and I don’t understand why. We should spend our energy explaining why a McCain presidency would be so bad for this country, not painting Obama as a sleazy politician from whom we need constant reassurance.
End of rant.
Comment by Ian — July 14, 2008 @ 9:31 pm
On a more positive note, I think it’s great that the country is having a national conversation about Afghanistan. I think it’s important to acknowledge that the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan are very different, and so it makes sense that our approach should be different. Combat soldiers could be helpful in Afghanistan in ways that they aren’t going to be helpful in Iraq.
Comment by Ian — July 14, 2008 @ 9:39 pm
I think that Obama is positioning himself very carefully on Iraq.
One the one hand, he is unequivocally saying that he wants to withdraw from Iraq, which is great.
On the other hand, he is willing to accept all sorts of caveats on that: we have the right to conduct missions inside Iraq if X, Y, and Z are the case.
In other words, I think we need to understand why Obama thinks withdrawal is necessary. It’s not because he thinks that Bush did not have the authority to invade but because he thought Iraq was a “dumb war.” This is not a principled rejection of what is called “preventative war”–the idea that we can invade a country if we anticipate that someday in some hypothetical future they may become a threat to us.
That is why I would like for Obama to explicitly articulate criteria where he thinks US military might is justified and where not, if he hasn’t done so already. I want to hear him talk through this issue in considerable detail because it is at the core of our politics. Is there ever a reason for US power to be used if we are not under imminent threat by another military power? Under what circumstances is it OK for the US to act “unilaterally,” if any?
I know what my view is: if the US is not under immediate military threat, then we should err on the side of non-intervention. In the hypothetical “military humanist” case for intervention during a genocide happening in another country, well, I think we need to be very very careful in those cases, and strongly resist acting outside the framework of international law and institutions. Just because we have big guns and are tempted to use them, in the name of what we call good, this doesn’t ensure that our intervention will make things better or that it’s just. War’s unpredictable that way.
Comment by Lee — July 15, 2008 @ 2:15 am