The More Things Change, the More They Don’t

Turns out he's not going home any time soon.

There are currently around 142,000 U.S. troops in Iraq.  During his presidential campaign, Barack Obama cast himself as the “anti-Iraq” candidate saying many times over how he would withdrawal American forces from that country should he be elected president.  With an unpopular war underway, Americans latched on to his promises and, put over the top by a weakened U.S. economy and high oil prices, captured the top job in the country.  Now it has been reported that he has set the withdrawn deadline for August of 2010.  Or has he?

According to the President, the U.S. will leave 50,000 of our soldiers in Iraq to train police and military forces, hunt for terrorists, and make sure the country doesn’t fall apart.  So, in effect, President Obama has pledged to reduce our presence there by less than 66%.  To Republicans like John McCain, this is a good thing but for Democratic Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, this isn’t so positive:

“I have long been for a significant drawback of troops in Iraq,” he said. “Fifty thousand is a higher number than I anticipated.”

It’s rather ironic that the former Republican presidential candidate would be in favor of this plan while the second highest elected Democrat thinks it’s not so positive.  In fact, it’s not just Harry Reid who is upset:

“Some leading Democrats have expressed disquiet over the size of the residual force that will remain in Iraq after the combat troops withdraw. House speaker Nancy Pelosi said she would prefer to see a force of fewer than 20,000.”

When he was president, George W. Bush not only resisted calls to set a date for withdraw but also refused to promise that there would even be a withdraw.  For his stance he was mocked by Democrats.  Indeed, on the campaign trail, John McCain said the U.S. could be in Iraq for 100 years.  What President Obama says he will do is leave about the same number of U.S. troops in Iraq as we have left in Korea since the 1950s!

“It’s not a matter of how long we’re in Iraq, it’s if we succeed or not,” McCain said.

The angry words and insults flowed forth from Democrats everywhere that either man would dare to be so honest.  So, instead of honesty, they picked “Hope.”  It turns out that “Hope” is not just in Arkansas or in the words of a Senator from Illinois, it was also in the minds of naive voters who believed what they were being told.

Of course, the 50,000 U.S. troops that are to remain in Iraq might end up being many more than that if “conditions change” there:

McCain, the ranking Republican on the Senate Armed Services Committee, said that a “failing situation in Iraq has been arrested and reversed” due to the “dramatic success of the surge strategy.”

He also praised Obama’s willingness to leave behind a significant residual force and reassess the situation if conditions change in the future.

Had Obama been in charge, no surge, no "success."

My issue is not with the withdraw plan proposed by President Obama.  Indeed, I think the president has listened to military commanders and made the correct assessment of the situation.  Because President Obama is listening to people who have more experience about Iraq I think he is acting in the best interest of our troops and he is to be praised for that.  What I do take exception to are that, during the campaign, Obama clearly gave the impression that the U.S. would exit Iraq when, being the intelligent man that he is, he surely knew that his “exit strategy” was surely no different than what former President George W. Bush or Republican candidate John McCain would have done.  When you are talking about the lives and courage of U.S. soldiers and the policy of a nation you should not be pandering to your supporters allowing them to believe the impression you leave with them knowing full well it is inaccurate.

And what of the anti-war Obama supporters who engaged in vile insults at two politicians who were honest about U.S. policy in Iraq, whether you agree with the premise of the war or not?  Do you think that Nacny Pelosi, Harry Reid, or the many others who have spent the last eight years attacking the policies of the Executive Branch concerning Iraq would have reacted with such diplomatic talk had a Republican won the presidency?  The answer is, of course, that they wouldn’t.

In their dreams?

In President Obama’s speech at Camp Lejeune he remarked:

“Thanks in great measure to your service,” he said, “the situation in Iraq has improved. Violence has been reduced substantially from the horrific sectarian killing of 2006 and 2007.

“Al-Qaida in Iraq has been dealt a serious blow by our troops and Iraq’s Security Forces, and through our partnership with Sunni Arabs,” Obama continued. “The capacity of Iraq’s Security Forces has improved, and Iraq’s leaders have taken steps toward political accommodation.”

Contrast his statements now with those of 2007 before former President George W. Bush’s surge was put into place:

“I don’t think the president’s strategy is going to work. We went through two weeks of hearings on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee; experts from across the spectrum–military and civilian, conservative and liberal–expressed great skepticism about it… he [President Bush] continues to cling to the belief that somehow military solutions are going to lead to victory in Iraq.”

While it would be highly unlikely for the current president to credit the former president with finally taking a strategy that worked in Iraq, it is because of that strategy which Obama opposed that he is in the position to withdraw any U.S. forces!

So, in the end, we have a Democratic president making probably the very same decision that a Republican president would make concerning Iraq.  Where is the outcry?  All I can say is that President Obama made the correct decision but he did so via a path of obfuscation during his candidacy.

It will be very interesting to see if Obama supporters realize how they have been duped and whether they will change their opinions of George W. Bush and/or John McCain based upon the new information they have.  Probably not but this would be a better country if they did.