‘The central front in the war on terror is not Iraq, and it never was’

July 15, 2008

Barack Obama’s NYT op-ed yesterday was the first part of a two-pronged strategy. The second is an address, billed by the Obama campaign as a “major speech,” on Iraq, Afghanistan, and national security. (It’s streaming live now, if you’re inclined to tune in.)

Contending that the U.S. is not pursuing a sound strategy for keeping Americans safe, Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama said Tuesday that fighting al-Qaida and the Taliban in Afghanistan would be his top priority after ending the war in Iraq. […]

In a major speech on Iran and national security, Obama said he would also secure nuclear weapons and materials from terrorists and rogue nations, achieve “true energy security,” and rebuild the nation’s international alliances. […]

Obama said the Bush strategy that McCain supports has placed the burden for U.S. foreign policy on American military. National security policy should go well beyond Baghdad, he said, and involve allies around the world. He focused on Afghanistan and Pakistan, saying that if the U.S. were attacked again, it likely would be from the same region where the Sept. 11 attacks were planned.

“By any measure, our single-minded and open-ended focus on Iraq is not a sound strategy for keeping America safe,” Obama is going to say, according to excerpts released by his campaign. “In fact — as should have been apparent to President Bush and Sen. McCain — the central front in the war on terror is not Iraq, and it never was.”

And in the point I’ve been waiting for Democrats to hammer home for years, Obama says what needs to be said: “Our men and women in uniform have accomplished every mission we have given them. What’s missing in our debate about Iraq – what has been missing since before the war began – is a discussion of the strategic consequences of Iraq and its dominance of our foreign policy. This war distracts us from every threat that we face and so many opportunities we could seize. This war diminishes our security, our standing in the world, our military, our economy, and the resources that we need to confront the challenges of the 21st century. By any measure, our single-minded and open-ended focus on Iraq is not a sound strategy for keeping America safe.”

Once in a while, I’m reminded that Obama “gets it.” Today’s speech is a reassuring example.

Obama isn’t defensive, and he’s not relying on conservative frames to discuss national security. He’s taking steps — and I hope he takes even more — to argue that the nation has been arguing in a fundamentally flawed way.

“As President, I will pursue a tough, smart and principled national security strategy – one that recognizes that we have interests not just in Baghdad, but in Kandahar and Karachi, in Tokyo and London, in Beijing and Berlin. I will focus this strategy on five goals essential to making America safer: ending the war in Iraq responsibly; finishing the fight against al Qaeda and the Taliban; securing all nuclear weapons and materials from terrorists and rogue states; achieving true energy security; and rebuilding our alliances to meet the challenges of the 21st century….

“It is unacceptable that almost seven years after nearly 3,000 Americans were killed on our soil, the terrorists who attacked us on 9/11 are still at large. Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahari are recording messages to their followers and plotting more terror. The Taliban controls parts of Afghanistan. Al Qaeda has an expanding base in Pakistan that is probably no farther from their old Afghan sanctuary than a train ride from Washington to Philadelphia. If another attack on our homeland comes, it will likely come from the same region where 9/11 was planned. And yet today, we have five times more troops in Iraq than Afghanistan.

“Senator McCain said – just months ago – that ‘Afghanistan is not in trouble because of our diversion to Iraq.’ I could not disagree more. Our troops and our NATO allies are performing heroically in Afghanistan, but I have argued for years that we lack the resources to finish the job because of our commitment to Iraq. That’s what the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff said earlier this month. And that’s why, as President, I will make the fight against al Qaeda and the Taliban the top priority that it should be. This is a war that we have to win.”

For his part, McCain is criticizing Obama for articulating a policy on the Middle East in advance of his visit to the Middle East.

“Senator Obama is departing soon on a trip abroad that will include a fact-finding mission to Iraq and Afghanistan. And I note that he is speaking today about his plans for Iraq and Afghanistan before he has even left, before he has talked to General Petraeus, before he has seen the progress in Iraq, and before he has set foot in Afghanistan for the first time. In my experience, fact-finding missions usually work best the other way around: first you assess the facts on the ground, then you present a new strategy.”

That’s not a bad political spin, but it’s badly flawed. First, Obama isn’t presenting a “new” strategy; he’s talking to voters about the policy he’s embraced from the beginning. Second, one need not be in Iraq to set a policy for Iraq. Bush and Cheney haven’t exactly been regulars in Baghdad, but they’ve been dictating a policy that McCain loves for years.

MSM Spin: McAce is right. Obama is wrong. McAce is right. Obama is wrong. We must bomb bomb bomb bomb bomb Iran. I repeat. McAce is right Obama is wrong. Pass the baloney…

  • “Second, one need not be in Iraq to set a policy for Iraq”

    Exactly – in fact when McCain visits Iraq, he talks exclusively to the military, and listens to only their tactical assessments. For McCain, military tactics = his Iraq strategy.

    Which is exactly the point Obama needs to stress – that Bush and McCain have only listened to tactical level advice, but have never looked at broad strategy in making decisions.

    So it’s not that McCain has a bad strategy for foreign policy – it’s that he HAS NONE.

  • “McCain wants to finish the war Bush started, Obama wants to finish the war Bin Laden started.” I read that at a TPM reader’s blog yesterday. Damned succinct and factual.

    Obama also needs to tie the economy to the war more.

  • When you can’t access information from the intertubes and email, maybe you do need to travel to Iraq and get your propaganda face to face before you can make a decision.

    But that doesn’t make you presidential material.

  • So John McCain didn’t articulate an Iraq policy before he went to see the dog and pony show there? Did he “present a new strategy” when he got back from his casual but flak-jacketed stroll through the Baghdad market flanked by 100 soldiers and four helicopters? Or did he come back and say “See? I was right!”

    Obama is smart, by saying “the central front in the war on terror is not Iraq, and it never was” he’s calling Bush and McCain out on their BS.

    It’s about time these people were called what they are. Liars.

  • It’s about time Obama takes some control over the topic du jour of the blathering of the chattering classes. Give them something to talk about already– and keep it up.

  • Being part of a military family I can tell you that any military person asked says that they “want to finish the job” in Iraq and wherever they serve. It is a matter of pride for them. They want to be not only efficient, but our heros. It’s in their culture and for many who choose that profession, it is in their blood. So when asked, they will always tell the President and McCain what they want to hear most. Once they are involved their judgement is in fact biased. We just need to know that and accept that. It’s up to their leaders to make sure that their missions are winnable and that their blood isn’t shed recklessly. In my opinion, my son, even if killed, served his country well, but I can separate him from a crummy mission and evil politicians who fight economic wars for profit. I just wish others could detach as well. Then maybe we can have a reasonable discussion about Iraq.

  • Obama is going to where the facts are, because he cannot get any facts from the Bush/McCain cartel.

    The chipmunks in my back yard will obtain nuclear weapons and declare themselves an autonomous quadrupedal dictatorship before anyone on the planet can get any facts from the Bush/McCain cartel—unless we beat it out of them.

    The Bush/McCain cartel, that is….

  • I need to add that if my son is killed in Iraq, I will never ever forgive this administration and its shills though…their culpability is absolute.

  • And the MSM’s pre-designated response (as spoon fed by their corporate handlers): Obama is flip-flopping on his stance on Iraq, he’s cutting and running and will turn Iraq over to al-Quada. He’s also for appeasing Iran.

    Winner of today’s foreign policy battle: John McCain.

  • Oh, good, another “major speech” from the guy who can’t get enough of hearing himself talk. Can a single day go by without this conceited man trying to attract attention to himself? Confident presidential candidates do not need to be in the news all the time. Methinks Senator Lookatme is so insecure that he has to keep trying to make headlines.

  • The great thing about Obama is that when he takes a principled stand on a matter of importance he sticks with it. You can take his words about Iraq to the bank and deposit them in the account where you deposited his words promising to oppose, and filibuster if necessary, FISA and Telecom immunity..

    This is one of my favorite blogs but Mr Benen is becoming a bit of an Obama groupie.

  • How can Obama understand Iraq without seeing Gen. Patraeus’ dog and pony show? How can he understand Iraq without taking an unsecured walk through an open-air market -like Sen. McCain did?

  • The professor doesn’t like looking at uppity black people (though I am sure he uses another word).

  • “McCain wants to finish the war Bush started, Obama wants to finish the war Bin Laden started.
    It’s good, and salutary, for the country to hear that last sentence again, from as many prominent sources, as often as possible. The 9/11 attacks were an opportunity, to be charitable, and a pretext, to be harsh.

    The ‘goal’ for the whole bloody war was to give the GOP, operating out of the White House, a stick to beat Democrats with, to reduce domestic opposition to the Glorious Revolution to a cipher, using a wartime surge of nationalism and the powers of an aggrandized executive.

    A war was the key to the One-Party State. A long twilight police-and-counterinsurgency effort against a few thousand non-state actors wasn’t going to cut it.

    This whole misbegotten escapade in Mesopotamia has been nothing more or less than a second American civil war — this time fought by proxy — attempting to settle deep and abiding differences about what this country, not Iraq, is, means, and does, by having a war about it — but this time not having the war here.

  • Frankly I cringe when I see Obama using Bush’s term ‘war on terror’.

    That phrase is a GOP-invented talking point. While I applaud Obama for taking a common-sense approach to what’s going on in Iraq (and I am grateful to much of his overall strategy), when I see him using that term, I sometimes wonder if even he gets it.

    To me, you don’t fight terrorists by bombing them or occupying their territory. It’s clear the US learned nothing from the Russian war in Afghanistan.

    I say this noting that that I opposed the US invasion of Afghanistan, because I knew it would not accomplish what I wanted to see (capturing Bin Laden).

  • AlwaysHopeful@10 – I wish your son and your family good fortune in his Iraq duties.

    Way too many fine men and women have been lost due to Bush’s “War of Choice”.

  • Obama’s ability and willingness to cut through false frames and skewed “conventional wisdom” is why I’ve been able to stand up for the guy despite several moves (such as FISA and distancing himself from Clark) that otherwise would have caused me to walk away. He’s confronting the big lies that have been foisted upon the US by conservatives for the sole purpose of leading us in directions we never would have gone had we been told the truth. When and if such facades can be demolished, it is my hope that abominations like the latest FISA bill can dealt with in a more realistic and rational environment. I’m hoping that he is simply choosing battles he thinks he can win and tackling them in the order he thinks he can win them.

    If that’s too much wishful thinking for some, I can only say, what else have we got? Decades of false framing and new realities that pop in and out of existence like unstable worm holes have so distorted our public discourse that rationality no longer matters. In many cases, acknowledging reality is seen as a losing strategy. If he can convince enough people that we’ve been handling the so-called WOT all wrong, it seems a we’ll have moved closer to convincing them we’ve approached surveillance all wrong. If Obama’s not the one to do that, then others will have to take up the cause, but I think the work he’s doing here brings us closer to the day when constitutionally acceptable solutions are more more politically feasible.

  • @26 “what else have we got?”

    We’ve got the Democrats who have enabled the Bushies to do all the bad things that we oppose.

    Glenn Greenwald has a nice blog up today arguing that the reason the Democrats were so willing to give in to Bush on FISA and other matters is they are afraid they too may be vulnerable for charges of war crimes.

    So let’s all be hopeful that Obama, our “magic Negro” to use someone’s term will save us from ourselves. And if the saving requires him to act just like the people he is saving us from-well let’s just hope that after he’s elected we’ll see some “change that we can believe in. ”

    Because after all “what else have we got?”

  • re 27: Well, we could drown our heads in the toilet, but I don’t see much future in that.

  • #19 what the MSM won’t tell you is that after McCains meet and greet through the market many shopkeepers closed up and went into hiding for fear of retaliation in fraternizing with the US.

    Obama should go with a small security detail and no gunships patrolling overhead and broadcast this to brass balls McCain.

  • My God you are the most unsympathetic (I know better words but will not use them here) person in the Universe. If Obama “gets it” why have you not yet volunteered for fighting in the US Army at the Afghanistan “front” instead of leaving the dying to others? Or are you too old and let kids do the dirty work for you?

  • Why is Obama stating a strategy for Iraq before his trip to the area, and before he consults with the commanders on the ground? Obama says we should shift our attention to Afghanistan, but why hasn’t he even voted on the committee for Afghanistan, the committee which he supposedly chaired for the past year? It sounds to me like Obama is simply playing politics with his statements, rather than offering a policy which is based on reality … and a policy which would actually work. Let’s keep America safe and secure, by electing Senator John McCain in November.

  • “This whole misbegotten escapade in Mesopotamia has been nothing more or less than a second American civil war — this time fought by proxy — attempting to settle deep and abiding differences about what this country, not Iraq, is, means, and does, by having a war about it — but this time not having the war here.”

    That is actually a very good way of putting it.

  • “As President, I will pursue a tough, smart and principled national security strategy – one that recognizes that we have interests not just in Baghdad, but in Kandahar and Karachi, in Tokyo and London, in Beijing and Berlin. — Obama

    Not to mention New York, San Francisco, Washington DC. etc, etc, etc. All of which will be easier to keep an eye (and ear) on, now that I’ve helped to “fix” FISA.

    It’s “funny”, this FISA “fix”… Ordinarily, I do not get upset easily, nor do I hold grudges. But this one has really stuck in my craw and, try as I might, I don’t seem able to dislodge it. I still have my Obama sticker on my car (even though it’s magnetic and could, easily, be removed). And I still have my Obama pin on my pocketbook, so that it’s visible every time I leave the house. And I’ll continue to volunteer for the Dems — at the headquarters, at the various fair booths etc. But the excitement is gone because I no longer believe in Obama’s promises, now that he’s not kept his word on that single thing. Once a pitcher is broken, it may be glued together but it will never again be reliable…

    […] Obama, our “magic Negro” to use someone’s term […] — Money in the Bank, @27

    Deflated balloon as I may be, I wouldn’t go as far as O’Reiley (spell?) for my descriptions of Obama…

  • In the 1950s, in the wake of Eisenhower’s “Atoms for Peace” plan, Pakistan obtained a 125 megawatt heavy-water reactor from Canada. After India’s first atomic test in May 1974, Pakistan immediately sought to catch up by attempting to purchase a reprocessing plant from France. After France declined due to U.S. resistance, Pakistan began to assemble a uranium enrichment plant via materials from the black market and technology smuggled through A.Q. Khan. In 1976 and 1977, two amendments to the Foreign Assistance Act were passed, prohibiting American aid to countries pursuing either reprocessing or enrichment capabilities for nuclear weapons programs.

    These two, the Symington and Glenn Amendments, were passed in response to Pakistan’s efforts to achieve nuclear weapons capability; but to little avail. Washington’s cool relations with Islamabad soon improved. During the Reagan administration, the US turned a blind eye to Pakistan’s nuclear weapon’s program. In return for Pakistan’s cooperation and assistance in the mujahideen’s war against Soviet occupation of Afghanistan, the Reagan administration awarded Pakistan with the third largest economic and military aid package after Israel and Egypt. Despite the Pressler Amendment, which made US aid contingent upon the Reagan administration’s annual confirmation that Pakistan was not pursuing nuclear weapons capability, Reagan’s “laissez-faire” approach to Pakistan’s nuclear program seriously aided the proliferation issues that we face today.

    Not only did Pakistan continue to develop its own nuclear weapons program, but A.Q. Khan was instrumental in proliferating nuclear technology to other countries as well. Further, Pakistan’s progress toward nuclear capability led to India’s return to its own pursuit of nuclear weapons, an endeavor it had given up after its initial test in 1974. In 1998, both countries had tested nuclear weapons. A uranium-based nuclear device in Pakistan; and a plutonium-based device in India.

    Over the years of America’s on again- off again support of Pakistan, Musharraf continues to be skeptical of his American allies. In 2002 he is reported to have told a British official that his “great concern is that one day the United States is going to desert me. They always desert their friends.” Musharraf was referring to Viet Nam, Lebanon, Somalia … etc., etc., etc.,

    Taking the war to Pakistan is perhaps the most foolish thing America can do. Obama is not the first to suggest it, and we already have sufficient evidence of the potentially negative repercussions of such an action. On January 13, 2006, the United States launched a missile strike on the village of Damadola, Pakistan. Rather than kill the targeted Ayman al-Zawahiri, al-Qaeda’s deputy leader, the strike instead slaughtered 17 locals. This only served to further weaken the Musharraf government and further destabilize the entire area. In a nuclear state like Pakistan, this was not only unfortunate, it was outright stupid. Pakistan has 160 million Arabs (better than half of the population of the entire Arab world). Pakistan also has the support of China and a nuclear arsenal.

    I predict that America’s military action in the Middle East will enter the canons of history alongside Hiroshima, Nagasaki and the Holocaust, in kind if not in degree. The Bush administration’s war on terror marks the age in which America has again crossed a line that many argue should never be crossed. Call it preemption, preventive war, the war on terror, or whatever you like; there is a sense that we have again unleashed a force that, like a boom-a-rang, at some point has to come back to us. The Bush administration argues that American military intervention in the Middle East is purely in self-defense. Others argue that it is pure aggression. The consensus is equally as torn over its impact on international terrorism. Is America truly deterring future terrorists with its actions? Or is it, in fact, aiding the recruitment of more terrorists?

    The last thing the United States should do at this point and time is to violate yet another state’s sovereignty. Beyond being wrong, it just isn’t very smart. We all agree that slavery in this country was wrong; as was the decimation of the Native American populations. We all agree that the Holocaust and several other acts of genocide in the twentieth century were wrong. So when will we finally admit that American military intervention in the Middle East is wrong as well?

  • I’m getting a little confused here. Last week we had a candidate who wanted to get our troops out of the Middle East and not have permanent military bases in the Middle East for the next 100 years, and another candidate who wanted to keep our troops in the Middle East, in military bases which would stick around for 100 years.

    This week BOTH candidates want to keep our troops in the Middle East, presumably needing military bases which would stick around for the next 100 years. We could be there even longer than in Iraq because Afghanistan’s government has even less support of the Afghan people than the Iraq government does of the Iraq population factions.

    Why can no one see that Obama has a foreign policy which is practically identical to Bush’s and McCain’s, merely substituting the name “Afghanistan” anyplace Bush or McCain would put “Iraq”? If this kind of foreign policy is what a candidate needs to “have foreign policy experience”, then foreign policy experience is highly over-rated.

    For those of you who still read yer Bibles, there’s a lovely story (heavily paraphrasing Matthew 21:28-31 here) of a Democratic Party who went to its two Presidential Candidates, and asked them to oppose an occupation of the Middle East. The first son voted for a bill which allowed the President to go occupy the Middle East, but then later felt guilty and opposed the occupation. The second son refused to vote for the bill which allowed the occupation of the Middle East, but then later on went along with the occupation because he figured out a way supporting the occupation would get him more votes.

    In the Bible, the first son was the Good Son and the second son was the Bad Son. In the Democratic Primaries, Hillary Clinton was declared the Bad Son despite eventually condemning the occupation. Barack Obama was declared the Good Son for opposing the occupation up front, but despite him adopting a pro-occupation stance last week, lots of Democrats continue to support him as the Good Son.

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