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Clay · Guest

by Peter Wehner

In his New York Times op-ed today on Iraq, Barack Obama makes several
claims worth examining.

In his opening paragraph, Obama writes

The call by Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki for a timetable for
the removal of American troops from Iraq presents an enormous
opportunity. We should seize this moment to begin the phased
redeployment of combat troops that I have long advocated, and that is
needed for long-term success in Iraq and the security interests of the
United States.

A phased redeployment of combat troops can now be done in the context
of a victory in Iraq, whereas when Obama first called for the complete
withdrawal of all combat troops in Iraq by March 2008, it would have
led to an American defeat. It is because President Bush endorsed a
counterinsurgency plan which Senator Obama fiercely opposed that we
are in a position to both withdraw additional combat troops and
prevail in Iraq.

Obama goes on to write

In the 18 months since President Bush announced the surge, our troops
have performed heroically in bringing down the level of violence. New
tactics have protected the Iraqi population, and the Sunni tribes have
rejected Al Qaeda - greatly weakening its effectiveness.

But the same factors that led me to oppose the surge still hold true.
The strain on our military has grown, the situation in Afghanistan has
deteriorated and we’ve spent nearly $200 billion more in Iraq than we
had budgeted. Iraq’s leaders have failed to invest tens of billions of
dollars in oil revenues in rebuilding their own country, and they have
not reached the political accommodation that was the stated purpose of
the surge . . . Only by redeploying our troops can we press the Iraqis
to reach comprehensive political accommodation and achieve a
successful transition to Iraqis’ taking responsibility for the
security and stability of their country.

This point cannot be emphasized enough: Obama, in opposing the surge,
was wrong on the most important politico-military decision since the
war began. He not only opposed the surge, he predicted in advance that
it could not succeed and that it would not lead to a decrease in
violence (on January 10, 2007, the night President Bush announced the
surge, Obama declared he saw nothing in the plan that would “make a
significant dent in the sectarian violence that’s taking place there.”
A week later, he repeated the point emphatically: the surge strategy
would “not prove to be one that changes the dynamics significantly.”)

Both predictions were demonstrably wrong. And for Obama to state that
Iraq’s leaders “have not reached the political accommodation that was
the stated purpose of the surge” is misleading and false. Iraqi
leaders have reached comprehensive political accommodations, including
passing key laws having to do with provincial elections, the
distribution of resources, amnesty, pensions, investment, and de-
Ba’athification. In fact, a report card issued in May judged that
Iraq’s efforts on 15 of 18 benchmarks are “satisfactory”–almost twice
of what it determined to be the case a year ago. Is Obama unaware of
these achievements? Does he care at all about them?

In addition, Prime Minister Maliki, a Shiite Muslim, has taken to lead
in opposing Shiite militia throughout Iraq, which in turn has led in a
rallying of political support for Maliki throughout Iraq and respect
for him among other Arab leaders.

The successful, Iraqi-led operations in Basra, Sadr City, and
elsewhere completely subvert Obama’s claim that “only be redeploying
our troops” can these things be achieved. They are in fact being
achieved, something which would have been impossible if Obama’s
“redeployment” plan had been put in place.

Obama writes this as well:

for far too long, those responsible for the greatest strategic blunder
in the recent history of American foreign policy have ignored useful
debate in favor of making false charges about flip-flops and
surrender.

In fact, it is far from clear that Iraq will be judged a strategic
blunder at all, let alone the “greatest strategic blunder in the
recent history of American foreign policy.” It is now plausible to
argue that the Iraq war will lead to a defeat of historic proportions
for al Qaeda. It has already triggered a massive Sunni Muslim uprising
against al Qaeda, a repudiation of violent jihadism from some of its
original architects, and a significant shift within the Muslim world
against the brutal tactics of jihadists. Iraq is also, right now, the
only authentic democracy in the Arab world. And Saddam Hussein, the
most aggressive and destabilizing force in the Middle East for the
last several decades, is dead, and his genocidal regime is now but an
awful, infamous memory.

This is not to deny that huge mistakes and miscalculations were made
in the Phase IV planning of the war; it is to say, however, that those
mistakes have been rectified and that we are now on the road to
success in Iraq. None of this would have been possible if Senator
Obama’s recommendations had been followed. It’s worth adding, I
suppose, that if Obama’s recommendations had been followed, the
results would qualify as the greatest strategic blunder in the recent
history of American foreign policy.

Finally, Obama writes this:

"...on my first day in office, I would give the military a new
mission: ending this war"

This is in some ways the most revealing statement written by Obama. He
still cannot bring himself to say that the mission in Iraq is success,
even when success is clearly within our grasp. For Obama the mission
is, and since his presidential announcement in February 2007 has been,
to end the war, even if it means an American loss of epic proportions.
And if Obama had had his way, that is exactly what would have come to
pass.

Among the most striking things about Obama’s op-ed is how
intellectually dishonest it is, particularly for a man who once
proudly proclaimed that he would let facts rather than preconceived
views dictate his positions on Iraq.Obama’s op-ed is the effort of an
arrogant and intellectually rigid man, one who disdains empirical
evidence and is attempting to justify the fact that he has been
consistently wrong on Iraq since the war began (for more, see my April
2008 article in Commentary, “Obama’s War“).

Senator Obama is once again practicing the “old politics” he claims to
stand against, which is bad enough. But that Obama would have allowed
America to lose, al Qaeda and Iran to win, and the Iraqi people to
suffer mass death and possibly genocide because of his ideological
opposition to the war is far worse. On those grounds alone, he ought
to be disqualified from being America’s next commander-in-chief.

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-C-

BikeFan · Guest

Clay wrote: