Biden's Foreign Policy Strengths

For a long, wide-ranging, and frank interview with Biden on foreign policy, go here. His ego is on full display, but so is his experience and analysis. Here is an account of his trip to Romania by an impressed U.S. Ambassador.

But a large part of foreign policy is being able to see in advance the consequences of our actions. That's what the judgment question is all about. As for his judgment in seeing in advance the big issues of recent years, Iraq and terrorism, here is what I found:

IRAQ

He voted to authorize force so that Bush would have the backing he needed at the U.N, but he understood that the threat of Iraq was exaggerated, that we would need U.N. support, and that the post-war recovery period would be difficult and up to a decade in duration. At the moment before invasion, he cautioned that Bush was going to war recklessly and without leveling with the American people about the costs. His greatest mistake seems to have been trusting Bush with war powers.

08/04/02 - USA Today

"I believe there probably will be a war with Iraq," said Biden, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. "The only question is, is it alone, is it with others and how long and how costly will it be?"

09/12/02 - FoxNews.com

Sen. Joseph Biden, D-Del., issued the appeal a day before Bush's speech on Iraq to the U.N. General Assembly. Bush is expected to ask the Security Council to compel Iraq to readmit U.N. weapons inspectors. It is not clear whether he will say the United States is prepared to use force against Iraq if the Iraqi president refuses to comply.

Biden, in remarks to the World Affairs Council of Philadelphia, said he will be "extremely disappointed" if Bush lays out a unilateralist approach in his U.N. speech that conveys the message, "`The world be damned, here we go.' That is not in our interest," Biden said.

He said Iraq has biological and chemical weapons and is trying to add nuclear capabilities. But he said he sees Saddam as someone who would give up his weapons in order to retain power and is not bent on destroying the world.

10/10/02 - Senate floor speech quoted in USA Today on 02/08/07

"There is a danger that Saddam's downfall could lead to widespread civil unrest and reprisals," Biden said on the Senate floor on Oct. 10, 2002.

Biden warned in that speech that "one-third of that population (in Iraq) hates the other two-thirds of the population. They say Iraq will quickly be able to organize itself politically, economically, and militarily, into a peaceful, unified nation, free of weapons of mass destruction. The American people need to know that most experts believe Iraq will require considerable assistance politically, militarily, and economically. Indeed, they say we should speak not of 'the day after,' but of 'the decade after.' "

Fall 2002 - recounted by David Corn in December 2006

Before the vote, Biden tried to craft a bipartisan alternative to the White House resolution that would have partly restricted Bush's authority. That effort failed. Discussing the final bill on the Senate floor, Biden described Iraq's WMDs as a threat to the United States—but he noted that this threat was not immediate and that Iraq was not in league with al-Qaida. He said:

We have time to deal with that problem in a way that isolates Saddam and does not isolate the United States of America, that makes the use of force the final option, not the first one, that produces the desired results, not unintended consequences.

And he claimed Bush believed this, too: “That is the course President Bush has chosen.” Biden hailed Bush's recent decision to ask the U.N. for a resolution that would demand that Saddam accept new inspections. “Thank God for Colin Powell!” Biden exclaimed. As for what might happen after an invasion, Biden said,

There is a danger that Saddam's downfall could lead to widespread civil unrest and reprisals. There is only one thing I disagree with in the President's speech on [October 7]. He said what could be worse than Saddam Hussein? I can tell you, a lot... This is a much more complicated country than Afghanistan.

Biden noted that there would be plenty of challenges in post-invasion Iraq, that meeting them would be tough and costly, and that chaos in Iraq could lead to regional warfare involving Iran and Syria. Bottom line: Biden had a handle on the nature of the threat posed by Iraq and the potential consequences of an invasion; he failed to suss out that Bush was committed to war.

11/11/02 - Meeting with The Trotter Group as reported in USA Today

In separate meetings last week with members of The Trotter Group, an organization of black columnists, Condoleezza Rice, the Bush administration's national security adviser, and Sen. Joseph Biden, D-Del., the lame-duck chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, differed over virtually every aspect of this looming conflict.

"The guys who have to fight this war don't think it's a good idea," said Biden, the Senate's leading Democrat on foreign affairs. To buttress his point, Biden recounted a recent conversation he had with an unnamed chairman of one of the military services, who told him that a U.S. war with Iraq would be "the dumbest thing in the world."

Rice, however, rejected the suggestion that any key military leader doesn't back Bush's Iraq policy.

Republicans took "something that nobody, including the president, believes is an imminent danger and moved it up in the election cycle," Biden said of the war resolution Bush got Congress to adopt shortly before this month's midterm elections. (Biden said that after his own more restrictive resolution lost support, he reluctantly backed the one that passed to give Secretary of State Colin Powell the leverage he needed to get the United Nations to adopt a resolution that would slow the Bush administration's rush to war.) There is "zero evidence that Saddam has cooperated with al-Qaeda," Biden told the black columnists.

Rice differed sharply with Biden on this point. She compared Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein to Adolf Hitler and Josef Stalin. Saddam's government, she said, "has supported terrorism and harbored terrorists," and as a consequence the Bush administration must be "concerned about the potential union of terrorism, extremism and weapons of mass destruction" because "bad guys travel in packs."

12/10/02 - Larry King Live

And really, Larry, what we found whether we were talking to anyone from our military, and we met a lot of generals in addition to Franks in the region, all the way to, you know, Palestinian reformers and everyone in the region was, It's not going to be the day after, it's going to be the decade after.

And they want to know, are we in for the long haul? Are we going to make sure that country isn't going to disintegrate? It's going to be a very tough job. And establishing a democracy, as the administration is talking about, is going to be a monumental task.

What they really want to know is, If you're going to go get him, are you going to finish the job? And they don't mean just take him down. They mean -- they mean stabilizing the situation after he is taken down.

...

I think the president's got it just right. He's playing this out the way he should play it out because, quite frankly, Larry, the one thing we don't want to do is we don't want to be an occupying power after we take down Saddam. We got to have other folks in on the deal.

We have to have this a civilian run operation somewhat like Kosovo after the fact with U.S. and coalition forces backing it up. Otherwise we're going to be there as the sitting ducks.

And so it's very, very important that we all stay together and the closer we're together, the more the president's in on the deal with the rest of the United Nations, the more likely it is that Saddam is going to yield. It's not likely, but it is more likely.

12/20/02 - Washington Post Op-Ed (with Hagel) titled "Iraq: The Decade After"

Although no one doubts our forces will prevail over Saddam Hussein’s, key regional leaders confirm what the Foreign Relations Committee emphasized in its Iraq hearings last summer: The most challenging phase will likely be the day after — or, more accurately, the decade after — Saddam Hussein.

Once he is gone, expectations are high that coalition forces will remain in large numbers to stabilize Iraq and support a civilian administration. That presence will be necessary for several years, given the vacuum there, which a divided Iraqi opposition will have trouble filling and which some new Iraqi military strongman must not fill. Various experts have testified that as many as 75,000 troops may be necessary, at a cost of up to $ 20 billion a year. That does not include the cost of the war itself, or the effort to rebuild Iraq.

Americans are largely unprepared for such an undertaking. President Bush must make clear to the American people the scale of the commitment.

02/07/03 - FoxNews.com

Sen. Joe Biden, D-Del., ranking member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said that before any military force is used, the United States should seek U.N. support.

"While we can win the war on our own, we are much better off with the support of the United Nations," Biden said, adding that post-war efforts will require help from "as many countries as possible." Biden and Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., said that Bush needs to explain to the American people what war with Iraq will require in terms of monetary and personnel commitment.

"I don't think many Americans understand the scope and the magnitude" of what a war will mean, Biden said.

9/11

On September 10, 2001, the day before the attacks of September 11th, Biden warned that the Bush Administration was focusing too much on missile defense and not enough on terrorism. At the National Press Club, he said:

“Sure, we’ll do all we can to defend ourselves against any threat — nobody denies that — but even the joint chiefs says that a strategic nuclear attack is less likely than a regional conflict, a major theater war, terrorist attacks at home or abroad, or any number of other real issues. We’ll have diverted all that money to address the least likely threat, while the real threat comes to this country in the hold of a ship, the belly of a plane, or smuggled into a city in the middle of the night in a vile in a backpack. And I ask you, if you want to do us damage, are you more likely to send a missile you’re not sure can reach us, with a biological or chemical weapon because you don’t have the throw weight to put a nuclear weapon on it, and no one’s anticipating that in the near term, with a return address saying “it came from us, here’s where we are”? Or, are you more likely to put somebody with a backpack crossing the border from Vancouver down to Seattle, or coming up the New York Harbor with a rusty old ship with an atom bomb sitting in the hull? Which are you more likely to do? And what defense do we have against those other things.

“Watch these hearings we’re about to have. We don’t have, as the testimony showed, a public health infrastructure to deal with the existing pathogens that are around now, we don’t have the investment, the capability to identify or deal with an anthrax attack. We do not have, as ambassador to Japan now, Howard Baker, and his committee said, the ability to curtail the availability of chemical weapons lying around the Soviet Union — the former Soviet Union and Russia — because they don’t know what to do with it. They showed us a report where they showed us photographs of things that look like outhouses, clapboard — clapboard buildings with no windows and padlocks on the door, that have been many chemical weapons in that building, could destroy the bulk of the East Coast, and we’re not spending the money to help them corral and destroy that in the name of this search. The cost estimate was $30 billion over 10 years in this bipartisan commission and it was listed as the most urgent threat to the United States of America.”

Dissembler in Chief

Politico has read Ron Suskind's new book:

A new book by the author Ron Suskind claims that the White House ordered the CIA to forge a back-dated, handwritten letter from the head of Iraqi intelligence to Saddam Hussein.

Suskind writes in “The Way of the World,” to be published Tuesday, that the alleged forgery – adamantly denied by the White House – was designed to portray a false link between Hussein’s regime and al Qaeda as a justification for the Iraq war.

The author also claims that the Bush administration had information from a top Iraqi intelligence official “that there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq – intelligence they received in plenty of time to stop an invasion.”

The letter’s existence has been reported before, and it had been written about as if it were genuine. It was passed in Baghdad to a reporter for The (London) Sunday Telegraph who wrote about it on the front page of Dec. 14, 2003, under the headline, “Terrorist behind September 11 strike ‘was trained by Saddam.’”

Politico has more interesting stuff about the workings of the White House and the deliberate use of Cheney to preserve willful ignorance on Bush's part as to the illegal actions of his administration.

Who Benefits from a Consensus for Withdrawal?

Michael Crowley says McCain because it allows him to shift the debate from his unpopular advocacy of a long-term stay to who will be better at wrapping up.

Polling shows that McCain is basically even with Obama on Iraq. On other foreign policy issues, McCain leads by a wide margin. On practically every other issue, such as economic policy, Obama leads. Therefore, Iraq is a drag on McCain's only strength. If McCain can get Iraq out of the way, he has a cleaner shot at Obama on foreign policy.

Opposite of a Sound Counterinsurgency

Daniel Larison's takeaway from a post at The American Prospect:

Lost in the frequent back-and-forth over whether John McCain understands what the “surge” was or whether he knows when the Anbar Awakening happened (answers: apparently not and no) is the more basic point, made here by Matthew Duss, that the Anbar model has succeeded for the time being by pursuing the opposite of a sound counterinsurgency...

Reduced Violence in Iraq

To borrow from Obama, we've gone from an unacceptable level of violence up to a horrifying level of violence and now back down to an unacceptable level of violence. That's not a tremendous accomplishment. Yglesias:

If you look back to the summer of 2005, you'll see that few people at the time regarded conditions in Iraq as "good" or even acceptable. And yet things got so much worse over the course of 2006 and early 2007, that improvement in 2008 to bring us back to the kind of level of violence we had three years ago -- except with more walled-off and ethnically cleansed neighborhoods in place -- is now represented as a great triumph. James Vega has a forceful post up at The Democratic Strategist reminding us of how perverse this is.

And then you get things like today's newspaper headline "Bomb Attacks in Baghdad and Kirkuk Kill Dozens". The essence of the "success" of the surge is that, as in 2004 and 2005, you only sometimes read about that kind of thing, whereas at its worst you read about it frequently. That's not nothing, but people should understand that even in its "better" state Iraq is very much a shattered society featuring an unenviable quality of life.

What If We Had Left Iraq?

Matthew Yglesias suggests that 2005 would have been the perfect time to leave Iraq:

Instead, the reason given for why we had to stay in Iraq was that if we left Iraq there would be civil war, sectarian violence, and ethnic cleansing. Since we know all of that happened anyway it seems reasonable to second guess the decision-making that led us to stay.

Deaths per day in Iraq from suicide attacks and vehicle bombs by year:




Deaths per day in Iraq from gunfire and executions by year:




Of course, it can be argued that these violence levels would have been even worse without the U.S. presence, but it's hardly clear that staying through 2006 and 2007 accomplished our goals.

CBS Covers-Up McCain Error

Your liberal media at work:

McCain's Despicable Attack

McCain: "I had the courage and judgment to say that I would rather lose a political campaign than lose a war. It seems to me that Sen. Obama would rather lose the war in order to win a political campaign."

This is what class looks like, McCain:

Despite differences with his Republican counterpart, Obama said that he and McCain both want to see success in Iraq.

"John McCain doesn't want to see us take a wrong strategy when it comes to fighting the war on terror," he said. "I think John McCain wants to see America safe, just like I do. And so, I respect his best judgments in many of these issues, but I think it's important to recognize that, on the majority of issues that we've faced in terms of foreign policy, not just over the past four years, but over the past six, seven years, that my batting average is pretty darn good."

Surge Fraud

I feel like I am stepping in front of an avalanche of Republican triumphalism here, but I have to dissent from the idea that the Surge has been a success.

Obama is being hammered by the right for refusing to acknowledge the success of the Surge, which they accept as an irrefutable truth. But I don't think the Surge has been such an undeniable success.

First, let's take a look back at Obama's judgment in late 2006 given what he knew then. Obama was highly critical of the Surge but stated that additional troops could help suppress the violence while failing to solve its root causes. We should also remember that, at the time the Surge was proposed, Rumsfeld had only recently announced his resignation and had not yet been replaced. Gates became Secretary of Defense in December of 2006 and Petraeus did not become the top commander in Iraq until January of 2007. Americans had not only lost patience with the war, they had lost confidence in the Bush Administration. There was no indication at the time the Surge was proposed that the Pentagon would dramatically overhaul its strategy and tactics in Iraq in conjunction with the Surge.

Second, Iraq cannot be viewed in a vacuum. Continued investment in Iraq comes at great cost, and Obama has consistently maintained that Iraq was a distraction from the more important war in Afghanistan.

On the Surge itself, there are two broad reasons to doubt its success: (1) the purported relationship between the Surge and reduced violence is speculative, at best; and (2) there is no evidence that the Surge has resulted in political progress.

Reduced Violence

In addition to the Surge, candidates for credit for reduced violence are the Baghdad Wall, the Sunni Awakening, strengthened Iraqi Security Forces, and the completion of ethnic cleansing.

While the Surge and those other factors may have contributed, I would suggest that the most likely reason for the reduction in violence in Iraq is the cease-fire called for by Shia nationalist cleric Muqtada al-Sadr on August 30, 2007. Note that date: August 30, 2007. Here is a chart showing the number of violent deaths in Iraq from January 2006 through December 2007:


Here is the timeline for the Surge:

• January 10, 2007: Troop level at 132,000 when Bush announces surge.
• March 20, 2007: Troop level reaches 152,000 (approx. half of surge troops have arrived).
• June 15, 2007: Troop level reaches 160,000 and surge operations commence. "All the forces initially identified as part of the surge have completed their strategic movements into theatre in Iraq."
• August 2007: Surge troops expected to be operating at full capacity.
• September 2007: Troop level peaks at 168,000. Surge results disappointing.

While the drop in violence followed the Surge, it coincided more with the Sadr cease-fire. Additional troops from January to June appeared to have no impact. In the summer, with all Surge troops in Iraq and the Surge reaching full strength, violence remained at previous levels. In September, after the call for cease-fire by Sadr, the violence dropped dramatically.

Political Progress

As stated above, Obama was concerned that political progress would not be advanced by the Surge. He was probably wrong in stating that the Surge would hinder political progress, but there is no evidence that the Surge is responsible for political progress. Even if there has been substantial political progress, and the Iraq Study Group says there has not been, the political progress is not necessarily a result of the Surge.

The Conservative Realism of Obama's Foreign Policy

Neoconservatism has its roots in the left. Its signature foreign policy event - the invasion in Iraq - is grounded in liberalism, not conservatism. The idea that you can quickly and easily remake the world in America's image and spread freedom and democracy is the sort of enormously idealistic and interventionist thinking that you would expect from a "bleeding-heart liberal". Obama favors the traditional conservatism most recently exemplified by George H. W. Bush. Fareed Zakaria:

Obama talks admiringly of men like Dean Acheson, George Kennan and Reinhold Niebuhr, all of whom were imbued with a sense of the limits of idealism and American power to transform the world. "In his view of history, in his respect for tradition, in his skepticism that the world can be changed any way but very, very slowly, Obama is deeply conservative," wrote Larissa MacFarquhar in her profile of him for The New Yorker. "There are moments when he sounds almost Burkean. He distrusts abstractions, generalizations, extrapolations, projections. It's not just that he thinks revolutions are unlikely: he values continuity and stability for their own sake, sometimes even more than he values change for the good."

Adopting Obama's Foreign Policy

Hilzoy has a great post showing how Obama's positions on Iraq, Afghanistan, and Iran are gaining support.

On Afghanistan, McCain has said in the past that Iraq is the focus in the war on terror and that any additional troops in Afghanistan should come from NATO, not the U.S. Recently, he has copied Obama's call for three additional brigades in Afghanistan, saying only that he would be open to the additional troops coming from NATO.

On Iran, Bush is now negotiating with the second coming of Hitler.

On Iraq, McCain has claimed that Obama is wrong because he does not know the facts on the ground, but now Maliki, the guy who really knows the facts on the ground, agrees with the 16-month timetable (the weak backtrack under pressure from Bush notwithstanding). Hilzoy:

By two days ago, McCain was left with basically two messages: (a) timetables would be a disaster, and Obama's embrace of them just shows how naive he is; and (b) McCain got the surge right and Obama got it wrong. It's a pretty weak foundation for a candidacy.

It was against this backdrop that Maliki comes out in favor of Obama's proposal to withdraw combat troops from Iraq in 16 months (though he is careful not to endorse Obama.) McCain has to call Obama naive on Iraq. But that is a lot harder to do if Maliki agrees with Obama. It's hard to say that Maliki is insufficiently familiar with the facts on the ground. It's hard to call him naive. And whatever you think of Maliki's motives, it's also a lot more complicated to make the case that he doesn't know or care what's best for his country. In Presidential elections, uncomplicated cases are key. "Obama has only been in the Senate for three years; he doesn't have the experience to get Iraq right" is an uncomplicated case. There is no such uncomplicated explanation for Maliki's being wrong.

***

Worse, lot of the more obvious ways of responding to Maliki's statement are fraught with danger for McCain. Responding that Maliki either doesn't know what he's talking about or is somehow untrustworthy and bad directly undercuts our reasons for staying in Iraq. We are there in support of the Maliki government, which we are hoping will become capable of running the country without our presence. The more ignorant, untrustworthy, or otherwise bad Maliki is, the less likely it is that he will succeed, and the less clear it is why we should try to help him.

Saying, as McCain has, that Maliki only supports a timetable for political reasons is almost as bad, since it rather obviously implies that the Iraqi people really want us to leave. (As, in fact, they do.) Again, this raises the question: what on earth are we doing there? If the Iraqi people want us out, and their Prime Minister is asking for timetables, why not just take 'yes' for an answer?

If the Iraqi people want us out, we have two choices. First, we leave. As McCain said four years ago, "I don't see how we could stay when our whole emphasis and policy has been based on turning the Iraqi government over to the Iraqi people." McCain does not seem to have seriously considered this option, which would deprive him of yet another distinction between himself and Obama.

Second, we continue to occupy Iraq whether the Iraqi people and their government want us to or not. We have not paid much attention to the wishes of the Iraqi people for some time now -- in fact, I'm always struck, listening to Bush and McCain, by the way in which they consistently describe the question how long we stay in Iraq as one to be answered solely by them, in consultation with the commanders on the ground, as though Iraq's government and its people had no say in the matter at all.

This has, of course, always been true. This administration has never cared much about what the Iraqi people think. But Maliki's comments might make it clearer to the American people that it's not enough to ask whether a candidate supports staying in Iraq; you need to ask whether he supports staying in Iraq even if the Iraqi government asks us to leave. Asking McCain that question would force him to chose between maintaining our presence in Iraq and maintaining the idea that that presence has something to do with helping the Iraqi people.

Moreover, explaining why it would be OK to override the wishes of the Iraqi government presents yet another problem for McCain. The obvious default position is that when a country's government asks us to withdraw our troops, we should do so. To say that that's not true in a given case, like Iraq, you need to provide some sort of explanation. Part of that explanation would normally be: the government is unrepresentative or dysfunctional or awful in some way, and so its wishes do not carry the weight they would in, say, Switzerland.

But saying something like that about the Iraqi government -- that it doesn't really speak for the Iraqi people, or isn't capable of making its own decisions about Iraqi territorial integrity -- would undercut McCain's claims about progress in Iraq. Again, McCain would have to choose: does he say that Iraq's government has made some real political progress, and is capable of making its own decisions? In that case, he should accept its wishes. Does he say that he can disregard its requests on matters of Iraqi sovereignty? In that case, he undercuts a lot of his claims that the surge has enabled real and lasting progress in Iraq.

As I see it, Maliki's statement is all upside for Obama. It neither poses risks for him nor presents him with problems. But it's a minefield for McCain. And this will, I think, become clearer as time goes on, when people begin to ask him these sorts of questions.

Obama's Latest on Foreign Policy

An op-ed on Iraq in the New York Times:

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. Instead of seizing the moment and encouraging Iraqis to step up, the Bush administration and Senator McCain are refusing to embrace this transition — despite their previous commitments to respect the will of Iraq’s sovereign government. They call any timetable for the removal of American troops “surrender,” even though we would be turning Iraq over to a sovereign Iraqi government.

But this is not a strategy for success — it is a strategy for staying that runs contrary to the will of the Iraqi people, the American people and the security interests of the United States. That is why, on my first day in office, I would give the military a new mission: ending this war.

As I’ve said many times, we must be as careful getting out of Iraq as we were careless getting in. We can safely redeploy our combat brigades at a pace that would remove them in 16 months. That would be the summer of 2010 — two years from now, and more than seven years after the war began. After this redeployment, a residual force in Iraq would perform limited missions: going after any remnants of Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, protecting American service members and, so long as the Iraqis make political progress, training Iraqi security forces. That would not be a precipitous withdrawal.

And a speech on his overall national security strategy with a look back at the missed opportunities of the past eight years:

Imagine, for a moment, what we could have done in those days, and months, and years after 9/11.

We could have deployed the full force of American power to hunt down and destroy Osama bin Laden, al Qaeda, the Taliban, and all of the terrorists responsible for 9/11, while supporting real security in Afghanistan.

We could have secured loose nuclear materials around the world, and updated a 20th century non-proliferation framework to meet the challenges of the 21st.

We could have invested hundreds of billions of dollars in alternative sources of energy to grow our economy, save our planet, and end the tyranny of oil.

We could have strengthened old alliances, formed new partnerships, and renewed international institutions to advance peace and prosperity.

We could have called on a new generation to step into the strong currents of history, and to serve their country as troops and teachers, Peace Corps volunteers and police officers.

We could have secured our homeland—investing in sophisticated new protection for our ports, our trains and our power plants.

We could have rebuilt our roads and bridges, laid down new rail and broadband and electricity systems, and made college affordable for every American to strengthen our ability to compete.

We could have done that.

Instead, we have lost thousands of American lives, spent nearly a trillion dollars, alienated allies and neglected emerging threats – all in the cause of fighting a war for well over five years in a country that had absolutely nothing to do with the 9/11 attacks.

“I think we’re at the irreversible point.”

Let's all pray that this is true.

More on Obama's Alleged Iraq Flip-Flop

I had to share the thoughts of Andrew Sullivan, a pre-war supporter of the invasion who has been remarkably self-critical but at times cautiously optimistic during the post-invasion mess:

I'm relieved that he has shifted exactly as I hoped he would: to a pragmatic commitment to a withdrawal strategy that does not jeopardize the fragile and reversible gains of the last year or so. I don't see this as a U-turn, any more than I regard my own attempt to understand the situation in Iraq as best I can and to remain open to good, as well as bad, developments as some kind of flaw. Very few people foresaw the extent of the gains we have made this past year, in part because a new counter-insurgency had the luck to coincide with some real shifts among Sunni tribes and the Sadrite opposition. But facts change. Shouldn't tactical policy respond? I would never have felt that Obama would be a good president if I felt he'd stick to a position on an issue irrespective of empirical data. As long as the goal is total withdrawal from Iraq as soon as possible, and the man doing it has the vital characteristic of having opposed the war in the first place, I'm fine with pragmatism. Any conservative should be.

John Cole helpfully suggests you Google the phrase "as careful getting out as we were careless getting in".

Obama's "Flip-Flop" on Iraq

Commenter Stan on Matthew Yglesias' blog, in response to Matt accurately noting that your "liberal media" will paint anything other than total refusal to adjust to reality and listen to advice on Iraq as a flip-flop, gives a useful rundown of instances during the primaries where Obama said exactly what he is saying now.

OBAMA HAS CONSISTENTLY SAID HE WILL LISTEN TO COMMANDERS ON THE GROUND IN IMPLEMENTING HIS POLICY

June 2008: Obama: I’ve Consistently Said That I Will Consult With Military Commanders On The Ground And Be Open To The Possibility Of Tactical Adjustments. Obama said, “I’ve also consistently said that I will consult with military commanders on the ground and that we will always be open to the possibility of tactical adjustments. The important thing is to send a clear signal to the Iraqi people and most importantly to the Iraqi leadership that the U.S. occupation in Iraq is finite, it is gonna be coming to a foreseeable end.” [MSNBC, 6/16/08]

March 2008: Obama Said He Would Give Senior Military Leaders Opinions Great Weight In Implementing His Iraq Plan But As Commander In Chief Would Make His Own Assessment Of The Situation. Obama was asked “what weight will you give to
the counsel of the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, the CENTCOM [U.S. Central Command] commander, the combatant commander on the ground in Iraq and current intelligence chiefs on the ground in Iraq regarding an immediate phased withdrawal?” Obama said, “I will give their counsel great weight. But, as commander in chief, it is my responsibility to make my own assessment of the situation. We must send a clear signal to the Iraqi political leadership that we are leaving Iraq on a timeline. Doing so will put pressure on those leaders to begin to resolve the political impasse at the heart of this civil war. But I also want to be clear about another thing. I am worried our Army is overstretched and that we have asked an awful lot from our military families. Many in our senior military leadership are worried about a plan that will keep 130,000 troops on the ground in Iraq for the foreseeable future. So, as commander in chief, I will also have to take into consideration the counsel of other senior military leaders who may be concerned that Iraq is undercutting our ability to confront other security challenges.” [Washington Post, 3/2/08]

March 2008: Obama Said The Size Of The Residual Force Will Depend On Consultation With Military Commanders And “Will Depend On The Circumstances on The Ground.” Obama said, “The precise size of the residual force will depend on consultations with our military commanders and will depend on the circumstances on the ground, including the willingness of the Iraqi government to move toward political accommodation. But let me be clear on one thing: I will end this war, and there will be far fewer Americans in Iraq conducting a much more limited set of missions that include counterterrorism and protection of our embassy and U.S. civilians.” [Washington Post, 3/2/08]

November 2007: Obama Said He Would Leave Residual Troops In Iraq Based On The Levels Of Violence, “It’s Not My Job To Specify Troop Levels.” Obama said, “If we see a serious effort by the Iraqi leadership to arrive at an agreement and an accommodation and you’ve seen continued reductions of violence, then you need one level of troop protection for the embassy…If things have gone to hell in a hand basket then you need another … It’s not my job to specify troop levels. My job is to tell our commanders on the ground, ‘Here’s your mission. Protect our embassy, protect our diplomats and our humanitarian workers in the area and make sure al Qaeda in Iraq, or other terrorist organizations inside of Iraq are not re-establishing bases there.” [Fosters, 11/28/07]

November 2007: Obama Said U.S. Has To Make Sure “We Are Not Just Willy-Nilly Removing Troops” And That It May “Take A Little Bit Longer” In Some Areas Where There Is Less Stability. “According to all the reports, we should have been well along our way in getting the Iraqi security forces to be more functional. We then have another 16 months after that to adjust the withdrawal and make sure that we are withdrawing from those areas, based on advice from the military officers in the field, those places where we are secured, made progress and we’re not just willy-nilly removing troops, but we’re making a determination – in this region we see some stability. We’ve had cooperation from local tribal leaders and local officials, so we can afford to remove troops here. Here, we’ve still got problems, it’s going to take a little bit longer. Maybe those are the last areas to pull out.” [New York Times, 11/1/07]

November 2007: Obama: “If The Commanders Tell Me They Need X, Y And Z, In Order To Accomplish The Very Narrow Mission That I’ve Laid Out, Than I Will Take That Into Consideration.” “You raise a series of legitimate questions. As commander in chief, I’m not going to leave trainers unprotected. In our counterterrorism efforts, I’m not going to have a situation where our efforts can’t be successful. We will structure those forces so they can be successful. We would still have human intelligence capabilities on the ground. Some of them would be civilian, as opposed to military, some would be operating out of our bases as well as our signal intelligence…But listen, I am not going to set up our troops for failure and I’m going to do something half-baked. If the commanders tell me that they need X, Y and Z, in order to accomplish the very narrow mission that I’ve laid out, than I will take that into consideration.” [New York Times, 11/1/07]

In March, Obama foreign policy adviser Samantha Power explained that Obama's sixteen month plan for withdrawal is a best-case scenario that would be adjusted based on the situation when he takes office and the facts on the ground in Iraq.

The difference between Obama and McCain is that Obama has a clear goal of withdrawal as soon as possible, whereas McCain has no problem with an open-ended commitment, complete with permanent military bases. Obama's plan would have substantial combat troops in Iraq into the middle of 2010 and residual forces remaining throughout his first term. Matt points out in another post that Obama has been consistently centrist and McCain won't get a lot of support for the position that 2010 isn't long enough and we should be in Iraq for over 2 more years.

Gates as Obama's Secretary of Defense?

The idea has merit and is apparently being seriously considered in the Obama camp.

I don't like reinforcing the view that only Republicans can handle military or foreign policy matters, but Gates possesses indispensible experience in this conflict and is, by all accounts, trustworthy and competent. If Obama thinks he's the best man for the job, he shouldn't let the fact that Gates is a Bush appointee affect the decision.

Winning the War on Terror

This article from the London Times for the most part says how I feel about the war on terror.

Failure of the Surge

The American Conservative's Daniel Larison:

The argument over who was for the “surge” first misses several important points. It’s true that there were doubts about the efficacy of deploying additional forces into Baghdad, since it seemed to be no different from previous increases in the number of soldiers there, but the more significant objections were to the proposal that the “surge” be temporary and that this temporary measure would facilitate political reconciliation. The latter has still, for the most part, not occurred, nor was there ever much reason to expect that it would occur. Even the Pentagon’s own more positive report has little good to say about the Iraqi government. According to the administration’s standards, the “surge” has generally not yielded the results that it was supposed to yield–that’s normally what we call failure. Meanwhile, the GAO says that the measurements that the administration is using to show progress in Iraq are either flawed or show a less positive picture than the one currently being trumpeted.

Surge Makes All Options Better

Responding to David Brooks' Bush Paradox, Matthew Yglesias writes:

To its proponents, the surge is working so well that it sets the stage for years and years of further American military engagement in Iraq. And it's true -- the security gains of the past year do make the Bush/McCain strategy of perpetual military entanglement in Iraq look a lot more viable than it looked a year ago. But it's also true that the security gains of the past year make a strategy of leaving Iraq look a lot more viable than it looked a year ago.

Basically, when Iraq was hellishly violent, all possibly strategies seemed likely to lead to more hellish violence. The cliché was to start every discussion of Iraq by saying "there are no good options, but..." Now insofar as things look better, all options really do look better as a consequence.

RE: This should be fun (Bush's legacy)

A friend recently compared Bush to Lincoln. I laughed out loud. The Truman comparison is only slightly less ridiculous.

Andrew Roberts analogizes that both Truman and Bush will have left office with extremely low approval ratings and a foreign policy that has been judged a failure. He goes on to predict that, like Truman, Bush will be regarded as a great president. The analogy should be of no comfort to Bush's supporters. Truman was unpopular, and his foreign policy deemed a failure, because of the Korean War. Truman's handling of the Korean War is still considered a foreign policy failure. Truman is considered a great president because he was, in retrospect, successful in other areas. Surely Andrew Roberts, a historian, knows this. I can only assume he is being dishonest.

On to the merits. The article gives this pretty good summary of Bush's supposed positive legacy.

The overthrow and execution of a foul tyrant, Saddam Hussein; the liberation of the Afghan people from the Taliban; the smashing of the terrorist networks of al-Qa'eda in that country and elsewhere and, finally, the protection of the American people from any further atrocities on US soil since 9/11, is a legacy of which to be proud.

Hussein was an awful dictator whose removal from power is a good thing. No reasonable person ever denied that. It remains to be seen whether Iraq will become a liberal democracy. I would say the odds are still against that final outcome.

Even if that is the outcome, it came at great financial cost to the United States, with great sacrifice on the part of many soldiers and their families, and with great loss of life in Iraq. Will a liberal Iraq be worth it? Additionally, the disregard for diplomacy leading up to the war badly strained our international relationships.

The conduct of the war is nothing to be proud of. If we have a stable and peaceful Iraq, it will be in spite of - not because of - Bush's leadership. He went in with too few troops. He then stuck by Rumsfeld well after it was clear that Rumsfeld was not up to the task. The surge, the impact of which I believe has been overblown by the right in an effort to take more credit for recent progress than Bush or McCain deserve, was not even Bush's idea. Finally, he authorized torture and other abuses of power for which I will forever be ashamed of my country.

The invasion of Afghanistan was a no-brainer. I give Bush no credit for that. Further, instead of seeing that project through, he diverted attention to Iraq. The author credits Bush with "the smashing of the terrorist networks of al-Qa'eda in that country and elsewhere," so why is Osama bin Laden still putting out tapes? Did Bush disrupt al Qaeda? Maybe. Smash? Not so much. I would expect any president to have at least overthrown the Taliban and disrupted al Qaeda. You don't get credit for doing the minimum.

In the article, Andrew Roberts says we should give Bush credit for the lack of a terrorist attack after 9/11. According to Roberts, if there is a terrorist attack on the World Trade Center during the first year of a president's first term and none during the rest of his two terms, he has responded to the threat as well as possible. So I'm sure you can understand my surprise when he described Clinton's response to al Qaeda as ineffective. After all, there was an attack on the WTC in 1993 and no other successful attacks from Islamic terrorists on U.S. soil until after Bush took office. Roberts describes Clinton as refusing to act against al Qaeda. However, some conservatives accused Clinton of an attempt to "wag the dog" when he ordered strikes against al Qaeda in 1998. During the transition in early 2001, the Bush Administration reportedly had little interest in the Clinton Administration's strong recommendations for dealing with al Qaeda.

I'm fairly certain that, if there had been a major terrorist attack on U.S. soil, Andrew Roberts and the rest of the Bush apologists would have plenty of (good) reasons for absolving Bush of responsibility. They were preparing for such a possibility years ago by talking about how we have to succeed 100% of the time and the terrorists only have to succeed once. Even with our best efforts, attacks can still happen. What effective measures has Bush taken that any other president wouldn't have taken? I can't think of any. While I criticize his lack of attention to terrorism before 9/11, I don't blame Bush for 9/11 because I have no concrete reason to believe he could have prevented it even if he were paying attention. However, I'll give Bush credit for the lack of a terrorist attack since 9/11 if he accepts full responsibility for 9/11. No, "But Clinton!" Full responsibility.

Bush's actual record is terrible. Port security remains neglected. The war in Iraq has been a drain on resources and a recruiting tool for terrorists. I'll conclude with former Navy General Counsel Alberto Mora's comments to the Senate last week explaining how Bush's detention and torture policies killed Americans.