You're right Mick, it can give him the cover he needs. I'm sure the Obama camp are desperately trying to figure out a way to modify that counter-productive timeline.

But if he is too explicit about the changing conditions on the ground allowing him to do this, doesn't this turn him into a hostage of fortune in the run up to November when the violence is bound to spike?

At what point does more violence then dictate another change of timeline due to changing events on the ground?

Yeah, or maybe Packer is just full of it.

The more the Iraqi government is able to consolidate its authority and the Iraqi Army can function on its own, the less effective Republicans will be in charging Senator Obama, or anyone else advocating an orderly withdrawal from Iraq, with ‘cut and run’ or ‘’inviting a bloodbath.’  This is the best possible situation for Obama,

Obama wants to bring combat troops home within 16 months of instructing the generals to give him their plan to withdraw. That’s two years from now. If the Iraqi government continues making gains like those described in the NYT and WP recently, the pace will accelerate.

Obama will tell the generals to come up with a plan for orderly withdrawa as opposed to 'winning' (which has no meaning in the Iraqi context anyway).  

Obama should embrace the recent military and political gains and build from there. The Democrats need to keep the content of the Iraq debate in their court.  Obama needs to anticipate 'the next big thing' and not get bogged down debating whether the glass is half empty or half full after the surge.. Re-hashing it is a Republican tactic to keep Obama on the defensive and from focusing on the immediate and mid-teerm future.

The next big question is already on the table: whether we keeptroops in Iraq indefinite;y  along the 'Korea/Japan' model.  However, it has not yet filtered down into a voter concern.  The Democrats need to get out front on this issue immediately.  

Obama should stave off any agreement with Malaki and put this question in context of an Obama administration diplomayc initiative and what regional 'guaranties' of security in the area.can be negotiated.

more: horribledictu.com

Without making any argument one way or the other, isn't reconsideration of your plans in light of facts on the ground simply *the right thing to do*?

I am going to wait patiently for Harry --the war is lost-- Reid and many other Democrats to react to a re-tooling of the Obama withdrawal strategy.  There are a lot of people in the party base who don't want to hear anything about new facts.  History stopped in 2006.

I am going to wait patiently for Harry --the war is lost-- Reid and many other Democrats to react to a re-tooling of the Obama withdrawal strategy.  There are a lot of people in the party base who don't want to hear anything about new facts.  History stopped in 2006.

Also, Obama will have less of a problem with the changing situation if he points out that, in contrast to McCain, he does respond to changing situations, rather than bunkering in with his own comfy world view.  The environment has changed since 2000 and issues that were crucial in the aftermath of 9/11 have receded, and others have come to the fore (for example, energy, Russia, Iran, financial market stability).  McCain's awkward strategy of offering the Republican base more of the same while offering independents a new, more thoughtful type of conservatism is just that, awkward.

If the McCain future is going to look like Iraq, in the sense of a U.S. posture that involves sending in the cavalry into another country on a set of unsupported assumptions and strategic fantasies, then my guess is enough voters will be open to an alternative.  Obama's bigger challenge is to grab hold of the national security debate AND KEEP HOLD OF IT, and not leave it in the hands of Republicans who deal from the bottom of the deck whenever we're looking the other way.  The narrative that only the Repugs can deal with security issues just has to be overturned -- it's the single most important bit of "truthiness" that needs to be dislodged to create space for new thinking.

Irony, I'd be very pleased if Sen. Obama would speak to what his foreign policy might consist of in the vast world not named Iraq.  After he gets done talking, without preconditions, with the leaders of a lot of countries who hate our guts, of course.

First, how would he deal with Iran?  Pre-emption?  Containment?  Which and why?  The rise of China?  Our Asian alliances?  Expand the Army and USMC?  Which weapons systems to buy, which to cancel?  The list goes on and on, and he has no writings, no speeches from which one can even guess what he would do.

Maybe he can "grab hold of the nat'l security debate" but I really don't see how.

I was trying to make a half-way serious point, butchie.  I'm getting kinda fed up with this pious invoking of Obama's missing policies when there is a list of foreign policy positions, available with two clicks, on Obama's campaign web site that answers many of your questions, at least in the sense of establishing a basic approach -- including vis-a-vis Iran.

Secondly, what I was trying to say is that the biq question is NOT the individual policy tools -- intel, direct diplomacy, international organizations, military pressure etc -- but rather the philosophical and political framework within which policies are debated and executed.  What I'm interested in is a rethink of our future strategic identity that gets away from the ideological myopia and folksy self-delusion of the Bush-Cheney years and tries to get a decent set of policies and goals launched (hopefully taking reality into account, for a change).  I don't think McCain is capable of this -- which doesn't mean I think he'd be a bad president (I mean, the bar is pretty low at the moment).  I have hopes for Obama.

With regard to your comment about weapons systems, I don't know what Obama thinks (does any presidential candidate discuss specific purchases?) but my response would be that, as president, he should definitely push critical languages and cultures training in our high schools and colleges, because skilled and versatile linguists will be significantly more important in the war against terrorism than an extra USMC brigade.

I agree with your last, irony.  President McCain should do that, too.

Your second graph sounds interesting, but what does it mean to have a "rethink of our strategic identity"?  Because for the foreseeable future that would be  - the biggest kid on the block, the only superpower, the indispensable nation (M. Albright).  That may be myopic and self-delusional, but seems to me that's where we are.

I see no evidence that McCain's f-p includes invading another country, but maybe I'm wrong.  I eagerly await the Presidential f-p debates.

Before Samantha Power had to go because she called

Hillary a monster, wasn't the Hillary campaign

slamming her for saying exactly what Packer wants

Obama to say on Iraq - that of course he'd be

responding to whatever happens between now and then?

Ok I found the youtube:

www.youtube.com/watch

I think that we are clearly those things, butchie, but the way one uses that status and those assets can be productive and imaginative and indeed modest, or the opposite.  Also, I think that anyone who doesn't understand that the problems of our economic and social model are not disconnected from fluctuations in our globally-projected strength in diplomatic and strategic contexts is sticking his head in the sand.  To put it more simply, we're taken a little less seriously today than we were in 2000.  Iraq in particular has imo shown the limits and not the scope of our power -- not a view that most want to hear, as conservatives don't want to discuss limits anyhow (and McCain certainly has closed down that line of thought) and the left doesn't want any critique of Iraq that's pragmatically based.

I would agree to some extent about McCain -- I wasn't really suggesting that he was trigger-happy, more that I don't think he sees the new networks and conditions in the world.

The "hard line," Michael, is that Obama was wrong.  The Democrats were wrong.  The entire leadership, Pelosi, Reid, et al were cravenly wrong.

The Democrats have been wrong on Defense for forty years now.  Obama, for all his intelligence and education, is an idiot in the realm of national security.  

And, I'm not sure what other policy he's put forward that sounds very right, either.  Starting with his complete lack of a good idea on energy.

What Barack Obama is, is a brilliant promoter and campaigner.  He should join me in my business:  advertising.  

A much safer place for him-- and the for us-- than the White House.

irony, we don't need to hear all his Obama's missing policy on the rest of the world.

He's shown himself completely wrong and misguided on the most critical part of the world:  the hostile Middle East.

Why don't you just confess that craven Democratic policies are a failure and just back off.

Why the Left is so convinced that cowardice is a viable policy, I cannot understand.  The only explanation is that the Left (meaning these days the leadership of the Democratic Party) wants the United States to lose.

This is why people are tempted to say that the modern Democratic Party (as opposed to millions of decent individual Democrats) are not patriotic.

Chan writes:  "Why don't you just confess that craven Democratic policies are a failure and just back off[?]"

Because I'm a bit of an asshole and I dislike backing off in the face of polemical sallies that bear a distinct resemblance to a stream of hot air.  And as the bulk of your comment appears to consist of ludicrous and offensive assumptions that I would have to take on board in order to respond, I guess I'll leave it there.

Chan's "ludicrous and offensive assumptions" are a great read.

Only forty years Chan?

I would have thought it was more like two hundered years.

Thanks to psantilla for the great Samantha Power link that actually expresses Obama's likely policy positions much better than Chan. Please take note, Butch. There's a paper trail here.

Please also note that the historically heroic figure now acting as Iraqi Oil Minister has announced early signs of a reasonable resolution of the conflict. Iraqi sovereignty isn't going to be seen automatically as a state oil company, but the multinationals which are the only practical means of quickly bringing Iraq's lagging production on line have been forced to accept competition, including from a democratically accountable regulating state. This is the key to unlocking the problem--Iraq, and ultimately Iran, return to the World Community (tm), and we carry on trying to figure out what exactly that is.

The entire civilized world has an interest in a non-traumatic glidepath to diversified energy sources. Only Persian Gulf oil provides this option, and we should take it.

I guess as a president or presidential candidate there is just no other way than to be seriously insincere and to completely decouple talk from action.

On this note, I have found an interesting anomaly on the political betting market Intrade. If any of you smart people care to have a look, could you please explain this: The market has consistently been betting that a Democratic president would entail a higher US troop level in Iraq in June 2010 than a non-Democratic president. In other words, McCain is predicted to decrease troop levels more significantly than Obama up until that date.

I can understand why no one would believe Obama's withdrawal promises, but I don't understand why the market believes in a complete policy negation. The site is

www.intrade.com -> Click "Politics"-> and subcategory "US Pres. Decisions" -> Contracts "DEM.PRES-TROOPS.IRAQ" and "NONDEM.PRES-TROOPS.IRAQ"

Good question jerk. My guess is that President Obama will be under much more pressure to avoid appearing weak and inexperienced than President McCain.

And, there's a good possibility that if the oil deal goes through, positive dominoes begin to fall in a way that would encourage the recipient of history's largess, Obama, to maximize the gains in a way that McCain, under attack from a Democrat Congress, couldn't match.

Thanks RP.

>President Obama will be under much more pressure to avoid appearing weak and inexperienced

Yes, that is the only explanation I've come across as well. If it's true, it's very interesting, because it suggests that policy y leads in practice to its own opposite. This could be true about other issues as well, such as social spending, labor policy, what have you. It would then mean that you should vote Republican if you want increased social spending, better labor protection, etc, and Democratic if not.

There are political theories explaining this (see for example Brunsson on what he terms "Hypocrisy"), but I've never seen much strong empirical evidence for it. I still think there might be something I'm overlooking about Intrade's Iraq numbers.

Yes, RP, it was good to see Ms. Power completely expose Obama's stated position as mush.  What will he do as President?  It depends.  Which is OK with me, but the Moveon crowd ain't gonna go for it.  His pivot to the center continues on every issue - free trade, faith-based orgs, etc.  Smart politician, no?

Irony, I've never been convinced by the declinists.  Of course there are limits to American power.  But - and it's a big but - just where those limits are varies from issue to issue.  For example, if you are the Iranian leadership, do you bet that because the Iraq war has gone the way it has, that the US is bluffing about not allowing you to get nukes? In fact, the surge sent a salutary message to the Middle East - the US did not run away, did not fold, etc.

In any case, there's a big world out there not named Iraq.  I still don't see how Obama makes the nat'l security issue his own. He's too green, and has very little paper trail in this area.  Maybe if Colin Powell blesses him.

"I still think there might be something I'm overlooking about Intrade's Iraq numbers."

...it would seem to me the simplest explanation is that there is a lot of speculation that Obama will, in response to either good or bad information, have to increase troop levels in the long term. Iraq has a problem with bandits hijacking oil shipments, and there is always the possibility of excessive meddling by at least one neighbor.

Channy, thanks for reaffirming my lack of faith in the Republitards. If I ever need to be led around by the nose and told what to think, I know where to go.

psantillana, thanks for the link! I was going to go 'tubing for some video myself, but you saved me the effort.

> Obama will, in response to either good or bad information, have to increase troop levels in the long term. Iraq has a problem with bandits hijacking oil shipments, and there is always the possibility of excessive meddling by at least one neighbor.

But wouldn't that be equally true for a president McCain?

butchie, he makes it his own by getting people to understand that there are two types of protection that a government can offer its population: one type (very legitimate in its own way) iinvolves a kind of quick-reaction alertness, looks to clear hierarchies of force as determining factors, and rests on a kind of suspicion of the outside world.

The eventual downside of too heavy a concentration on that first mode is a "my way or the highway" attitude that alienates others, a tendency to treat political problems as law enforcement problems and law enforcement problems as military problems, and a habit of engaging in bellicose performances to reassure people that one is truly in charge.  This has been the Bush approach.

The  other mode of protection -- national security, if you like -- is the one that comes from seeing down the road a bit, pre-empting potentially dangerous crises by other means before they become genuine military problems, and building up the international networks and institutions of cooperation that we need to advance our national interests (which can be, in may areas, interests shared with other countries and regions).

I don't quite believe McCain capable of making the much-needed shift from the first to the second mode.

Well, irony, first let me disagree with characterization of teh Bush approach.  But no matter.

As to paragraph 2 above, I reject the position that this administration has not done, in the main, exactly what you propose.  On Iran, support of the EU-3's diplomatic efforts.  On NKor, participation in the 6-party talks.  We have not abandoned the UN, not scotched NATO, etc.  So I don't understand any criticism that says that we have torn down int'l networks (our cooperation with Europe on the terror problem is a case in point) and institutions of cooperation that we need to advance our national interests.

I see no empirical evidence that we have done so.  Nor do I believe terrorism to be a law enforement problem to the extent that we encounter terrorists in foreign lands.  If OBL were captured tomorrow, I'd court-martial and execute him in Afghanistan, under US military rules.

"But wouldn't that be equally true for a president McCain?"

Not all outcomes are valid independent of political denomination; troop reductions will have to happen within 2 years as a matter of logistics (the current economy simply cannot maintain mobilization for much longer) but the actual details will vary based on who is in charge. Additionally, I can easily see Obama building good will with Iraq and being more involved in helping Iraq rebuild its infrastructure in the coming years (ie fewer combat brigades, more engineering/logistics type units). I think the Reps are trading a little low, but at the same time I can imagine that without good diplomacy to generate good wll, Iraq is going to demand that we pull out more troops and they may actually be trading high.

butchie, I reject your rejection -- the Iran/EU business is a fiasco because the EU doesn't have anything to offer that Teheran wants right now, while we're hiding outside the door; the NK thing is the result of a substantial change in the U.S. approach which many of the the key FP mavens didn't want (= the change that might be useful for the Iran problem, incidentally), and none of this bears upon the larger problems caused by Iraq and indeed Guantanamo (a poisonous viper that keeps sliding into the living room every time we claim the moral high ground on human rights).

It's also a matter of tone, a matter of priority, and a matter of vision, to some extent.  You may believe that McCain will be both (a) different from Bush and (b) more of the same, or perhaps just (b).  I think he'll be at least 75% (b), and I want something fresh.

I think that the court martial + execution idea might be a bad idea.  OBL organized and thus committed mass murder on American soil and should be tried and convicted for it.  I don't concede that he's a "soldier" or anything like that, and I don't want him transformed into a martyr.

We should already have a OBL double in Leavenworth under a 24/7 webcam. No one will ever see hide nor hair of the genuine article, who's probably been buried under a glacier in Pakistan for five years.

You want concrete Butch? Obama some time ago announced a hard commitment to increasing our infantry forces, Army and Marine, by 90,000. Probably not to shore up our forces in Germany. Several times during the debates he made a list of the things we'd still need to do in Iraq that would enable us to "get out as carefully as we got in carelessly". Most informed opinion about numbers made it between 40- and 60,000 to carry out those tasks going forward, which figures to be WAY forward as the oil deal now looks likely to come together at last.

What does Obama need to say about China? Or Russia? Or Brazil? At this stage, the less the better. We don't really have any outstanding foreign policy problems outside the Greater Persian Gulf with the weird and increasingly manageable-seeming North Korea excepted. If Obama gets Iraq and Iran right, and I've seen nothing to indicate that he won't, the rest is show biz. He can make rousing speeches at the UN, inspire the crowds in Brussels and Paris, etc., but if he gets Iraq and Iran wrong, he's another Jimmy Carter and the Dems will roam the political wilderness for another generation.

It's not hard for me to guess what he's likely to do.

Fair enough, rp.  We shall see.

Irony, who mourns Saddam, or Timothy McVeigh?  No, the way to make OBL a martyr is to keep him in prison.  Shoot his ass immediately upon sight.  Problem solved.

WE have nothing to offer Iran, either, until they agree to stop enriching uranium.  They won't.  Full stop.

On NK, a "substantial change in approach" shows that the administration is not as bull-headed as it's made out to be.  Seems to me that no matter what W does, it's wrong hereabouts.

We'll agree to disagree on Gitmo - I have seen no evidence of torture at all.  But what say we just ship each one back to the home country?  Those guys would do well to stay in Gitmo.

butchie, I don't understand your examples, as both Saddam and McVeigh got a trial:  in Saddam's case it was more or less a Shi'a revenge performance, but in McVeigh's case he got what every defendent in America is entitled to.

The question is not whether there's torture at Gitmo -- I'm happy to believe that there isn't -- but what role it plays in the shadowy but often very significant world of credibility and reputation.  Not a good one -- as Tom Friedman wrote once, around the world they don't think Gitmo is where the terrorists are, they think it's where you get put if you have a problem with your visa at JFK.

I've set out my particular ten cent's worth on Iran before, so I don't want to rehearse it here.  Bottom line is that if you approach it from your stated position, then clearly there's nothing to be done.  I don't see it that way.

To various verbal adversaries:  no one is trying to tell anyone what to think here.  What is clear is that when the war seemed to be going badly, the media and the Left were in a gleeful rush to affirm same.

When the war is equally clearly now going well, the media and the Left are for the most part going to great pains to maintain themselves in denial.  Or, when that is untenable, as with Obama, to try to slide unnoticed to the Right, acting as if they had never advocated the precipitous withdrawal they so recently had.

The point stands, whether you wish to accept it or not.  Obama and his Left minions were wrong on the war, wrong on how to conduct the war.  And now that they're being proven so, no admissions of such are forthcoming.

The Democratic Party has only one answer to any question of national security:  Vietnam.

I have visited the Samantha link.  What it demonstrates, if we are to believe his aid, is that Obama was disingenuously-- make that dishonestly-- telling his Leftist audiences that he intended to exit Iraq within a year or so of assuming office.  

But, his real intention was to follow situational politics and public opinion, in the presidential style of Bill Clinton.

At least neither he, nor his present followers, can deny that he opposed the Iraq invasion in the first place.  He's made that a lynchpin of his campaign.

Chan--

Obama has been very specific about what he thinks we need to do in Iraq, and none of it could be done if we "exit within a year or so of assuming office". What Power made clear is that Obama is far too smart to be tied to a "bail out at any cost" policy. The fact that his supporters tend to project on to him what they want to hear makes him, in this regard at least, just like every other successful political leader in history.

I didn't think what Obama said about the invasion was particularly disturbing given what he actually said. If Bush had paid more attention to some of his stated concerns we wouldn't be having this discussion. Our main-forces troops would have been way in the background by now, as they are likely to be soon anyway.

I think it's perfectly coherent to have been against the decision to go to war and to be confronted, as the potentially responsible individual, with the job of trying to deal with the fairly complicated position that obtains in Iraq now and may -- again, may -- persist through the Fall.

As I said elsewhere, the utter irresponsibility of a certain constituency on the Republican side is manifested clearly in their acting as if they were a doctor treating a patient for a serious illness, and the patient were to have a sudden remission of his condition due to a new kind of treatment, and the doctor were to say casually, "ok, everything's fine now -- so long, buddy!"

So Obama reconsiders his Iraq position. Had that idiot stick in the White House now reconsidered his position in Iraq or any of his other moronic plays during the past 7 years we would not be the shape we are in today. As for flip flopping,would GW's change on Global Warming count as a flip flop?

Robert Powell, like most regulars here, I always respect what you have to say on any subject, especially Iraq.  That you are defending Obama reflects well on him.

But, I have heard him several times state in speeches, at least during the primaries, that he would have American troops out of Iraq by time certain, I believe 16 months was his schedule.

Now that he is facing the entire electorate, he is scurrying to the right.  And, I'm not surprised.  I had expected it.  And I also believed he would not commit political suicide if elected by doing what he was promising his Left.  But, he has in the past made such promises.