Will Iraq’s Agreeing with Obama – Backfire on Him? July 22, 2008
Posted by Coonsey in Foreign Policy, Military, Politics.Tags: al-maliki, General Petraeus, iraq, senator Barack Obama, senator john mccain
trackback
Political pundits are discussing tonight that the Iraqi government has essentially backed Barack Obama’s, condition based, 16 month withdraw from Iraq. They even claim that the administration’s announcement on accepting a ‘time horizon’ for withdraw of troops, is just one more gold nugget for Obama’s foreign policy plans.
While on the face of it, the pundits seem to be right. President Bush and Senator John McCain are backed up to a wall. What can they do now? They’ve both been seen and recorded as saying if the Iraqis’ ask us to leave, “we will leave”.
Even though Barack Obama announced upon his arrival in Afghanistan, that he will be pushing no agenda, that we already have one President, that’s his job, it would appear that the Iraqis’ have accepted Obama as the next President by agreeing with his plans for leaving Iraq.
I have a question? Could Iraq’s Prime Minister al-Maliki’s position on a 2010 withdraw date for American troops to leave — backfire on Senator Barack Obama?
What’s stopping Senator John McCain sometime immediately after General Petraeus’s briefing to Congress in September (presumably Petraeus will announce a successful mission and that more troops ‘will indeed’ be leaving Iraq before the end of the year), from coming out and saying,
My fellow Americans, the Surge worked. The surge that I began pushing for years ago, has worked. General Petraeus just reported to Congress that more troops are beginning to come home. We also told that the Iraqi government, feels secure enough now, to ask that we begin a ‘conditions based’ withdraw. They ask that we set a goal for the end of 2010. As President Bush and I have both stated previously, if asked, we will leave; that my friend is called ‘Victory’.
Senator McCain, with that statement alone, is not advocating a time line, he’s just saying the Iraqis’ are doing so. It implies however, that we ‘are’ going to begin leaving soon, and we’re able to do so, simply because the ’surge’ worked and the Iraqi government has asked us to.
I hope Senator Obama has a comeback to this possible scenario.
Obama is only worried about losing the far left moveon.org support! He can not win the battle against General Petraeus a great man with a chest full of medals and the American people will stick with the General on this issue! Obama is a fool!
If that were the case polls would be supporting the war in Iraq right now — they aren’t. Besides, the Commander-n-Chief is the one that sets the policy — not the military on the ground. The do what the chief tells them to do.
If you know anything about the military then you know that Petraeus knows the chain of command or he wouldn’t have all those stars on his shoulders today.
Petraeus said the following during his last briefing:
a mission focus on either population security or transition alone will not be adequate to achieve our objectives;
the security and local political situations will enable us to draw down the surge forces.
long-term US ground force viability will benefit from force reductions as the surge runs its course;