Why Obama’s Iraq policy created a media tizzy

No rigid timetable for pullout
Troops should be withdrawn, he said in 2006, but the president should “work with our military commanders” to figure out the best plan to do so.

“I am not suggesting this timetable be overly rigid,” he said.  “We should be willing to adjust to the realties on the ground.” What Obama said last week echoes this.

And the withdrawal, Obama said in 2006, “could be suspended if at any point U.S. commanders believe that a further reduction would put American troops in danger.”

“Drawing down our troops in Iraq will allow us to redeploy additional troops to Northern Iraq” — which is also in Iraq — “and elsewhere in the in the region as an over-the-horizon force” to “allow our troops to strike directly at al Qaida wherever it may exist” — in Iraq, for instance.

And he said some U.S. troops might need to remain in Iraq in order to “send a clear message to hostile countries like Iran and Syria that we intend to remain a key player in this region.”

It’s true that by September 2007 he had become more specific in his timetable: “our drawdown should proceed at a steady pace of one or two brigades each month. If we start now, all of our combat brigades should be out of Iraq by the end of next year (2008).”

But everyone knew that withdrawal would not “start now” (in 2007) — since President Bush would not order it, and there weren’t enough votes in Congress would not vote to force it.

Sounding the pragmatic note
Obama sounded the note of the pragmatist in April 2007.

Video Obama on Iraq April 26: Sen. Barack Obama talks about his stance on the war in Iraq at the Democratic presidential debate. MSNBC

If Bush vetoed an Iraq spending bill that included a withdrawal timeline, then Obama said Congress would go ahead and provide the money anyway, because no lawmaker “wants to play chicken with our troops.”

“Obama caves to Bush,” declared an irate Markos Moulitsas Zuniga of the Daily Kos web site reacting to Obama’s statement. Moulitsas called Obama’s stance “ridiculous.”

“Not only is it bad policy, not only is it bad politics, it's also a terrible negotiating approach. Instead of threatening Bush with even more restrictions and daring him to veto funding for the troops out of pique, Barack just surrendered to him.”

Clinton argument fails
And Clinton tried the line of attack that Obama had been too slow to come around to calling for withdrawal. “In fact, he voted for over $300 billion in funds for the war and waited 18 months to speak on the Senate floor about Iraq, delivering a speech AGAINST the (2006) Kerry amendment that set a hard deadline for withdrawal,” Clinton’s campaign complained in March.

But neither the Daily Kos argument nor the Clinton argument persuaded enough Democratic voters.

The singular advantage Obama had over his rivals Clinton and John Edwards is that he hadn’t voted for the 2002 Iraq war resolution. In fact some voters were convinced that he had voted against it, (an impossibility since he wasn’t a member of the Senate in 2002).

In a sense when it came to Iraq, the Democratic primary season was always more about the past than the future.

And while there were other contenders who also didn’t vote for the 2002 Iraq resolution, (New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson, former Sen. Mike Gravel, Rep. Dennis Kucinich), primary voters didn’t find them sufficiently credible or appealing.

And that’s how voters got to this point, with the questions facing the would-be president — “What kind of troop presence do we need to have a counterterrorism strike force in Iraq that assures that al Qaida does not regain a foothold there?”  — to be answered some day in the future.

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