In one of the defining moments of the last presidential
election, John Kerry was boxed into saying that knowing what he
knew in 2004, he still would have voted to authorize the use of
force in Iraq. It seems to me that Barack Obama was trying to avoid
that mistake last night, in an interview with "Nightline." The Web
version of the interview reads:
So far this month, five U.S. troops have been
killed in combat, compared with 78 U.S. deaths last July. Attacks
across the country are down more than 80 percent. Still, when asked
if knowing what he knows now, he would support the surge, the
senator said no.
"These kinds of hypotheticals are very difficult," he
said. "Hindsight is 20/20. But I think that what I am absolutely
convinced of is, at that time, we had to change the political
debate because the view of the Bush administration at that time was
one that I just disagreed with, and one that I continue to disagree
with -- is to look narrowly at Iraq and not focus on these broader
issues."
So basically, even though the surge has been a tremendous success
that has actually made withdrawing troops under stable conditions a
much better possibility, he still wouldn't have supported it
because he had a political disagreement with Bush. Obama would
rather see failure in Iraq than take off his ideological blinders.
Obama goes on to say that Gen. Petraeus expressed "deep
concerns" about a timetable, but that doesn't seem to matter to
Obama.
But the most startling statement in the interview was this:
"I think it is indisputable that, because of great
work that they have done, as well as the unbelievable work that the
troops have done, we've made significant progress in terms of
reducing violence in Iraq," he said.
However, Obama would not attribute the decreased
violence entirely to the troop surge, which he opposed, instead
saying that it was the result of "political factors inside Iraq
that came right at the same time as terrific work by our troops.
Had those political factors not occurred, my assessment would be
correct. ... The point I was making at the time was the political
dynamic was the driving force in that sectarian violence."
Obama's talking point about the surge up until now has always been
that while violence decreased as a result of the sacrifice of the
troops, we haven't seen any political progress. The only way we'll
see political progress, Obama has argued, is to start withdrawing
troops to force the hand of the Iraqis by showing them that our
commitment isn't open ended. Though it's often difficult to
decipher Obamaspeak, now he seems to saying that there was both a
reduction in violence
and political
progress in Iraq over the past year and a half that correlated with
the surge strategy, but somehow it's a total coincidence and so he
still would have opposed the surge all along.
topics:
Barack Obama, Iraq, NATO
