The American Mind

Sen. Barack Obama is backing away from his firm opposition to the Iraq War:

Sen. Barack Obama left open the possibility of slowing his promised, 16-month withdrawal of combat forces from Iraq, saying he would consult with military commanders on an upcoming trip to the region to ensure a withdrawal would keep troops safe and Iraq stable.

“My 16-month timeline, if you examine everything I’ve said, was always premised on making sure our troops were safe,” Obama told reporters as his campaign plane landed in North Dakota. “And my guiding approach continues to be that we’ve got to make sure that our troops are safe, and that Iraq is stable. And I’m going to continue to gather information to find out whether those conditions still hold.”

Obama, the presumptive Democratic nominee, has long said the nation “must be as careful getting out of Iraq as it was reckless going in,” but during his hard-fought primary fight with Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, he stuck to a timeline that foresaw withdrawing one to two combat brigades from Iraq a month.

In recent weeks, Republicans and some Democratic-leaning military experts have said conditions have changed so dramatically that Obama would have to rethink that goal. His own advisers have sent mixed messages. Sen. Claire C. McCaskill (D-Mo.), a strong Obama supporter, has firmly maintained he has not shifted on Iraq at all. But foreign policy adviser Susan Rice, in recent days, appeared to take a more flexible approach.

In North Dakota Obama put emphasis on being careful in pulling out troops. That’s a contrast to what’s on his website. There it’s all about “immediately begin[ning] to remove our troops from Iraq” and showing the Iraqi government that troops really are leaving so they’ll have to politically reconcile. In the past Obama bragged about wanting a “phased withdrawal,” and in 01.07 he introduced a bill to get U.S. troops out of Iraq by 03.08. After the Samantha Power blow up when she told a U.K. audience that a 16-month pullout was a “best case scenario” campaign manager David Plouffe said Obama’s commitment was “rock solid.” That talk is bolder than saying Obama wants to bring the Iraq “war to a responsible end.”

Obama adjusting his Iraq War opposition doesn’t bother me in that I think it’s much more sensible and realistic than the pap he was spouting during the Democratic primaries. The surge has brought about significant progress while much still needs to be done. Obama is a smart guy. He knows that with U.S. casualties declining [PDF] the war won’t be as prominent in voters’ minds. However, what’s to say Obama won’t make another abrupt change? We’re relying on his “superior judgement” since his political resume is so thin. But his judgment on the campaign trail has been to tell primary voters one thing and foreign audiences another. Which is the real Barack Obama?

In the case of Iraq Samantha Power was more accurate than her ex-boss. In her infamous U.K. interview she said:

You can’t make a commitment in whatever month we’re in now, in March of 2008 about what circumstances are gonna be like in Jan. 2009. We can’t even tell what Bush is up to in terms of troop pauses and so forth. He will of course not rely upon some plan that he’s crafted as a presidential candidate or as a US senator.

We can take Obama’s talk on Iraq for what it really is “just words.” Just like a typical politician.

“Obama Softens on Iraq Withdrawal Timeline”