Nathan Moore's Thoughts
Obama’s Flacks on Overdrive
Susan Rice, the most “qualified” Barack Obama adviser, was on MSNBC’s Morning Joe moments ago explaining how Barack Obama’s “timetable” to retreat from Iraq is not the same as a “fixed deadline”.
Say what?
So, if you intend to leave Iraq 16 months from today, then - barring a rift in the space-time continuum - you are expecting to depart on a particular day, 16 months from now. We get a new detail, too - Obama wanted to pull out of Iraq so that more troops could go to Afghanistan. Considering that he chairs a subcommittee with oversight authority over NATO forces in the Afghan theater. and has yet to hold a single hearing on the topic, this line of rationale reeks of disbelief. That Obama was willing to lose a country that functions as the lynchpin of Middle Eastern stability in order to stabilize the Afghanistan government is small comfort.
Susan Rice also poo-pooed Henry Kissinger’s editorial in The Washington Post today which, in a fittingly diplomatic way, described Obama’s position on Iraq as asinine
Establishing a deadline is the surest way to undermine the hopeful prospects. It will encourage largely defeated internal groups to go underground until a world more congenial to their survival arises with the departure of American forces. Al-Qaeda will have a deadline against which to plan a full-scale resumption of operations. And it will give Iran an incentive to strengthen its supporters in the Shiite community for the period after the American withdrawal. Establishing a fixed deadline would also dissipate assets needed for the diplomatic endgame.
No matter what Rice says, saying we will leave Iraq in 16 months means…we will leave Iraq in 16 months. Kissinger’s analysis is not rocket science - one does not have to have spent decades in diplomatic circles to understand it. It is logically very simple. Most worrisome is that Barack Obama seems completely unable to comprehend it. The only explanation that makes any sense of Obama’s Iraq position is the McCain camp’s retort that he is willing to lose a war to win an election. Indeed, he is steadfast in it.
The only thing more ridiculous than Obama’s ideas is the way his surrogates have to defend them.
July 31st, 2008 at 4:44 pm
Obama’s plan is to remove 1-2 brigades a month, and under that scenario, they should all be out within 16 months. He’s repeatedly said that he’d reserve the right to adjust the rate of withdrawal based on the conditions inside Iraq.
July 31st, 2008 at 5:44 pm
Most wars are done when the enemy is no longer capable of waging war, BO just seems to want to get out. If I were the bad guys, I would just cool it long enough to give the evil Americans a false sense of “all is well in the world, let’s just all get along”, let them leave, and surprise, surprise, as Gomer would say, I can do whatever I please. If I were a bad guy in Iraq, I would vote for BO if I could, I would even contribute to his cause, heck, maybe I already have?