Obama constantly touts his judgement as one of the prime qualities that he would bring to the office of President. But on the most important issue of the time, at the time that it was most important to make a good judgement, he made a terribly, terribly bad judgement:
“To reach such a solution, we must communicate clearly and effectively to the factions in Iraq that the days of asking, urging, and waiting for them to take control of their own country are coming to an end.” This is the most absurd point of all. The Iraqis didn’t have enough trained and seasoned security forces to bring stability. Retreat would not have forced them to work together — it would have forced the factions to arm themselves and go to war to protect themselves. The central government needed more time to develop the means to “take control of their own country”, and in 2008 we have seen the results.
McCain and Bush made the right call in supporting the Surge. The irony of the situation now is that the gains that we have made through the Surge have made Obama's withdrawal plans feasible, instead of crazy - as they were when he started advocating them - in other words, the rightness of McCain and Bush ultimately allow Obama to seem more reasonable, and thus, electable. That's a shame.
At some point, Democrats decided that facts didn’t matter anymore in Iraq. And they nominated just the man to reflect the party’s new anti-factual consensus on the war, a Barack Obama who has fixedly ignored changing conditions on the ground.
It’s gotten harder as the success of the surge has become undeniable, but — despite some wobbles — Obama is sticking to his plan for a 16-month timeline for withdrawal from Iraq. He musters dishonesty, evasion and straw-grasping to try to create a patina of respectability around a scandalously unserious position.
He wants the marginal rate on total federal taxes, including his social security tax hike, to immediately rise at least 57% on the highest earners. Obama wants to raise taxes even in a weak economy, though this is a recipe not just for recession but worse. Obama also wants to raise taxes on dividend income and to return the death tax to its highs of eight years ago.
Obama has proposed more than a trillion dollars in new spending.
Obama wants to cut and run from Iraq, with withdrawals of crucial forces beginning immediately upon his entry into office. Obama has never met one on one with General Petraeus and has not been to Iraq in more than 900 days. He is indifferent to the incredible progress made by our troops and the Iraqi Defense Forces and the Iraqi government in the last 18 months.
He supports the decision extending habeas rights to Gitmo detainees and he thinks the most liberal member of the Supreme Court, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, is a great model for future Supreme Court appointments.
Obama supports gay marriage, and opposes the California constitutional amendment to restore marriage to the definition overturned by a 4-3 vote of the California Supreme Court in May. He supports abortion on demand, including partial birth abortion.
Obama has the slightest grasp on history, and routinely makes the sort of errors about basic facts that shock knowledgeable observers, like arguing the Kennedy-Khrushchev summit in Vienna was an example of the benefits of one-on-one diplomacy.
A look at Barack Obama's new general election ad over at The Corner:
About 46 seconds into the ad, we are told that Obama “passed laws” that “extended healthcare for wounded troops who’d been neglected,” and in the usual manner of these political commercials we are given a little citation at the bottom. The citation reads “Public Law 110-181 1/28/08”. That law is the only federal legislation cited in the ad — the other two items mentioned were from the Illinois legislature.
Public Law 110-181 was the 2008 defense appropriations bill. It passed the Senate by 91 to 3 in January, with six Senators not voting. Among those six absentees was Barack Obama. So he cites a bill he didn’t even vote for
Senator Obama’s statements on Iraq are representative of his larger weaknesses. If you strip away the eloquence, charm, and political skills and drill down on the substance, Obama is, especially when it comes to Iraq, misinformed and seemingly out of his depth. He continued to make claims that are demonstrably wrong–and perhaps the media, many of whom are utterly enchanted with the Obama candidacy, will begin to hone in on how out of touch with reality he is. We are, after all, electing a president and not a high school prom king. Obama’s lack of knowledge on issues like Iraq should matter more than his ability to excite a crowd and charm reporters. And his steadfast refusal to alter his views based on new, and in this instance encouraging, evidence is more evidence of the enormous gap that exists between who Obama is and how he presents himself to be. On Iraq, Barack Obama is in a state of denial.
Al Qaeda in Iraq is pretty close to dead, according to al Qaeda in Iraq. Hence, it's the perfect time to elect the guy who wants to pull out of Iraq and reinvigorate al Qaeda in Iraq! Because if we don't have a war to protest, the lefties will all have to get rid of those cool "endlessthis war" bumper stickers.
What we have is jihadists virtually conceding defeat, while the leading Democratic candidate for president essentially campaigns on a way to turn that defeat into a victory by removing the obstacles to jihadi success.
To which I say, keep your chin up, al Qaeda in Iraq! After all, O! is promising hopeyness and changitude! — though for a while there, he had me convinced he was directing that message at the US electorate.
Instead, turns out he’s just pitching it toward our adversaries and the uninformed here at home — and of course, to those who feel that shows of US military strength are just part and parcel of an unsavory US international hegemony, one that needs to be thwarted so that we’ll learn our lesson about crass interventionalism (defined as interventionalism in our own national interests, rather than the kind that smacks of showy altruism); stick to ourselves, culturally speaking; and concentrate on important things, like how best to have the government regulate our thermostats, our medical care, our eating habits, etc., as well as how best to “put every American to work” in the service of the State — a small offering, if you will, to the Secular Godhead and His cult of personality.
I've been waiting patiently for Matthew Yglesias to explain the sudden end to Obama's "Accidental Foreign Policy," which met its demise over the weekend with a report in the New York Times that the candidate does not now, nor has he ever, supported direct and immediate talks with the leader of Iran. This happened just as Yglesias published a piece in the Atlantic celebrating Obama's bold and unwavering support for direct and immediate talks with the leader of Iran.
