Last night, President Obama addressed the nation, claiming that all combat troops would be withdrawn from Iraq, fulfilling a campaign promise to end the eight-year war there begun during the Bush Administration. Speaking from the Oval Office, the President declared "mission accomplished," claiming that Iraqi forces will now be responsible for keeping their own security, with the aid of about 50,000 "military advisors" -- US troops who will provide military training and consulting to Iraqi forces.
All in all, I agree with Bill Kristol: it wasn't a bad speech given who and what it was all about:
President Obama opposed the war in Iraq. He still thinks it was a mistake. It's therefore unrealistic for supporters of the war to expect the president to give the speech John McCain would have given, or to expect President Obama to put the war in the context we would put it in. He simply doesn't believe the war in Iraq was a necessary part of a broader effort to fight terror, to change the Middle East, etc. Given that (erroneous) view of his, I thought his speech was on the whole commendable, and even at times impressive.
But like Nick Gillespie at Reason, my one problem with the speech may be, though, that it's premise is not entirely truthful. I mean, it's not like the war is actually ending or anything. Unless you're an idiot celebrity or something that believes that shit, or has a difficult time understanding the complexity of international involvement.
I am not a supporter of the war in Iraq. I was at first when everyone was and over the years the utility of fighting in Iraq got lost on me, particularly given that we didn't bother to secure one country before heading off to invade another. So to me, this new development is pretty much cold comfort: 4,400 lives lost and countless others injured or changed with violence still a regular occurrance. Not that any of that can be changed now, nor is it worth rehashing the reasons for going or staying, but it felt strange hearing Obama issue only vague assurances and weird, recycled platitutdes from earlier speeches in an effort to convince me and millions of other Americans that he has a handle on what's going on. As many have said, he is a domestic policy President, whose focus is on improving conditions within our borders, and it felt, last night, as though he were just arbitrarily ending something he had little interest in anyway.
That last part isn't just an observation -- Obama opposed the war and ultimately opposed the troop surge that led to the primary successes our time in Iraq achieved -- and quite possibly brought that country back from the brink of total chaos. Say what you want about George W. Bush, who got a weird, uncomfortable shout out for his efforts, but the troop surge was a brilliant strategy that allowed us to be in this position -- and although many lives were lost, allowed those whose blood spilled on the battlefields of Iraq to have not died in vain. After eight years and billions of American dollars, the war may very well be considered by history to be a success, as strange as that sounds to me personally. Whether we met the goals that we set for ourselves upon entering Iraq, well, that's entirely dependent on how we define success in the Middle East for ourselves. President Obama defines success much more loosely than the previous administration, so who knows.
But that's not to say the war is actually over. About 50,000 troops will remain in Iraq, and as the Associated Press points out, those 50,000 troops aren't out of harms way. In fact, their main mission will still be counterterrorism, which will likely put them into contact with armed enemies on a regular basis. Actually, not likely... almost certainly. Among those left will be Navy SEALs and Army Green Berets whose mission will be to root out and destroy Al Qaeda. Which, I think has been basically the same combat mission all along. So there's that.
I also found the economic quip at the end rather disconcerting, blaming the Iraq war for the growing deficit and our country's recession on the lack of focus on domestic issues blah blah blah blah. First of all, it's a war. Second, given the numbers, it actually seems that our failed efforts at stimulating the economy with billions of tax dollars has actually cost taxpayers significantly more than the Iraq War effort. During the height of the war, spending on operations in Iraq was less than a quarter of national spending on things like Medicare, and it accounted for less than 15% of deficit spending throughout its duration. In other words, President Obama wasted more tax dollars in the first two months of his presidency on useless federal economic stimulus projects than George W. Bush did on Iraq efforts during his entire eight years in office.
Suffice it to say, I'll be waiting and watching with the rest of America to see what happens next. I hope that President Obama takes a long, hard look at the Middle East and how it affects American lives both at home and abroad. I hope he takes the next steps very serious and with extreme caution and recognizes the impact that both foreign and domestic policies have on the longer American outlook.
Filed under: National Politics
Tags: Barack Obama, Democratic Party, Democrats, George W. Bush, Iraq War, President Obama, Republican Party, Republicans, war, War in Iraq
