Does Obama have an Iraq problem?

Mon, 06/02/2008 - 12:15pm

Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

For months, the rough consensus of the pundit class has been that Iraq is an albatross around the neck of John McCain. Surge or no surge, the U.S. public had largely made up its collective mind about the war -- the toll on the military, the massive expenditures, and everything else -- and decided it wanted to get out. (As über-pollster Andrew Kohut observers, however voters are divided on how fast to get out, and they overwhelmingly prefer McCain to Barack Obama on national security.)

But what happens when the facts change? May saw the lowest number of U.S. combat deaths of any month in the war's five-year history, and Iraqis are increasingly taking the lead. Iraqi military operations in Basra, Sadr City, and Mosul have all gone better than many outside observers expected. Although it's easy to imagine the violence picking back up again, it's also conceivable that, by November, Iraq could be very calm indeed.

The Washington Post editorial board seems convinced that this will present trouble for Obama. I'm not so sure. It's possible the war staying out of the news will only help focus the race on the economy, where the Democrats have an advantage. But I can see it cutting both ways. At the very least, it will be awkward for Obama to pivot from saying, "the war is lost, let's get out" to "the war is won, let's go home." Readers, what do you think?

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Only possible if foreign policy is not discussed

by Cindy on Mon, 06/02/2008 - 11:49am

First, the proclaimed successes in Mosul are being denied by AQ-ISI, (translation on NEFA). Second, that doesn't matter, without tending to the political problems in Iraq military gains will be temporary. Third, when McCain speaks on Iraq/Iran, Afghanistan/Pakistan, or Israel/Fatah he reveals lack of knowledge, Obama the opposite. Therefore Obama will have an asset in all these areas if two things happen: foreign policy becomes a campaign issue and the public becomes more informed on the history, relationships, and realities. If this happens McCain will also have a serious Pakistan problem. McCain's best hope is to hide his ignorance and make it appear that security is an issue yet doing so while avoiding addressing the topics on the merits and instead overstating his foreign policy experiene and mischaracterizing Obama's suitability for commander-in-chief.

He's the only one without an Iraq problem...

by bryantnewby on Mon, 06/02/2008 - 1:32pm

If a guy goes into a bank to rob it, how good is the news that he has temporarily stopped killing hostages and is now willing to negotiate? Its good news obviously. But wouldn't it be better if he had never gone in to begin with?

The arguement that making small bits of progress in a war that should never have been started to begin with is clearly flawed. It is nothing more than a political strategy. There is no reason for anyone to believe that this war is going well for anyone. (with the exception of Iran)

Obama may have voted to fund the war once it had begun and its good that he did that. Especially after learning that our soldiers weren't even given adequate armor to protect themselves etc... Anyone that did not vote for further funding would have been attacked by the Bush administration's spin machine and labeled as not caring about our men and women in uniform.

The real question is, who voted for the war to begin with? Who showed good judgment and forethought from the start. It wasn't McCain and it wasn't Clinton. The way I see it, Obama is the only one who doesn't have an Iraq problem.

McCain is an intellectual wonkette...

by Lure D. Lou on Mon, 06/02/2008 - 4:17pm

Like Bush, McCain cut his teeth as a reprobate and drunk as a young man....(not that there is anything wrong with that..it makes one a 'character' without actually building any)...unlike our Commander in Disgrace Bush,however, McCain at least had the courage to fight but not the skill to avoid getting shot down....neither being a drunk nor being a prisoner of the Viet Cong/NVA makes one a policy wonk worth listening to...it only makes you attractive to other dim-bulbs who believe that simply having put on a uniform qualifies you for something more than taking orders and enduring that bullshit that passes for life in the military....if McCain had actually accomplished anything in the military except polishing his 'war hero' credentials (which he surely deserves)then we should all perk up our ears when he talks about the problems facing us 'over there'....in the meantime how about we elect someone who has actually read a book now -and -again and can do more than 'me-too' the worst foreign policy blunder in our nation's history.

Assassinate his experience, not his character

by grandpaw7 on Tue, 06/03/2008 - 10:26am

Lure D. Lou is mad and also wrong. A good way to improve McCain's performance is to try to besmirch his character by alluding to how much he drank as a young man and by claiming that being shot down in Vietnam was result of inability. That is the kind of politics that I hope Obama will try to steer away from, although he can't control all of the folks who support him.

Here is my notion of McCain's Iraq problem. His prognostications about what would happen in Iraq proved to be catastrophically wrong. This to me represents McCain's "voice of experience":

"McCain: "There's no doubt in my mind that once these people are gone that we will be welcomed as liberators." [MSNBC, Hardball, 3/24/03]

McCain: "I believe that we can win an overwhelming victory in a very short period of time." [CNN Late Edition, 9/29/02]

McCain: “And I believe that the success will be fairly easy” and “There's no doubt in my mind that... we will be welcomed as liberators.” [3/24/03]

McCain: “I think we could go in with much smaller numbers than we had to do in the past... I don't believe it's going to be nearly the size and scope that it was in 1991.” [9/15/02]

McCain: “There's not a history of clashes that are violent between Sunnis and Shias. So I think they can probably get along.” [4/23/03]

McCain: “Overall, I think a year from now, we will have made a fair amount of progress if we stay the course.” [12/8/05 (Exactly one year before violence in Iraq peaked)]

McCain: "We're not going get into house-to-house fighting in Baghdad" [CNN Late Edition, 9/29/02]

After all of the above gross misjudgments, McCain has the arrogance and gall to say: "We have not told the American people how touch and difficult this task would be… they were led to believe this could be some kind of day at the beach." [CNN, 8/22/2006]

Shortly before he was fired for making the statement Army Chief of Staff General Shinseki said that we would need several hundred thousand troop in Iraq. What is particularly important and prescient about his statement is his explanation of why:

"We're talking about post-hostilities control over a piece of geography that's fairly significant, with the kinds of ethnic tensions that could lead to other problems. And so it takes a significant ground- force presence."

In a public rebuke to Shinseki, Rumsfeld and his deputy, Paul Wolfowitz, called Shinseki's estimate "far off the mark"[15] and "wildly off the mark". Wolfowitz said it would be "hard to believe" more troops would be required for post-war Iraq than to remove Saddam Hussein from power.[1] Specifically, Wolfowitz said to the House Budget Committee on February 27, 2003:

DEP. SEC. WOLFOWITZ: There has been a good deal of comment - some of it quite outlandish - about what our postwar requirements might be in Iraq. Some of the higher end predictions we have been hearing recently, such as the notion that it will take several hundred thousand U.S. troops to provide stability in post-Saddam Iraq, are wildly off the mark. It is hard to conceive that it would take more forces to provide stability in post-Saddam Iraq than it would take to conduct the war itself and to secure the surrender of Saddam's security forces and his army - hard to imagine.

So what did the McCain's "voice of experience" think about General Shinseki's clear foretelling of the future: I have no qualms about our strategic plans," he told the Hartford Courant in a March 5 article, just before the invasion. "I thought we were very successful in Afghanistan.

Yes, I think McCain could teach Obama a lot, about how to get things wrong. Very wrong.

Did Obama say the war is lost? I don't think so.

by grandpaw7 on Tue, 06/03/2008 - 12:34pm

Obama told reporters, when he apparently was in Iraq, in a January 7, 2006 conference call;

"If we don't see significant political progress ... over the next six months or so, we can pour money and troops in here until the cows come home, but we're not going to be successful."

Surely everyone agrees with that political progress is essential to a good outcome. Yes, Obama may be subject to criticism for saying "over the next six months or so", but McCain is simply lying when he claims that Obama said the war was lost.

It seems to me that McCain is subject to the criticism that his lying remark carries the implication that he does not think that political progress is essential.

Uh, yeah, now Obama has an Iraq problem...

by Cindy on Wed, 06/04/2008 - 8:32pm

Obama blew it at AIPAC today when he stated Jerusalem must be undivided and the capital of Israel. This immediately will raise the ire of Muslim countries everywhere, increase the unity among them against the U.S., and devastate his likelihood for diplomatic success regarding them. That's one card that shouldn't have been played.

Then again...

by Cindy on Thu, 06/05/2008 - 7:01pm

Gotta give Team Obama props, they (unlike McCain who would've dug in) recognized the united Jerusalem capital of Israel statement would have been a diplomacy breaker and wasted no time in sending out a "clarification." All's good again. No Iraq problem.