Obama, McCain, Biden posture on Iraq

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By Bill | September 13, 2007 | Email This Post

It’s been an active few days for the candidates on the subject of Iraq. This is understandable; General Petraeus’ testimony before Senate panels that included five Presidential hopefuls provided an opportunity that anyone running for the White House would be foolish to ignore. The spectacle was a perfect backdrop in front of which a thoughtful Presidential candidate might gain media exposure for their reasoned proposal to an intractable problem. Failing that, it at least gave them a platform on which to grandstand.

Unfortunately, the latter option prevailed.

As all such affairs go, everyone in the room had their mind made up well before the General began speaking. His central point - the surge appears to be working, let’s give it a chance to see how it holds up - is a favorable one to the troops on the ground, who presumably have more reason than anyone to dispute a strategy that does not work. John McCain was the lone voice among Presidential hopefuls on the panel to share the same view, saying, “I choose to win, I choose to stay and I choose to support these young men and women and let them win.” In making the statement, McCain chooses to view the surge as something different (and more likely to succeed) than the way in which the war in Iraq has been conducted thus far, saying the current state of affairs is “the terrible price we have paid for nearly four years of mismanaged war.”

Joe Biden sees it differently, as do Senators Obama, Clinton, and Dodd. Biden, always a savvy player, used his Chairmanship of the proceedings to maximum effect, making the excellent point that the current administration’s plan - if one can call it that - smacks of dumping the problem onto the next President. But he then went on to squander the insight offered by such a point by offering General Petraeus a hypotheical question about maintaining troop levels into next year in the context of the progress that will or will not have been made by that time and, when Petraeus declined to answer, Biden offered his own summation: “I would pray you’d be wise enough not to recommend it.” Come on, Senator Biden; you know very well that it’s impossible in a situation as complex as Iraq to offer a meaningful answer based on a one-sentence scenario lobbed at a witness during a political trial. It was beneath of you to try and make partisan points through such an obvious ploy. What’s worse, you didn’t even offer a good sound bite.

Senator Obama was similarly unpersuaded by Petraeus’ remarks, and used six of his eight allotted minutes to talk rather than inquire. “We are now confronted with the question: How do we clean up the mess and make the best out of a situation in which there are no good options, there are bad options and worse options?” the Senator asked, following his words up the next day with the slightly inconsistent offering that “The president would have us believe there are two choices: keep all of our troops in Iraq or abandon these Iraqis. I reject this choice.” Rather, Obama would have the United States start withdrawing combat troops immediately and enter into a working group of other nations that would collectively seek to stabilize Iraq.

The problem in all this is that neither side has defined the end state America should hope to seek, at least not in realistic terms. Some questions that might be addressed:

McCain wants to “win;” fine, but what does that mean? At what point can we declare Iraq stable? Similarly, what outcome do the Democrats hope to achieve?
Biden’s claims that Bush intends to dump this problem on the next administration; if that’s true, does Obama’s suggestion that we address the problem through a multinational effort mean we’re dumping the problem on the rest of the world? We should at least be forthright about this abdication of duty, since the USA created this mess.
Biden also makes the point that the seeming effectiveness of the surge is a temporary thing. Well, of course it is; it’s much harder for terrorists to cause trouble if there’s a soldier with a gun on every corner. So the question for Republicans is how to turn the surge into long-term success.
The Democrats, responding to popular opinion, want to get out of Iraq, and the sooner the better. But what happens then? The Iraqi government is in no shape to manage its own country, and by all accounts may not be for the foreseeable future. If the United States picks up and leaves, do we condemn Iraq to a bloodbath, to be taken in a basin we filled to the brim? The answer is likely yes; if so, our choices would seem to be 1) stay and do our best prevent such a horror, or 2) agree that it is an outcome with which we’re willing to live. If the point is that no amount of Iraqi lives are worth more American lives, I’m willing to entertain the argument, but no one is taking the trouble to come out and say that explicitly.
Chris Dodd and other Democrats suggest that we publicly state a deadline for leaving Iraq, with the thought that the sober reality of a definite American departure will cause the Iraqi government to make greater strides in their own ability. Does anyone really believe this? As if regular assassinations, being occupied by a foreign power and your country ripping itself apart around you isn’t incentive enough?
What about Iran? One used to hear the term “power vacuum” thrown around in international affairs; does not our departure create just such a situation here? Will not Iran step in to fill it?
Bush would have us believe that we’re fighting terrorists over there so that we will not have to fight them over here. Others disagree with that statement. For myself, I doubt that he had the foresight to know the invasion would turn Iraq into the terrorist magnet that it is today, but it’s certainly serendipitous that the young jihadists who blow themselves up on a daily basis are traveling to Baghdad rather than New York. Where will they go to practice their trade once there are no American targets left in that country? Surely, they will not simply remove their suicide belts and take a nice holiday on the coast?
Osama Bin Laden has made the point that, like the Soviets before us, the USA has no stomach for a prolonged conflict and that his organization can outlast us. Should we leave, what about the recruiting boost he will get when he is proved prescient?
The cost in American lives from the Iraq war is certainly not insignificant; 3104 combat deaths as I write this. Can the Republicans claim that these deaths are justified, either by the results achieved so far (whatever they may be) or in the light of the eventual outcome we’re seeking (whatever that may be?) And if we continue to fight and fall short of that goal, will the effort still have been worth it?
And perhaps the saddest point of all: I get the sense that both parties are looking forward to using Iraq as an issue in the election (Democrats: “end the war,” Republicans: “win the war.”) If both parties see the war as politically expedient, as repellent to the rest of us as that view might be, it’s unlikely that any actual progress will be made.

In short, the Republicans need to tell me what they hope to ultimately achieve by our continued presence in Iraq and what steps they are taking to accomplish it. The Democrats need to tell me why the terrible fallout that will result from our departure is something I should be willing to accept.

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