Obama's victory over Hillary Clinton was due largely to his brilliant spinning of a single antiwar speech he gave in 2002. At the height of Obamamania, one would have thought he had spent his entire time in the U. S. Senate camped out in front of Bush's "ranch" in Crawford, toasting marshmallows with Cindy Sheehan, while Hillary plotted with Dick Cheney to invade Iran. The truth was (as Bill Clinton pointed out, only to be called a racist) that Obama's antiwar reputation was a "fairy tale." Obama provided zero leadership on the issue when he was actually in a position to do so.
(Another unfortunate truth: The public doesn't want to think about Iraq. They know it's a mess we never should have gotten into, but they don't give a shit about Obama's prewar prescience. They want the next president to deal with the quagmire and then to start fixing the economy.)
Which brings us to Obama's Iraq "flip-flopping." I don't mean to keep picking on Josh Marshall, but TPM is Obama Central. According to Marshall, Obama and McCain are poles apart:
We have two candidates with starkly different positions. Barack Obama is for an orderly and considered withdrawal of all US combat forces in Iraq, a process he says he will begin immediately upon taking office. John McCain supports a permanent garrisoning of US troops on military bases in Iraq -- a long-term 'presence' which he hopes will require a constantly-diminishing amount of actual combat and thus an ever-diminishing toll in American lives.
Based on their rhetoric, this is accurate, but at some point down the road, these "starkly different positions" are likely to get blurry. Marshall elsewhere chastises Jennifer Loven of AP for characterizing Obama as squishy on Iraq, but he fails to note this:
After his remark at a news conference about refining policy exploded onto the political scene, he called a do-over four hours later to "try this again." He said the refining wouldn't be related to his promise to remove combat forces within 16 months of taking office, but to the number of troops needed to train Iraqis and fight al-Qaida. But then he acknowledged that the 16-month timeline could indeed slip if removing troops risked their safety or Iraqi stability.
That's a loophole big enough for somebody like Barack Obama to drive an army through. When are the Iraqis trained sufficiently? How many American troops will it take to fight al-Qaida? What is "Iraqi stability"? It's nice that Obama wants "an orderly and considered withdrawal of all US combat forces," but that's just blogger talk. Accomplishing it will require a president with the courage to confront the inevitable military setbacks and political challenges attendant on such a difficult undertaking--and courage is not a trait Obama has ever demonstrated in his brief career, most particularly when it comes to Iraq.
Obama refused to engage in any kind of "refinement" of his position during his battle with Hillary Clinton, who tried to speak like a potential commander-in-chief and was pilloried for it. Now that it's safe to do so, Obama--with respect to the war--is falling back on his favorite Democratic debate answer--"What she said." Gee, thanks, Barack.
It's not about flip-flopping. It's about character. Obama's antiwar position was never anything but theoretical. When it came down to acting on his convictions, he went AWOL. There's no reason to believe he has what it takes to manage our withdrawal from Iraq.
I know John McCain is no walk in the park. But don't ask me to vote for Obama on the basis of his superior position on the war. I'm sure it's continually evolving, and it's anybody's guess where he'll end up.
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