Perhaps the best sober analysis I have seen of Barack Obama's thinking on Iraq policy and strategy is John Dickerson's piece on Slate.
When Karen Tumulty of Time asked Obama what he'd learned on his trip, he said, "It confirmed a lot of my beliefs." Lara Logan of CBS asked him if he was ever in doubt that he could lead the country in war as commander in chief, and he answered, "Never." After seven and a half years of George Bush, we should pause when a man auditioning for president says that the facts confirmed his beliefs and that he's never in doubt. As Obama himself has warned us at other moments, these are signs that a fearless leader may be letting ideology or rigidity steer him in the wrong direction.
Well, yes. Obama is surely right to want to assure us all that he is up to the job of President, but just as surely the right thing to say was: "of course." Then he could point out that any serious person would have some doubts in the face of such an awesome job, but that he is confident that he is the best person to take it on. His unequivocal "never" shows us how much of a typical twenty-first politician he is.
But a more serious question is whether he can respond to events in the world, and change his mind when changing is warranted. After all, this is supposed to be George W.'s biggest flaw, that he always responds to failure by "doubling down."
The main complexity Obama has to confront in Iraq is the apparent success of the most recent phase of U.S. military strategy, of which the troop surge was a key part. Violence has come down from stratospheric heights. The success is relative (violence is still at 2005 levels), but the situation is far better than Obama predicted. When he voted against the surge in January 2007, he claimed on more than one occasion that it would lead to increased casualties and sectarian violence. It didn't. How'd he get that one wrong? In January 2007, Obama claimed that the Iraqi government would make no hard choices if the United States stayed. But they have made hard choices. Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki launched incursions into Basra and confronted cleric Muqtada Sadr, both of which helped pave the way for the Sunni faction's return to the government. This is not enough progress to suggest Iraq is anywhere near stable, but like the drop in violence, it's more than Obama predicted.
The success of the surge strategy in Iraq is one of the most important new, and encouraging facts that one must think about when trying to get a handle on what we should do next. Paradoxically, it makes it easier to contemplate staying in Iraq or leaving. But as Dickerson points out, "Obama still holds the same policy views he did more than a year and a half ago."
I would add to what Dickerson says that Obama has a unique problem here. His single most important claim on behalf of his candidacy is that he was opposed to the Iraq war from the beginning. Of course, he did not get to vote on it at the beginning, so we don't really know what he would have done. If he was in the Senate at the time, would he have acted on principle and voted no, or would he have acted like Kerry and voted for it before he voted against it? I think all the evidence points to the latter.
But when he did get to vote, he voted against the surge. That might have been the most important vote he cast in the Senate, and it was a mistake. Perhaps Obama thinks that to admit that mistake, and the mistaken thinking underlying the vote, would undermine the case he is making for himself. Maybe. But as Dickerson points out:
In his book The Audacity of Hope, he writes about pulling aside reporters who were living in Iraq to get their views about the war. He expected them to agree with his call for a troop reduction. They didn't. They said a troop reduction would start a civil war. Obama called for a troop reduction anyway, but we know his mind is alive enough to capture and remember a piece of data that didn't fit with his pre-existing views. Are contradictory observations fine for a book but off-limits when you're a political candidate? Admitting you're wrong, or even that your thinking has evolved, is risky for a politician. Maybe too risky. That's certainly what George Bush believes.
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