Obama's No Good, Very Bad Options For Iraq
What can be done for a war where the options are: no good, bad and worse?
That's the question Barack Obama asked of Gen. Petraeus and Amb. Ryan Crocker on 9/11 p.m., and the one he intends to answer at a major foreign pol. speech 9/12 at Ashford University in Clinton, IA.
According to the Obama campaign, the speech will lay out a detailed withdrawal plan from Iraq and map out what US foreign policy would look like under an Obama presidency.
Spokeswoman Jen Psaki said Obama will outline what this war has cost us as a nation and lay out his plan for ending the war – with new policy proposals on troop withdrawals, diplomacy within Iraq and offer aggressive action to deal with Iraq's humanitarian crisis: and talk about what American can accomplish in the world once we end the war.
A key point in Obama's address will be to call for an immediate withdrawal of American troops from Iraq, which draws a sharp distintion from the position advocated by Sen. Clinton. Obama plans to say, "There is no military solution in Iraq. The best way to protect our security and to pressure Iraq's leaders to resolve their civil war is to begin immediately to remove ourcombat troops. Not in six months or one year – now."
A campaign release highlights four major points in his speech::
1. Obama would immediately begin to pull out troops engaged in combat operations at a pace of one or two brigades every month, to be completed by the end of next year.
2. He would call for a new constitutional convention in Iraq, convened with the United Nations, which would not adjourn until Iraq's leaders reach a new accord on reconciliation.
3. He would use presidential leadership to surge our diplomacy with all of the nations of the region on behalf of a new regional security compact.
4. He would take immediate steps to confront the humanitarian disaster in Iraq, and to hold accountable any perpetrators of war crimes.
Obama has already pushed for a timetable for troop withdrawal, proposing a bill in 1/07 to begin pulling troops from Iraq starting in 5/07. He was the first '08 Dem to do so. In a speech on the Senate floor, he said, "The days of our open-ended commitment must come to a close. It is time for us to fundamentally change our policy. It is time to give Iraqis their country back."
In a second speech on foreign pol. in 4/07 to the Chicago Council on Global Affairs, Obama pledged to have a foreign policy that was based on "burden sharing" among countries similar to what Bush 41 did with the first Gulf War.
"America cannot meet the threats of this century alone, but the world cannot meet them without America. 'We must neither retreat from the world nor try to bully it into submission -- we must lead the world, by deed and example.''
According to the New York Times, "His speech was punctuated with examples of his global travels and the underlying subtext that his world view was shaped differently from other candidates in the presidential race." Two concrete proposals he put forward was increasing foreign aid to $50 billion by 2012 and creating an international nuclear fuel bank.
Obama's most recent forays into foreign policy were seen as naïve guffaws by many, when he said that he would speak to the leaders of Iran and North Korea and that he would strike unilaterally against targets in Pakistan in speech to the Woodrow Wilson Center on 8/1 [Aswini Anburajan].
"Obama's most recent forays into foreign policy were seen as naïve guffaws by many."
Pithy comment, especially given that once people actually thought about his statements they realized...HE WAS RIGHT.
Ask John Edwards whether he would take out Bin Laden if Musharref wouldn't (or couldn't). If he said "no," then THAT would be a gaffe.
Finally A Democrat with a spine.
I love his courage and credibility.
"Pithy comment, especially given that once people actually thought about his statements they realized...HE WAS RIGHT."
Ha! Oh, Really?
Nice way to piss off the Pakistani government -- a fragile ally -- and start violent protests amongst is populace. Great foreign policy move, and he isn't even President yet. (Hopefully never will be.)
Obama is an empty suit.
You can't bomb a sovereign nation because you're looking to hit one person. That's a different type of issue when compared with what happened in Iraq. In addition, remember that Pakistan is part of the nuclear club. You're telling me you'd allow your leader to send a missile into a nation with nuclear weapons? What if Musharref was sacked somehow and an anti-Western government took over? They could use the fact that we struck first to their advantage, giving them leverage to hit, say, Israel. Think about what you're advocating...