Time machine: November 2002

This is a diary about Barack Obama’s stance on the Iraq War in November 2002. Since I first saw an interview he did at that time on Josh Marshall (then diaried here by Bobeltrash and jg82567), I’ve noticed some people have called it “obvious,” said that it “sounds like a hedge bet” or that “anyone with a brain and a heart arrived at the same conclusions.”

I remember November 2002, and I don’t think that very many politicians actually said what Barack Obama did. Below I let you compare some of what people were saying in November 2002 to what Obama says in that interview. I don’t think it was “obvious” at all – and I feel its prescience really deserves to be recognized as such. Please note I’m not an Obama supporter (yet) but this really does seem significant to me.

Contrast Obama's words to the kind of rhetoric that was in the media that month on three issues: the Iraq threat, the consequences of war, and the Iraq War Powers Resolution. I think that the important thing about the way he addresses these issues is that he avoids the terms according to which the Republicans justified the war and actually talks about the long term consequences of the war. That same month, Dusko Doder observed the latter is the part of the discussion that the Administration was avoiding:

Even the Iraqi debate is tailored for this purpose, since neither the President nor anyone in his administration has honestly addressed the question of whether war is necessary and worth the risks. Instead, the debate has been confined to secondary issues such as whether the United States should work through the United Nations, how close Iraq is to acquiring nuclear weapons or whether arms inspectors can uncover Saddam's secret weapons.

Dusko Doder, “What follows victory Military conquest is just a small part of what it will take to build a viable, democratic Iraq” in The Times Union, 11/03/02

Let’s start at the beginning of his answers:

1. Obama on the Saddam Hussein threat

This is the weakest of the three statements he makes:

Obama: I don’t there is anybody who imagines that Saddam Hussein is a good guy or somebody who isn’t a threat to stability in the region or to his own people. But I also think that us rushing into a war unilaterally was a mistake and may still be a mistake, and I think that we have to give those inspections a chance.

He’s being wishy-washy here, I think. Still, his parsing of the situation is notable for what he doesn’t say – there is no concession the WMD issue, and this was an article of faith among the shrill voices on the right: This was broadcast the same day on Fox:

Look, the truth is we know he's building weapons of mass destruction, and the problem I think, is Blix probably doesn't know where to look.

Fred Barnes, on “Fox Special Report with Brit Hume” 11/25/2002

Also on the same day, Robert Novak makes it sound like Iraq deserves attack for just denying the existence of WMD:

Yet, addressing students in Prague last Wednesday, the president's saber-rattling speech spawned Thursday morning headlines worldwide. He made the Dec. 8 deadline, imposed by the United Nations for Saddam Hussein to inventory weapons of mass destruction, sound like an ultimatum. "Should he again deny that this arsenal exists," said Bush, "he will have entered his final stage with a lie." The president implied that, without waiting for the verdict of U.N. weapons inspectors just arrived back in Baghdad, the Iraqi dictator would suffer "the severest consequences."

The Augusta Chronicle, 11/25/02

2. Obama on starting a war with Iraq

It gets better. Here is what Obama says with respect to the consequences of a military attack on Iraq:

If [by the 2004 election] it has happened, then at that point what the debate is really going to be about is what is our long term commitment there.

• How much is it going to cost?
• What does it mean for us to rebuild Iraq?
• How do we stabilze and make sure that this country doesn’t split into factions between the Shia, the Kurds, the Sunnis?

In hindsight this is very perceptive, but even were he to have been wrong the point is notable for the complexity with which he treats the situation. Contrast this to our elected officials that month:

"What 9/11 demonstrated was, first of all, what extremism can do and put on the table what extremism married with weapons of mass destruction might do," Rice said. "We know that, to be blunt, bad guys travel in packs. Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stalin managed to make an alliance less than two years before Adolf Hitler brutally attacked the Soviet Union. Bad guys travel in packs."

Derrick Z. Jackson, “Rice’s Argument for Sacrifice” in the Boston Globe 11/15/02

That’s stupid, and on the same day we get ultra-stupid, too:

If America uses military force to oust Saddam, Mr. Rumsfeld said, there would be a military command in Iraq while authorities tried to track down all of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction - a task Mr. Rumsfeld earlier said could take many months. Then some sort of interim government of Iraqis should take control, he said.

Iraq probably would not be able to fight for very long after an American-led invasion, Mr. Rumsfeld said, noting that ground combat in the 1991 Gulf War lasted just 100 hours.

"I can't say if the use of force would last five days or five weeks or five months, but it certainly isn't going to last any longer than that," Mr. Rumsfeld said. "It won't be a World War III."

He rejected Saddam's claims that Iraq has no chemical, biological, or nuclear weapons programs.

"We know that Saddam Hussein has chemical and biological weapons, and we know he has an active program for development of nuclear weapons," Mr. Rumsfeld said.

Mat Kelley, “Rumsfeld Weighs Saddam Response To U.S. Attack” in the New York Sun, 11/15/02

Is Obama sounding well-reasoned yet? And for comic relief, here is Kevin Spacey:

Sounding a little like Bill Murray in Stripes -- "C'mon, it's Czechoslovakia! We zip in, we pick 'em up, we zip right out again! We're not going to Moscow. It's Czechoslovakia! It's like we're going into Wisconsin!" -- actor Kevin Spacey believes that American forces can oust Saddam Hussein in less than two weeks. But the two-time Oscar winner and would-be foreign policy expert thinks our country's military is being misused for political ends. "We have a job in Afghanistan we haven't finished," Spacey said last week. "We have (fewer) troops in Afghanistan at this moment than we had in Kosovo. There's no clear victory in Afghanistan. There's a clear victory in Iraq in about 11 days. I think the (U.S. armed forces) can pull it off. And President Bush knows it."

The Columbus Dispatch, 11/17/02

3. Obama on the Iraq War Powers Resolution

If it had come to me as an up or down vote, as it came, I think I would have agreed with our senior senator Dick Durbin and voted Nay and the reason is not that I don’t think we should have aggressive inspections. What I would have been concerned about was a [giving] carte blanche to the administration for a doctrine of pre-emptive strikes that I’m not sure sets a good precedent.

He reiterates the need for inspections and emphasizes the problem of the doctrine of pre-emptive strikes. Certainly, as we look at the possibility of the IWPR being cited tomorrow as authority to attack Iran, his concerns are vindicated.

And yet, what were serious people saying? Here’s a political scientist named Donald Devine writing that same day:

After President George W. Bush's double victory in the United Nations and the election, it is time to get serious about Saddam Hussein. White House spokesman Ari Fleischer's "one bullet" solution for the dictator sets the right tone. The simplest solution with the least casualties is the best.

“Unfriendly turf for democracy” in The Washington Times, 11/20/02.

And let’s not forget how some Democrats voted on the IWPR:

Moreover, the defection of Senate Democrats to the president on the war resolution, such as Hillary Clinton of New York, who sounded more Republican in the debate than Arlen Specter, R-Pa., left Al Gore, the 2000 presidential candidate who opposed Bush's initiative, quite isolated.

Douglas Turner, “Bush Making Democrats look ragged” Buffalo News, 10/20/02.

Okay, they were misled by intelligence. Still, it is worth putting Obama’s (and Durbin’s) skepticism about the same in historical context.

I may not have convinced you that Barack Obama is a modern-day oracle, but at the same time he sure sounds like he not only had foresight but also was able to see past the garbage in the November 2002 discourse and talk about what would turn out to be really important.