Obama's Iraq stance
Feb. 29th, 2008 12:24 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
tagrynI was looking over Barack Obama's published stance on Iraq, and there's a serious contradiction in it that he needs to clarify. He gives a rock-solid, absolute promise that all troops will be out in 16 months...BUT "if al Qaeda attempts to build a base within Iraq, he will keep troops in Iraq or elsewhere in the region to carry out targeted strikes on al Qaeda."
What exactly does "attempt to build a base" mean? An increase in number of terrorist attacks? Intelligence from the CIA that al Qaeda's getting more active? What's the metric? We need to know; that's the tripwire on which his whole stance on keeping troops in Iraq rests.
And, "targeted strikes" is a joke. Clinton I tried that approach to disrupting al Qaeda and it did little more than driving the Taliban and al-Qaeda closer together. You can't just send in a few cruise missiles to bounce the rubble, congratulate yourself on having "done something," and go back to ignoring the problem. Without boots on the ground, most of the time the intel you do get is so out of date that by the time you verify and call in an airstrike, the people you want to kill will be long gone.
Final point: unless Obama's key objection to Iraq is moral (i.e. it was wrong to begin with, remains wrong, and will always be wrong) rather than practical, shouldn't he also be calling for complete withdrawl from Afghanistan as well? Indeed, as Stratfor said yesterday in their assessment report, Afghanistan has a much bleaker long-term outlook than Iraq:
What exactly does "attempt to build a base" mean? An increase in number of terrorist attacks? Intelligence from the CIA that al Qaeda's getting more active? What's the metric? We need to know; that's the tripwire on which his whole stance on keeping troops in Iraq rests.
And, "targeted strikes" is a joke. Clinton I tried that approach to disrupting al Qaeda and it did little more than driving the Taliban and al-Qaeda closer together. You can't just send in a few cruise missiles to bounce the rubble, congratulate yourself on having "done something," and go back to ignoring the problem. Without boots on the ground, most of the time the intel you do get is so out of date that by the time you verify and call in an airstrike, the people you want to kill will be long gone.
Final point: unless Obama's key objection to Iraq is moral (i.e. it was wrong to begin with, remains wrong, and will always be wrong) rather than practical, shouldn't he also be calling for complete withdrawl from Afghanistan as well? Indeed, as Stratfor said yesterday in their assessment report, Afghanistan has a much bleaker long-term outlook than Iraq:
As the situation in Iraq settles down — and it appears to be doing so — more focus will be drawn to Afghanistan, the war that even opponents of Iraq have acknowledged as appropriate and important. But it is important to understand what this war consists of: It is a holding action against an enemy that cannot be defeated (absent greater force than is available) with open lines of supply into a country allied with the United States. It is a holding action waiting for certain knowledge of the status of al Qaeda, knowledge that likely will not come. Afghanistan is a war without exit and a war without victory. The politics are impenetrable, and it is even difficult to figure out whether allies like Pakistan are intending to help or are capable of helping. Thus, while it may be a better war than Iraq in some sense, it is not a war that can be won or even ended. It just goes on.
