Loving the Troops, Hating Their Mission

Obama wants to have it both ways on Iraq.

Senator Barack Obama has done his best to make it appear as if he has embraced the surge, noting in his VFW speech last week, that “gains have been made in lowering the level of violence”. Yet when actually pressed on the subject he continues to insist that the surge has not worked. He is effectively embracing the surge without embracing it at all.

Obama has gone so far as to insist — when pressed by Katie Couric last month — that if given the opportunity to support or oppose the surge again, ["knowing what we know now"] he would still oppose it. So, on one hand, Obama recognizes success in Iraq. But on the other hand, he still opposes the American policy that fostered that success. In Obama’s mind, this is not a contradiction.

The reason why is that Obama won’t admit that the gains we’ve seen in Iraq are at all related to the surge. He knows things have improved in Iraq — even on the political front — but credits everything but the surge strategy and U.S. troops for those improvements. Sure, he’ll say on the stump that “our troops have accomplished every mission” and “they have performed brilliantly.” But in the very next breath, he’ll deny that they were responsible for the success (remember: “gains have been made”).

It seems as if nothing good can possibly have come from U.S. military policy in Iraq simply because it went ahead without Obama’s blessing.

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