…and that’s a good thing. Obama has consistently refused to commit to an unequivocal withdrawal, always laying out loopholes for why he might not withdraw troops from Iraq as soon as promised. He has, however, promised to begin the troop drawdown process – which is also President Bush’s policy post-surge. However, its clear from his comments that a sizable force will likely remain in Iraq for quite a while, and given that he plans to increase forces in Afghanistan, I expect that increasing the military budget is necessary. He’s alluded to that in his foreign policy speeches but it’s obviously not part of his stump.
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Problem is, his attack ads scream about Bush/McCain "wasting" $10 billion a month in Iraq. Â I’d like to believe he’s going to be a moderate liberal, but his voting record and rhetoric have consistently said he was going to draw down the military.I would like to see things differently, but I highly doubt that it will happen that way.
bwohlgemuth’s last blog post..From A White Sox Fan To A Cubs Fan
That’s what I’ve been saying for months, Aziz. Indeed, I don’t see how the various missions he’s outlined for the troops in Iraq can be accomplished with fewer than 50,000-80,000.  That’s what’s logistically required anyway and, since both logistics require and conditions in Iraq warrant a draw down of forces, a draw down of forces there will be.
I do think that your criticism of Republican plans is persiflage. As I’ve said before McCain would withdraw some forces from Iraq and call it "victory" while Obama would withdraw some forces from Iraq and call it "ending the war".
The only ones likely to be surprised by what happens in Iraq are those who equate “ending the war” with complete withdrawal.
I think, Dave, that McCain would probably not do too much different from Obama in Iraq, but the crucial difference is that McCain would not attend to Afghanistan either. We are definitely losing our strategic objectives there and McCain has never mentioned afghanistan on teh stump, and has no policy statement on his website. (well, he didnt a few months ago anyway – havent checked since). Whats liely is that McCain will treat Afghanistan the same way as Bush has done – primarily relying on air power rather than supplyming more boots on the ground. The situation in Waziristan is markedly different from the Anbar one and so a repeat of the Surge tactic will not work, but McCain argues explicitly that it will (there rae significant differences in terrain, for one; another is that the Al Qaeda in Iraq lot are not popular at all, whereas Al Qaeda in Afghanistan are folk heroes, so there is no community counterinsurgency support from the populace. part of this is because of the air-power approach that we have been using there).
Also, Pakistan policy under McCain is not going to be too diffferent from the "find a strongman" approach of Bush. Obamas selection of the single most well-informed, expert analyst in the Senate on India and Pakistan as his vice prez will really pay off.
Obama pledge on Iraq & on nuclear weapons.
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I can’t vote for Obama as I believe he’s been irresponsible on Iraq since the beginning, and frankly I’m still annoyed that he talked irresponsibly about Iraq to win the primary, Clinton talked much more responsibly and lost, and now he’s basically flipped over to a position in no way different from Clinton or Bush on the matter–which is a relief to me, but blows away any sense of trust or respect for him that I might have when it comes to this. And I still worry that he’s far to shallow on this stuff and may well do something really stupid in his first year in office regarding this that can’t be undone; I keep thinking of Kennedy’s disastrous actions regarding the Bay of Pigs as a comparison.
That said, I find it likely that you are correct and that Obama won’t do anything different from what we already expected to happen and what was already planned. Which is why I’m not too scared just yet of Obama.
As for Afghanistan: we’ve always known that’s a much tougher nut to crack. The country is much much poorer, much more isolated, much more of a cultural backwater, with literacy almost nonexistent and a still frighteningly young average population; you genuinely are talking about people still living in the Middle Ages there, for the most part. That’s going to take years and years of effort, and big public works projects and military operations aren’t going to do it.
We probably actually will be at war in Afghanistan for another decade or more. Iraq we’ll be in for many many many years, but "war" won’t be part of that equation for much longer as long as we stay smart.
Most sane people realized that when Obama actually sat in the Oval Office (or got close enough that it seemed likely) his fundamental appeal to the moonbat crazy Left which launched his campaign would have to deal with actual reality on things like Iraq.
I’ve never seriously considered it likely that Obama would abandon Iraq. I’m far more concerned about his domestic policy and his SCOTUS appointments than his pursuit of obvious national security issues where his own advisers would revolt if he put the USA at real risk.
It’s no coincidence that the great majority of the very same Democrats who now attack Bush unmercifully for the Iraq War originally voted for it. The vote was a national security thing, the attacks on Bush are pure politics. I don’t think even Democrats have yet completely lost sight of the difference between the two.
Some have. Maybe many have. But I sincerely hope MOST have not. Yet.
CosmicConservative’s last blog post..The coming Obama thugocracy?
Was Biden talking about Obama’s plan for a unilateral disarmament ? Biden knows Obama will need the Left to support the consequences of its Kucinich vision for American foreign policy. That’s what the warning meant, and this video is ample evidence of the direction Obama will take in national security.
In Afghanistan we need to revise our objectives downward to what is actually achievable given the facts on the ground. If more attention to Afghanistan is construed as more boots on the ground, it’s a losing strategy.
As I’ve been arguing for some time, the only practical course of action open to us in Afghanistan is to settle in for a long engagement. I don’t think that means a larger force; I think it means a force with a different mission.
Dave:
I’m not really that sophisticated about global geopolitics, but for some reason I have always felt that Afghanistan’s success or failure is more based on our relationship and alliances with their neighbors than what goes on inside Afghanistan itself. I do think more boots on the ground is a way to help maintain some semblance of order as we deal with the actual root causes of the problem in that area. I don’t find it to be a coincidence that Afghanistan resistance is so difficult to root out in a country that borders both Pakistan and Iran.
CosmicConservative’s last blog post..The coming Obama thugocracy?
Agreed with Cosmic, Dave -I dont see why the need for more boots is a losing strategy by definition. Fundamentally, the solution to Afghaistan is to weed out radicals who are a threat in eth short term while erasing it as a haven for those radicals in the long term. These are achievable goals, but requires more sensitive instruments than dropping bombs.
I think success in Iraq is tied to common cause with Iran in a regional sense. A negitiation with Iran in which we supply them nuclear material for power, they pemrit fully open inspections of thenir plants, and we work together in terms of Iraq stability, is ideal. Thats more likely under Obama than McCain, the latter who seems to accept the binary formulation of Iran as Evil Enemy Incarnate.
Aziz:
Anyone who thinks Iran is going to give us "open inspections of their plants" and work together with us on "terms of Iraq stability" is simply not operating with a full deck.
This, in fact, is the fundamental foreign policy issue I have with Obama. As you so aptly demonstrate, it is foreign policy based on naive wishful thinking. (Which actually is a fair description of his domestic policy too.)
Again, I have to hope that Obama’s actual advisers will remind him that appealing to the better nature of theocrats and despots has never been a successful policy. And I have to hope that he’s clever enough to realize that, even if many of his supporters are not.
CosmicConservative’s last blog post..The coming Obama thugocracy?
CC, i have reasons for my opinion on Iran. Ill maybe do a post on it later.
Realistically I don’t think Obama will abanodon Iraq or Afghanistan. I think his advisers will do what Greenspan did to Clinton after Clinton won in ‘92, they’ll pull him aside and deflate his idealism with a megadose of reality. But this goes to the main reason I can’t vote for the man now and prefer him to spend more time in the Senate or better yet serve as Govenor of Illinois before becoming President: he has no track record so we do not know what to expect from the man.
On about every issue that matters to me he has been all over the map. Yes most politicians change positions to get votes but he seems to be a very egregious in his tendency to flip and flop. At the end of the day he is just too much of an unknown factor.
So are we suppossed to be happy that he is deceitful to his supporters?Â
Frankly, I’d rather see someone who I thought had the basic character to honestly say what they would do, even if I didn’t agree with it then someone who didn’t have a lot of intergrity but would do what I prefered.Â
Dave Justus’s last blog post..Obama: give me another $10
Dave:
I mostly agree with you, and this is why I think character counts, and I frankly find Obama’s character to be different than the character that I believe belongs in the White House.
However, I think no matter who gets elected President, they are going to get a mega-dose of reality when they sit in the Oval Office and I suspect even some of my cherished notions about what I would do in that chair might come crashing to a painful end once I saw what their actual implementation might do.
I’ll give Obama the benefit of the doubt that he can learn and pick a better course. In that sense I like the idea that a person can react to reality and change some core beliefs once presented with an accurate picture of reality which forces them to revise their notions. FDR, for example, ran for office as an isolationist who would stay out of European affairs, but once he sat in that office and saw what that policy would mean, he became one of the most committed warmongers we’ve ever seen in that office. And good for him, that was the right thing to do.
CosmicConservative’s last blog post..Toon of the Day
If staying in Iraq is a very important issue to you, than really just go vote for McCain because its guaranteed he’ll stay there.
No point trying to justify it by looking for cryptic messages from Obama.
If Obama is seen to be following Bush’s views on Iraq, than by 2010 he can kiss goodbye to the democratic congress/senate
I echo Scott’s statement: Wishful thinking is the underpinning of Obama’s foreign policy. And we don’t know what to expect from Obama post-election in any type of foreign conflict at all, really. He’s a liberal illuminati wild card. It’s even more disturbing that his supporters think they know what he is going to do. Electing him is like getting married to someone you think you know, but he turns out to be a complete stranger.
[I]t’s clear from [Obama's] comments that a sizable force will likely remain in Iraq for quite a while, and given that he plans to increase forces in Afghanistan, I expect that increasing the military budget is necessary.
Not necessarily: “In a meeting with the editorial board of The Standard-Times, Rep. Frank, D-Mass., also called for a 25 percent cut in military spending, saying the Pentagon has to start choosing from its many weapons programs, and that upper-income taxpayers are going to see an increase in what they are asked to pay. The military cuts also mean getting out of Iraq sooner, he said.”
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