McCain, Obama sharply divided on Iraq goals

By Michael R. Gordon

updated 5:37 a.m. ET Oct. 6, 2008

WASHINGTON - One of the most pressing questions Senator Barack Obama or Senator John McCain would confront if elected president is how to build on the security gains in Iraq at a time when troop levels have begun to drop.

The issue was barely discussed in last month’s foreign policy debate. But in recent interviews with The New York Times, the two candidates made clear that they would confront the challenge in starkly different ways.

In the interviews, Mr. Obama and Mr. McCain offered conflicting visions of how to shrink the American military presence in Iraq, the best way to encourage further political progress there and what it would mean to succeed after more than five years of war.

They also provided telling clues about how much flexibility the next commander in chief would grant to his generals, including Gen. David H. Petraeus, the former top American general in Iraq who has been named to lead the Central Command, which oversees operations in the Middle East and Afghanistan.

Mr. Obama, who noted that General Petraeus wanted “maximum flexibility” in setting withdrawal schedules, said he “pushed back” when he met with the commander in July by making the case for sending more forces to Afghanistan, which the Democratic candidate views as the main battleground against terrorists.

Mr. McCain, who argued that a favorable outcome in Iraq is vital for American strategy in the Middle East and its overall efforts against terrorists, repeatedly invoked General Petraeus’s counterinsurgency strategy and said he would be inclined to give General Petraeus considerable latitude in setting force levels in Iraq.

Obama's timetable
At the heart of the dispute is Mr. Obama’s 16-month schedule for withdrawing American combat brigades, a timetable that is about twice as fast as that provided for in a draft American and Iraqi accord. Would that deadline spur the Iraqis to overcome their political differences and enable the United States to stabilize Iraq at far lower troop levels, as Mr. Obama asserts?

Or would it tie the hands of commanders and undermine political progress when the security gains in Iraq are still fragile, as Mr. McCain contends? How would Mr. McCain try to promote political progress and better governance in Iraq, when he insists that circumstances on the ground, not the calendar, should determine the pace of reductions?

“The danger with Obama’s rigid timetable is that it may not allow U.S. commanders to react to events on the ground,” said Toby Dodge, a specialist on Iraq at the University of London and a former adviser to General Petraeus. “McCain’s policies lack the detail needed to confront the challenges of politics in Iraq. Policies developed to please the party faithful are not being subjected to close electoral scrutiny and do not match the complex political and military realties of Iraq.”

Mr. McCain was interviewed on Sept. 17 for 38 minutes in Grand Rapids, Mich. Mr. Obama was interviewed for 27 minutes on Sept. 20 as his campaign plane flew to Charlotte, N.C. In each case, that was as much time as the candidates would allot.

Withdrawing U.S. troops
There is no question that the American reinforcements dispatched by President Bush have helped reduce sectarian violence, both directly through military operations and indirectly by helping encourage the spread of the Awakening movement, in which neighborhood watch groups have taken on Sunni extremists.

Iraq’s Parliament also took an important political step recently by calling for provincial elections to be held in most parts of the country by the end of January. The hope is that Sunnis and Shiites who boycotted earlier votes will participate, broadening the base of support for the Iraqi government.

But American commanders have also warned that the situation remains fragile, and that there has been mixed or no political progress in other areas. For the candidate who is elected, the challenge will be to sustain the reduction in violence and encourage political headway now that the “surge” of combat brigades is over and the military is scheduled to withdraw yet another brigade by February.

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On the surface, the two candidates’ views on troop cuts appear to have converged: each candidate envisions reductions in American forces over his first term, as does the Iraqi government. But the similarities vanish upon closer inspection.

Mr. Obama’s position on troop cuts was forged in late 2006 as Iraq appeared to be approaching a full-scale civil war. Drawing on the bipartisan Iraq Study Group report, he opposed Mr. Bush’s troop reinforcement plan and sponsored legislation in January 2007 that would have removed all American combat brigades by the end of March 2008, while allowing a small force to remain for training, counterterrorism and the protection of the American Embassy and its personnel.

At that time, American intelligence agencies warned in a national intelligence estimate that the removal of all American and allied forces within 18 months would “almost certainly” lead to a significant increase in sectarian fighting, suggesting that the speedy, if partial, withdrawal advocated by Mr. Obama would also risk a major increase in violence.

Since then, the gains made during the surge and Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki’s assertion of sovereignty have transformed the issue from a question of whether to start reducing brigades to a question of how fast and under what circumstances.

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