Barack Obama has got an op-ed in Monday's New York Times in which he lays out his plans for Iraq. He reiterates what he has been saying all along - he wants to withdraw from Iraq in 16 months (while taking the views of his commanders seriously) and deploy more troops to Afghanistan.
At the end of the op-ed, Obama hits those who have been trying to portray him as a flip-flopper on Iraq:
But for far too long, those responsible for the greatest strategic blunder in the recent history of American foreign policy have ignored useful debate in favor of making false charges about flip-flops and surrender.
It’s not going to work this time. It’s time to end this war.
Nice.
So while the media are trying to portray Obama as sticking his finger in the wind, Obama has the guts to bring up his initial opposition to the surge even when the media is repeating the GOP talking points that the surge has worked.
In the 18 months since President Bush announced the surge, our troops have performed heroically in bringing down the level of violence. New tactics have protected the Iraqi population, and the Sunni tribes have rejected Al Qaeda — greatly weakening its effectiveness.
But the same factors that led me to oppose the surge still hold true. The strain on our military has grown, the situation in Afghanistan has deteriorated and we’ve spent nearly $200 billion more in Iraq than we had budgeted. Iraq’s leaders have failed to invest tens of billions of dollars in oil revenues in rebuilding their own country, and they have not reached the political accommodation that was the stated purpose of the surge.
Obama keeps bringing it back to Afghanistan and Pakistan, the countries that the GOP and the media ignore the most even though the guy who attacked us is probably in the region.
Ending the war is essential to meeting our broader strategic goals, starting in Afghanistan and Pakistan, where the Taliban is resurgent and Al Qaeda has a safe haven. Iraq is not the central front in the war on terrorism, and it never has been. As Adm. Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, recently pointed out, we won’t have sufficient resources to finish the job in Afghanistan until we reduce our commitment to Iraq.
As president, I would pursue a new strategy, and begin by providing at least two additional combat brigades to support our effort in Afghanistan. We need more troops, more helicopters, better intelligence-gathering and more nonmilitary assistance to accomplish the mission there. I would not hold our military, our resources and our foreign policy hostage to a misguided desire to maintain permanent bases in Iraq.
Basically, Obama is calling bullshit on the GOP and media's attempt to caricature him and his position.
Nicely done, Senator Obama.
UPDATE: H/T to Slinkerwink for pointing out that Obama is also hitting McCain on his trip to Iraq. In the same comments to reporters today, Obama hits McCain on getting Sunni and Shia mixed up:
"John McCain has been in Congress 25 years, no doubt about that. If this is a longevity measure, then John McCain wins," Obama said to reporters. "I'll recall the visit he made last year in which he was surrounded by helicopters and SWAT teams and came back and reported how safe everything was in Baghdad. You know, I don't think that that was indicative of what was actually happening on the ground at that time."
....
"Before we went into Iraq, I knew the difference between Shia and Sunni. Before we went into Iraq, I said that this is going to be an extraordinarily costly endeavor," Obama said. "Before we went into Iraq, I said that we would be bogged down, that it would cost us billions of dollars and thousands of lives and that it would fan anti-American sentiment and that it would distract us from the war against Afghanistan."