Still Leaving
I’ve been amazed by the amount of crowing I’ve read since Election Day about Barack Obama backing off his pledge to withdraw from Iraq. I follow the news pretty closely, so I know Obama never said that. And yet, all kinds of people kept acting like he’d said it. Spencer Ackerman rounds some up:
Chances are, not a whole lot, since they can’t seem to comprehend the idea. Here’s Max Boot on the implications of Gates’ reappointment:
This all but puts an end to the 16-month timetable for withdrawal from Iraq…
And here’s Mara Liasson, the token liberal commentator on Fox News:
16 months has gone out the window, I think we can say that.
But hey, guess what, it turns out that presidents don’t take orders from cabinet secretaries. Rather, they pick subordinates who are willing to carry out their policies. Thus, yesterday Obama reiterated that “16 months is the right time frame” and today Gates said he supports Obama’s position and that Obama “framed” the issue “just right”:
The reality, obviously, is that the SOFA and the security agreement have made 2007-vintage disagreements about timeframes for withdrawal essentially irrelevant. Between an American government that wants to set an end to our involvement in Iraq and an Iraqi government that wants to set an end to our involvement in Iraq, it really does become a question of hammering out the logistics and framing the politics. The strategic debate about the wisdom of things like John McCain’s plans for a hundred years of occupation is over.
39 Responses to “Still Leaving”
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December 2nd, 2008 at 5:41 pm
I was thinking about this same theme the other day when the Press was trying to determine who was going to dictate Foreign Policy in an Obama White House. I blame the Bush Administration for this confusion. Before W., people understood that the President set the missions and policy for his cabinet & administration to implement. W. came in so sorely lacking knowledge that he outsourced much of the Presidential duties. I believe the Press has forgotten how things are truly supposed to work in our government.
December 2nd, 2008 at 5:53 pm
What do they say? Oh, right, “elections have consequences.” That’s what they say.
December 2nd, 2008 at 6:08 pm
Presidents don’t take orders from cabinet secretaries. (Or from generals, for that matter.) Who knew?
December 2nd, 2008 at 6:15 pm
#139,556 in Books
That’s HITS rank on Amazon.
Why does this guy have a blog. I mean, there are 139,655 people who are better positioned to write about foreign policy.
What gives?
December 2nd, 2008 at 6:17 pm
Worth noting - it’s not only crowing, but also gnashing of teeth. C.f. idiots like Chris Bowers. The stupider parts of the left seem to be just as convinced as the right that Obama’s appointments mean we’re not leaving Iraq.
December 2nd, 2008 at 6:33 pm
They’re crowing to obscure the fact that it was Obama, as a mere candidate for office, who provided al-Maliki with the opportunity to state when he wanted the US finish up. It was al-Maliki who said 16 months:
December 2nd, 2008 at 6:38 pm
#139,556 in Books, That’s HITS rank on Amazon.
Why does this guy have a blog. I mean, there are 139,655 people who are better positioned to write about foreign policy.
#27,527 in Books, That’s Sex And The City’s rank on Amazon.
Let’s ask Amy Sohn about foreign policy, or privatizing Social Security. I’m sure it’d be a hoot.
December 2nd, 2008 at 6:52 pm
Liasson is just a hack who sells her soul for nothing.
December 2nd, 2008 at 6:58 pm
Liasson is just a hack who sells her soul for nothing.
I’ll be a bit more generous and suggest that after 23 years at NPR, she decided to cash in (all the way back in ‘97?).
December 2nd, 2008 at 7:30 pm
it’s still true, after all this time, that a whole segment of elite opinion regards you as “unserious” if you think the time has come to end this excellent little adventure, and so the purveyors of this point of view are desperate to see tea leaves that don’t exist.
December 2nd, 2008 at 7:33 pm
Liasson is not a “token liberal commentator on Fox News.” She is a Fox News liberal. I.e., not a liberal. Or maybe she should be called “NPR’s Fox commentator.”
December 2nd, 2008 at 8:40 pm
And what evidence is there at all that Liasson is a liberal?
December 2nd, 2008 at 9:46 pm
Fox bills Liasson as a liberal commentator as part of the general campaign to marginalize NPR as a liberal network, and Liasson seemingly has no problem going along with it. Juan Williams fulfills about the same function elsewhere.
December 3rd, 2008 at 12:48 am
Mara Liasson is not the Fox token liberal but rather the Fox token supposedly objective journalist who is assumed to be liberal b/c all journalists are liberal but can’t fight back on Fox b/c journalists are suppposed to be objective.
Sort of like an even more useless version of Alan Colmes, but more pernicious b/c poisoning the Fox viewers against journalists.
December 3rd, 2008 at 1:48 am
Given that it’s the Iraqis calling the shots on Iraq, what Obama or Gates thinks is irrelevant from here on out, at least with regard to Iraq.
What matters is where do those troops go after they leave Iraq? Do they come home - or do they go to Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iran?
We already know at least 7,000 of them are going to Afghanistan.
And when the Taliban recruit 700 more Taliban - on a ten-to-one ratio, which will be trivially easy for them to do - to match that “surge”, what will Obama do next? Send another 7,000? Send 14,000? Send 140,000?
Recall that the number required to “stabilize” Afghanistan is something on the order of 400,000 - that is, if we’d sent that many in the first place. Now is too late.
Not even counting doing anything about “taking the fight to Al Qaeda” in Pakistan which Obama has also promised to do.
Also not counting the “Iran will not have any centrifuges” and “I will do EVERYTHING to prevent Iran from having nuclear weapons” (which you’d THINK should actually not be hard since Iran doesn’t HAVE a nuclear weapons program).
Iraq is old news, folks. It’s been old news since Maliki fought back against the SOFA.
December 3rd, 2008 at 9:28 am
This is reassuring news to us who have wanted us to get out of Iraq for a long time now (and supported Obama primarily for that reason).
Now whether we should move more troops into Afghanistan, I am still not totally convinced that it is a good idea. A foreign army hasn’t won a war there since, I think, Alexander the Great. And will we really help our cause of protecting America by putting a foreign, Christian (in their eyes) army in a Mulsim country? That is one of the main reason that we were attacked on 9/11 to begin with. I’m not saying we shouldn’t put more troops there, but I am skeptical.
December 3rd, 2008 at 9:40 am
The strategic debate about the wisdom of things like John McCain’s plans for a hundred years of occupation is over.
And you can tell it’s over by all of the Iraq Hawks who are declaring that they never intended for the United States to have a permanent presence in Iraq, and that the position Obama articulated in 2006 and has stuck to actually represents his acknowledgment that they were right.
We are withdrawing from East Asia. We always intended to withdraw from East Asia.
December 3rd, 2008 at 9:47 am
Obama is smart enough to realize that his proposed surge into Afghanistan, like the surge into Iraq, is not a strategic game-changer that will win the war, but a tactical bolster that buys us some time, keeps the situation from deteriorating.
Over the longer term, the answer is to build up the capacity of the Karzai government, both to provide services and to maintain security, while making it clear that we don’t intend to stay, and have no imperialist ambitions over their country, thus allowing the Karzai government to improve its political standing among groups that might be hostile or skeptical towards us, but would otherwise support the central government.
December 3rd, 2008 at 2:15 pm
Folks, we ain’t leaving until the oil deals are in place (that’s why we’re there to begin with). If those deals get struck within the 16 month time frame, then arguably we will indeed be leaving (although when we have bases there, I’d like a definition of “leaving”).
If a deal is not in place, then that time frame goes out the window.
December 3rd, 2008 at 5:35 pm
Memory or not, here is the actual content from the Obama Campaign website (barackobama.com) from the section under “Iraq”:
December 3rd, 2008 at 5:38 pm
In addition to the quotation in my earlier post, I meant to add the following as posted on my own blog:
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