Seeing as how Barack Obama emphasized before he went to Iraq that his mind was made up on a virtually unconditional, year-and-four-months troop withdrawal, we can concur with critics that his purpose was not to be instructed by facts on the ground.
The trip instead was a campaign maneuver sure to be rewarded by certain media outlets already giving him far more coverage than John McCain, as a recent survey demonstrates.
And sure enough, biggies from network TV stood in line for interviews while Obama aides back home were scrambling to cover up the presidential candidate’s self-contradictions.
In another one of his “major” speeches that make liberal hearts go pitty-pat, he had talked about the “many times” he had said “our troops have performed brilliantly in lowering the level of violence” in Iraq. His reference was to the troop surge, and what he left out were the times he has said it would not reduce violence.
Underlings, the New York Daily News discovered, went so far as to scrap a Web site contention of his that the surge wasn’t working, proving once again — as his admirers keep telling us — that the Obama campaign is masterful in Internet communications.
While conceding the surge’s success, he didn’t back up on his notion that Iraq was of minute strategic significance for the United States, that it had, in fact, “distracted” us from what’s most crucial — and in this conclusion he has many supporters.
So what if the United States should have a decent, progressive, big-time ally in the Middle East, a Muslim state demonstrating that tribal ferocities can be put aside and radical calls for jihad ignored while peace and prosperity are successfully pursued?
How could something as potentially stabilizing and even widely transformative as that be strategically important?
Well, it is.
And even if Obama has the backing of many in his timetable-locked determination to skedaddle no matter the conditions, there are those who get it that this could be as much a reckless stupidity as any action divorced from concrete reality.
His qualifications are pretty much limited to slowing things down some if our troops should be threatened. All that has been gained by lost American lives and the expenditure of billions could therefore be trashed if the forced timing were off or residual troops left behind were insufficient in number to do what was needed.
Genocide is a threat, along with an upsurge in America-devastating terrorism, an invigorated virulence in wacky Iran and the increased possibility of all-out Mideast war as Israel struggles to prevent a second Holocaust.
Just maybe, however, Obama’s timetable may coincide with improving conditions made possible, ironically enough, by the surge policy he strongly opposed. It’s the case, after all, that the Republican McCain and President Bush are eager to reduce the number of combat troops as quickly as reasonableness permits, and there are a number of indications that reasonableness is drawing nigh.
In statements that may have been exaggerated when first reported, Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki himself has spoken of a “vision” that conditions would allow significant withdrawals to take place by 2010.
Obama’s pacifist fans ought nevertheless to keep in mind that the candidate’s intent is not military idleness, but the transfer of additional forces to Afghanistan, where the situation truly is deteriorating.
A second irony for this politician would be if he were to be elected and then, four years from now, opposed by a candidate who does not see the strategic importance of a still troubled Afghanistan and comes armed with an inflexible timetable.
Examiner Columnist Jay Ambrose is a former Washington opinion writer and editor of two dailies. He may be reached at [email protected].
