Works for me: the WaPo says Obama is irritational and ahistorical
I’ve pointed out before that the WaPo editors seem to have gotten a clue lately about the self-serving awfulness of some of Obama’s recent moves, especially on Iraq.
Well, they’re at it again, with an editorial that hits Obama quite hard despite its calm tone—and they even sneak in a slight defense of Bush’s relative flexibility (gasp!) when compared to Obama’s rigidity on the subject.
The WaPo editors note an obvious flaw in Obama’s reasoning, one McCain pointed out yesterday by sarcastically saying:
[Obama] is speaking today about his plans for Iraq and Afghanistan before he has even left, before he has talked to General Petraeus, before he has seen the progress in Iraq, and before he has set foot in Afghanistan for the first time. In my experience, fact-finding missions usually work best the other way around: first you assess the facts on the ground, then you present a new strategy.
The WaPo editorial puts it this way:
If Mr. Obama really intends to listen to such advisers, why would he lock in his position in advance?
Don’t sit on a hot stove until Mr. ThouMustNotMockMe Obama explains the contradiction. He doesn’t have to; he thinks we’re all as stupid as he is. And if we elect him, maybe we are.
The WaPo finishes with this summation [emphasis mine]:
The message that the Democrat sends is that he is ultimately indifferent to the war’s outcome—that Iraq “distracts us from every threat we face” and thus must be speedily evacuated regardless of the consequences. That’s an irrational and ahistorical way to view a country at the strategic center of the Middle East, with some of the world’s largest oil reserves. Whether or not the war was a mistake, Iraq’s future is a vital U.S. security interest. If he is elected president, Mr. Obama sooner or later will have to tailor his Iraq strategy to that reality.
I agree with everything but the last sentence. I’m beginning to think that there is an excellent possibility that it is just wishful thinking, and that Obama, once elected, will ignore many realities.
There’s a tendency for his supporters to excuse his worst “irrationalities” and “ahistorical” blunders by saying that it’s all just a campaign ploy, and that once in office he will smarten up and do the right thing. Even some of his detractors say that.
I don’t happen to agree. But in the unfortunate event that Obama becomes our next POTUS, I sincerely hope I’m proven wrong about Obama’s ability to size up the situation and do the right thing.
The Obamas are the very logical product of the social/educational affirmative action p.c. machine.
It is perhaps amazing that two voter demographics are the bulk of his support: Afro-Ams (the least educated, most racist) and the urban elites (the best educated, most pro-diversity thus putatively least racist). Think of it: he attracts the ends of the dumbells but not the long bar between.
Obama is saying these things for political reasons, to avoid sounding like a flip-flopper. He’s going to reassess when he gets to office, obviously. But — the fact is, the Bush White House is already talking about an accelerated draw-down in Iraq because of the worsening situation in Afghanistan. Events “on the ground” are likely to move things in the direction of Obama’s proposal even before he is elected.
Mitsu – Uhhh…. You do know Obama’s already flipped-flopped on other stuff, right?
The Bush White House is talking about a draw-down in Iraq cause the surge WORKED.
You remember *The Surge*, the one Obama didn’t want? It seems to have worked.
It’s no longer needed, we can send those Surge troops elsewhere now.
Obama’s foreign policy statements have scared the crap out of me since I first heard of him and did a little checking to see what he was all about.
Our dear hostess is expressing it rather politely in this essay, I lack her tact.
I’ll just come right out an say it.
Obama strikes me as a foreign policy idiot. We are screwed if he’s the POTUS.
It might also have something to do with the ability of the Iraqi Army and (to a lesser degree) the Iraqi National Police to do most of the fighting.
Getting those troops rested, refit, and through some training cycles is important, but it is important no matter what other contingencies are out there.
By the way, if you go back to what experts like StrategyPage’s Jim Dunnigan were saying four years ago, you would not be surprised that after three to four years of training the Iraqi Army’s effectiveness would rise markedly.
Exactly, njcommuter – 3-4 years is what StrategyPage said is about the minimum time to build an NCO cadre, IIRC. Without solid NCOs, you have no Army (and without their civilian analogue, no police force).
Mitsu, I’m sincerely interested to hear what your news sources are. Clearly I need to go there and poke around so I can understand my leftist friends’ points of view better. Almost everything I listen to and read (I avoid the NYC and take NPR with a giant grain of salt, but I put in the “almost” because of NPR) acknowledges that we’re on the road to do – are in fact already starting to do – exactly what Bush said we would in Iraq: as they stand up, we stand down.
That this fact frees our military resources to perform other missions elsewhere is self-evident. And some of those troops may well end up in Afghanistan, “graveyard of empires” (which is still rather holding its own, in contrast to the “worsening situation” there that kicked the Soviets’ butts). But it’s a mistake to infer causation. It’s expensive to keep troops in theater; even if the rest of the world had already joined hands in a rousing chorus of the Whos’ Christmas carol, troops no longer needed in Iraq would be leaving.
And BTW… it’s pretty awful to consider that Obama, the New Kind Of (or should that be “Kinda”? “Kind-of”?) Politician, is “going to reassess when he gets to office” – meaning that he doesn’t mean a damn thing he says right now but is only saying it to get elected. Pretty much as Rev. Wright, with whom I disagree on every point I know of except this one, said – and a far cry from “New.”
Cue somebody to talk about Bush’s “no nation-building” thing prior to his 2000 election. Yeah. And then something of unprecedented horribleness happened, and casting one’s mind back, one may recall that a lot changed, even though from our perspective in 2008, things seem generally back-to-normal. The difference between Obama’s saying he’ll do things that he won’t do (or vice versa) and Bush’s saying he wouldn’t do things that he eventually did do (or vice versa) is that even Obama’s supporters fully expect and accept that he’ll change his tune “once he’s in office” without any world-changing events to point to.
Uh-huh,
I agree completely. I don’t think his white guilt card will carry him far with the Chinese, Russians, or Iranians.
Your blog title says that the WaPo called Obama “irritational.” I suspect that the word was intended to be “irrational,” but I confess I like “irritational.” If it’s not a word, it should be. And it fits.
mrs. whatsit: boy, what a Freudian slip! I find him exceedingly “irritational.” I think I’ll leave it as is.
I’ve already outlined my position in the past, and events are going more or less as I expected.
1) The Iraq war itself was the wrong priority, and it drastically took attention away from our primary targets, in my view, not to mention causing us a lot of difficulties on other fronts, in exchange for very small gains in other areas. In other words, not worth it.
2) The war, which would have been a mistake even if it had been executed well, was executed very poorly, to say the least.
3) Bush finally changed course after the 2006 elections, getting rid of most of the neocon inner circle, and finally (at long last) dumping Rumsfeld. Gates and Petraeus are immensely, immensely more capable and competent than their predecessors. It is not surprising, therefore, that we’re finally starting to see improvements in the situation there. I supported the surge (though I thought it should have been larger), and I am glad to see it is working, as I expected.
4) Notwithstanding the above, I am still an Obama supporter for a variety of reasons, not the least of which is that while I agree he was wrong on the surge, he was right on the war itself, long before most Democrats even knew. I take that as a much more important strategic insight than the tactical error of thinking the surge would not work. Thus, I am a supporter of Obama though I think McCain is a man of honor.
Mitsu,
People will be arguing over whether the war was right for years. You can choose a side based on careful study and experience, but you can also choose by tossing a coin. Even in the latter case you have a 50-50 chance of being right. Obama hasn’t convinced me that he didn’t toss a coin.
Something you can count on: When/if we leave Iraq for the most part, and concentrate on Afghanistan, the Mitsus will be complaining about out flawed strategy and insisting the threat is elsewhere.
After all, they’ll say, OBL, if alive, is hiding in a cave someplace and a threat to nobody.
If I understand the concept of a stalking horse, the Mitsus are using Afghanistan as a stalking horse and will abandon it as soon as we begin to put substantially more force there.
They can count on the media to forget it was what they called for.
>the Mitsus will be complaining about out flawed strategy and insisting the threat is elsewhere
All I have to say is, I think that’s an entirely unwarranted accusation, Richard. You seem to think everyone comes up with opinions as a mere political game, in order to make “the other side” look bad no matter what they do. I actually do think a lot, even the majority, of people decide to identify with one “team” or another and support everything their team does and oppose everything the other team does. If there’s anything I stand for it is total opposition to that sort of irrational way of forming political opinions.
Conservatives for years railed against big spending big government, yet now that Bush is in office, only a small percentage of principled conservatives seem to be upset at Bush for completely throwing out that centerpiece of traditional conservatism. They complained about “nation building” and overly idealistic foreign policy — but when Bush does it, again, only a small number of principled foreign policy conservatives stick to their principles and criticize this Administration.
As I’ve said before: I supported the Gulf War, enthusiastically. Started by a Republican. I supported the Afghan war, enthusiastically. Started by this president. I was in favor of welfare reform. I am in favor of fiscal responsibility. I supported the surge though many Democrats opposed it.
Afghanistan is no political stalking horse for me. It is, to my mind, a deadly serious matter deserving far more attention than we’ve been giving it.
Mitsu — As you have pointed out, Obama has lately been a politician speaking for political reasons. I assume this has always been true–including Obama’s much vaunted opposition to the Iraq War. It took little courage to oppose the war given Obama’s constituency at the time and he rode that horse all the way to the nomination.
It’s still too early to pass judgment on the Iraq War. The gains are not “small” at all — the liberation of 25 million from a brutal dictator who was a menace to his own people and to the region, the beginnings of democracy that could shift the balance of Islamic peoples in a healthier direction througout the world, US influence in perhaps the single most strategic country in the Middle East, and the crippling of al-Qaeda as an organization and an influence.
However, the surge is a different matter. It was a clearly defined strategy with a timeframe. Obama didn’t just oppose the surge on general principles, he made predictions that it would fail, and that it would make things worse. He was wrong on every count. At first he lied about the progress; now he is lying about his previous positions and scrubbing his website in an Orwellian fashion.
Now Obama claims that we need to worry about Afghanistan. But why? Last year he was willing to walk out on Iraq even if that meant genocide and a huge victory for al-Qaeda.
In the light of all this how do you justify your support for Obama’s judgment and intelligence?
PS. …not to mention his integrity and honesty.
Conservatives for years railed against big spending big government, yet now that Bush is in office, only a small percentage of principled conservatives seem to be upset at Bush for completely throwing out that centerpiece of traditional conservatism
Are you deaf and blind? Every conservative is outraged at Bush’s spending. I don’t know any who say “Oh that was a good idea”.
They complained about “nation building” and overly idealistic foreign policy – but when Bush does it, again, only a small number of principled foreign policy conservatives stick to their principles and criticize this Administration.
Again, are you deaf and blind?
Do you remember something called 9/11? How barbarians from a lawless failed state used that area as a training ground to attack us?
I guess not.
>Do you remember something called 9/11?
Yes, I remember something called 9/11. Which is why Afghanistan was a war I entirely supported. The Iraq war, on the other hand, was an attempt to create a democratic domino effect by invading a country that wasn’t even remotely involved in the attacks on 9/11. This is precisely the sort of idealistic foreign policy that traditional foreign policy conservatives attacked for years (this is something that you are evidently unaware of).
That’s why the Cato Institute opposed and still opposes the Iraq War, that’s why conservative foreign policy luminaries such as John Mearsheimer and Hans Joachim Morgenthau opposed the war. They used to be the center of gravity of conservative thought on foreign policy, but Bush completely threw that out the window with the Iraq war.
The fact that you don’t even know this speaks volumes about the ignorance of many about the policies of their own “side” — it seems, again, that people tend to identify with a “side” and support it regardless of whether or not it means a rejection of principles that they once supposedly supported.
Mitsu, I find it interesting that while we disagree about the Iraq theater, we both find that things are going as we expected.
As for priority, once the Taliban were removed and AQ dislodged from their bases, they were no longer the threat they had been. Saddam was a threat, and liberating Iraq was the right thing to do at the time.
If Iraq works out well, as it seems to be doing, the strategic gains will be potentially huge, very possibly leading to a far more peaceful Middle East in general.
(I should note that I don’t include Neo in this — because she converted to conservatism when neo-conservatism was on the rise. So she did not reject principles she had embraced before — she accepted the then-current neoconservative principles. So at least in her case, though I of course disagree with her views in many cases, she is not being inconsistent.)
>they were no longer the threat they had been
I agree … but that doesn’t last forever. They have been regrouping. They operate with impunity in the Pakistan northern territories, as our own government has been noting in increasingly urgent reports. They are regaining power in Afghanistan. And, we still haven’t caught, killed, or defeated the leadership of the organization that attacked us.
I do agree, by the way, with the neoconservative view that ultimately we won’t be able to defeat terrorism only by attacking terrorists. We will need to encourage democratic reform. I simply, as I’ve said before, disagree that invading Iraq was an effective means to that end.
The concept of electing a person as President on the assumption that he will change his policies once faced with the realities of the office is one of the most frightening ideas I can imagine.
The idea of supporting Obama because he was right on the war to begin with–which is a matter of pure conjecture–even though he has consistently advocated defeatist strategy is completely ridiculous. Obama is running on a backward looking platform. . .(sic) I was against the war from the beginning. . . That doesn’t make a particle of difference; all that matters is what you plan to do from this point on.
The Left continues to use “neglect of Afghanistan” as a primary basis for criticism. The truth is that once the Taliban was toppled and Al Qaeda displaced, Afghanistan became a side show. Once Iraq is finished we can finish off Afghanistan at our leisure. It is true our Afghanistan effort was set back by depending on NATO. There should be a lesson learned there. NATO is a hollow shell with a rotten core.
The liberation of Iraq served quite a few purposes, only one of which was the hope of it furthering the democratization of the Middle East.
As for the threat Saddam posed, the resolution to authorize us of US forces lays them out well: http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2002/10/20021002-2.html
Basically, Saddam’s regime supported terrorist organizations and terrorists, threatened surrounding nations, was in violation of UNSC resolutions, was in violation of the ceasefire that ended open conflict in 1991, was pursuing WMDs which could have been turned over to terrorists, regularly fired on Coalition aircraft, was terrorizing his own people, and etc. Not mentioned was that containment was not only counterproductive, but was being used by Saddam’s regime to generate anti-US propaganda and by terrorist organizations to recruit terrorists.
Involvement in the 9/11 attacks is irrelevant. We had been at war with Iraq since 1991, and for all of the above reasons, removing Saddam was the right thing to do.
It is interesting that you supported beginning the war against Saddam, but not ending it with liberation. Containment had been a horrendous failure. Saddam circumvented sanctions, intentionally starved his own people (well, not HIS people, but people he ruled) and used their suffering and death to fuel hatred of the US, funneled money to terrorist organizations, and bribed UN officials to play along. Our choices were liberation, continued containment (which the UNSC as well as the world was turning against), or let Saddam’s regime off the hook, which would have been a huge victory for him and would have led to more war (first against the Kurds) and his resumption of WMD development.
> I agree … but that doesn’t last forever.
True, and as you rightly point out they are making a comeback. It was a matter of judgment, but we couldn’t pursue them into Pakistan without causing another war, and once they were down, shifting to another key theater was a valid strategy. (I know you don’t consider Iraq as having been a key theater in 2003, but I do, so it’s a valid strategy from my viewpoint.)
I think also that AQ should be viewed as the military arm of a greater movement. As everyone has said (both Bush and Bush’s critics, anyway), there is no military-only solution. Addressing the roots of the movement is more important than simply fighting it’s armed branches. If the roots, the motivation for fighting, are destroyed, the armed branches will wither and die of their own accord. The liberation of Iraq and the attempt to spread democracy were an attempt to destroy terrorism at the recruiting office instead of the battlefield.
Mitsu.
Ref stalking horse. We’ll see, once it starts getting the bulk of our business.
You will recall that, before the dust of 9-11 settled, people were insisting we not go to war in A. Once we went to war in I, A seemed like a good alternative.
IMO, that’s only temporary.
>people were insisting we not go to war in A
Some “people” were, mostly on the farther reaches of the left, but I was not one of those people. Most people I know, liberal or conservative, supported that war.
The Iraq war itself was … not worth it.
If President Bush succeeds in the making of Iraq into a friendly democratic nation He will be hailed by historians as one of America’s best Presidents.
Shiite terrorists are on the wan, ditto Shiite militias – mostly due to the Iraqi Army. Jointly, the Iraqi Army and the US have al Qaeda scurrying around trying to survive. The Iraqi government has made good progress, especially considering that the government’s existence dates only from October of 2005. Having a friendly ally in a hostile region would change the previously bleak political dynamics of the Middle East for the better.
Throughout the Iraq War the enemy has been confined mainly to roadside bombs, suicide bombs against civilians, blowing up symbolic buildings such as the Golden Mosque and an occasional sniper. As a result US casualties have been kept low, historically low for such a major conflict.
Obama would throw out all this progress and tremendous potential. leaving Iraq to al Qaeda and Iran. Iran has caused much mischief in Iraq. We can expect to see that roguery magnified ten-fold if they have Iraq from which mount a campaign into Afghanistan.
Right now the Taliban is confined to operations out of the tribal areas of Pakistan. Since the cease-fire in 2006 between the Pakistan government and the tribal militants the Taliban has used these provinces to regroup and strengthen their forces. They have been able to harass the border areas of Afghanistan. With an enemy infiltrating Afghanistan from strongholds in an abandoned Iraq and their allies coming over the mountains from Pakistan they would no doubt be able to up their kills exponentially. Obama’s plan to abandon Iraq in order to send more troops into Afghanistan would only play into the hands of the enemy.
If Iraq is abandoned Afghanistan will inexorably follow unless a future administration decides to go back into Iraq. Some are bothered by blunders. No longer able to claim Iraq as a quagmire they would abandon Iraq because of what they view as mistakes previously made in Iraq by President Bush. Or because they think toppling Saddam was unnecessary. In doing so they would destroy the progress in Iraq and jeopardize Afghanistan.