Obama On Iraq: Setting The Record Straight

Tonight, President Obama will speak to the nation about the end of combat operations in Iraq. I’ll be liveblogging the speech here. I’ll be using a new system for liveblogging — as I liveblog the speech, you’ll be able to follow along without the need to reload the page. I’ll also be sending out liveblog updates through my Twitter feed.

Setting the Record Straight

An Iraqi woman raises a purple finger after voting for the first time in a free Iraqi election.

But first, it’s important to set the record straight. We would not be able to be removing our combat troops from Iraq had we not successfully quelled the sectarian violence in Iraq. In short, without the surge back in 2007, Iraq would not be nearly as stable as it is now. The surge worked. It reduced sectarian violence.

Because the U.S. worked with Sunni leaders, Iraqi Sunnis helped us remove al-Qaeda in Iraq. This lead to the death of al-Qaeda leaders like Abu Mus’ab al-Zarqawi and more recently Abu Omar al-Baghdadi. While there are still al-Qaeda affiliated splinter groups in Iraq, they are nowhere near as powerful as they were in 2007.

Because the threat of al-Qaeda in Iraq was eliminated, the radical Shi’ite groups lost support. Iranian-backed radicals like Moqtada al-Sadr couldn’t use the fear of al-Qaeda to win over Iraqi Shi’ites. Instead of leading a Shi’ite civil war, Moqtada al-Sadr ended up being discredited. His band of thugs, the Mahdi Army, are no longer a major threat to the future of Iraq. Al-Sadr himself was forced to flee to Iran out of fear.

All of this was due to the surge—not just the fact that we added more troops, but we used better tactics to protect the Iraqi people and improve their security and their living conditions.

There are two reasons why Iraq never flew into civil war in 2007: the bravery of the Iraqi people and the bravery of the U.S. and coalition troops.

The Real Obama Record On Iraq

Notably absent from these reasons in President Obama. His record on Iraq is a record of being fundamentally wrong from the beginning. Then-Senator Obama was an ardent opponent of the surge from the very beginning. He is on record as saying that not only would the surge not work, but the added troops would have increased tensions in Iraq.

As a candidate, Obama strongly opposed the surge throughout 2007 and into the 2008 campaign. His position was that the U.S. should begin immediately removing troops from Iraq. Had President Bush listened to Obama then, there would have been a power vacuum in Iraq that would have turned the country into another Somalia.

In fact, Obama had said that even after it was clear that the surge was working, he still would have opposed it.

But Obama has subsequently changed his tune. He tried to scrub his prior criticisms of the surge from his campaign web page. And it would be only a few years after Obama ripped the concept of the surge to shreds that he would endorse the very same policy—but that time applying it to Afghanistan. President Obama may have opposed the surge when he was a candidate, but now he seeks the credit.

He deserves little credit. He can’t say that he fulfilled any campaign promise to withdraw from Iraq: in fact the timetable for US withdrawal was set before Obama took office. It was the 2008 Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) that set the withdrawal date, not President Obama. Regardless of who had won in 2008, the situation would be the same. It was the surge that allowed the U.S. to draw down its forces in Iraq without creating a dangerous power vacuum that would have destabilized the entire region.

Now, if President Obama gives full credit to the troops without politicizing the issue, he’ll have set the right tone. But Obama’s statements must be set against Obama’s record on the war. He was wrong on the surge. The surge worked. The security of the Iraqi people was a necessary precondition to any political rapprochement. Obama’s preference for a “diplomatic surge” would never have worked.

No matter what Obama says tonight, the real heroes in this conflict and the American, coalition, and Iraqi soldiers, police, and security forces that put their lives on the line day in and day out to secure a better future for Iraq. If the President acknowledges this, he deserves credit. But if he tries to spin Iraq into a political victory for himself, it will backfire on him. This isn’t Obama’s victory, this is a victory for Iraq. We should never let the President forget that.

What Victory Looks Like

ABC News finds that Iraqis are more secure and more supportive of democracy. Security is a necessary prerequisite to any kind of political reconciliation, and it’s now looking like the Iraqi people really do feel more secure. For example, the poll found:

While deep difficulties remain, the advances are remarkable. Eighty-four percent of Iraqis now rate security in their own area positively, nearly double its August 2007 level. Seventy-eight percent say their protection from crime is good, more than double its low. Three-quarters say they can go where they want safely â€“ triple what it’s been.

Few credit the United States, still widely unpopular given the post-invasion violence, and eight in 10 favor its withdrawal on schedule by 2011 â€“ or sooner. But at the same time a new high, 64 percent of Iraqis, now call democracy their preferred form of government.

While it would be nice to be popular in Iraq, what we have achieved through the surge is what needed to be achieved. The goal of the surge: to provide enough security to prevent Iraq from exploding was met. The surge worked. It not only created a more secure Iraq, but thanks to our willingness to work with all sides, it has dramatically reduced sectarian tensions. The surge did exactly what it was supposed to do, and it represents one of the most important military turnarounds in the history of counterinsurgency. Future military leaders will be studying the tactics of great military minds like Gen. Petraeus and Col. H.R. McMaster for years to come.

Now, imagine an alternate scenario where John Kerry was elected President in 2004. He would have pulled U.S. troops from Iraq, leaving the country defenseless. An Iraqi civil war would have been inevitable. The Iraqi Shi’a would have looked to Iran for protection from al-Qaeda. Iraqi Sunnis would have banded either with al-Qaeda or looked to the Saudis and other fellow Sunnis for protection from the Iranians. The Kurds in the north would be fighting a pitched battle against both al-Qaeda and Iran.

For all the talk about how terrible a war Iraq was, it could have been much worse. Had Kerry been elected, it almost certainly would have.

Had now-Vice President Biden gotten his way and split Iraq down sectarian lines, the result would have been much the same. Iraq would be divided, and soon conquered.

Biden, now-Secretary of State Clinton, President Obama, Sen. Reid, Rep. Pelosi, all of them were wrong on Iraq. None of the advances that have been made in the past two years would have happened had they gotten their way. There should be a lesson in that.

Iraq still has a long period of transition. Other, more mundane problems like corruption and government efficiency still pose a threat to its future. But the days when terrorists threatened to destabilize the country are now over—and if we continue to meet our commitments to the Iraqi people and continue to train their military and government leaders, those terrible days will be over forever.

But peace is a tenuous thing. If Obama withdraws American troops in an irresponsible manner, the gains we’ve made could be lost as al-Qaeda, the Sadrists, or other groups exploit the vacuum. We must withdraw with full cognizance of the situation on the ground and be prepared to alter our timetable as necessary.

We have won in Iraq, and we should not ignore the lessons we have learned. Future conflicts in the 21st Century will look much like the one in Iraq, and we must be prepared to fight them—and we must also be willing to learn that the model of Iraq may not fit elsewhere as easily. What we need in Afghanistan is the same kind of visionary leadership that we had on the ground in Iraq as well as a political structure back home that will listen to them. President Obama should learn from President Bush’s mistakes and understand that the path to victory should be dictated by the theater of battle, not the politics of Washington.

Why We Won’t Attack Iran Anytime Soon

The Financial Times takes a skeptical look at claims that there’s an imminent plan to retaliate against Iran. They examine the political and military difficulties of such a strike and find that it’s unlikely to happen.

At the same time, Barry Rubin reiterates why it is we should be worried about Iran’s nuclear program. Even though the military option isn’t going to be played out soon, the time for the diplomatic option is running out. We don’t know when Iran might be able to produce a nuclear bomb. It could be as soon as 2009. We do know that its in nobody’s interest for that to happen. If diplomacy fails, then and only then will the military option become truly viable—and even then we can’t be sure whether it would be effective or not.

All the furor on Capitol Hill over the mere possibility of an attack paradoxically makes such an attack more likely. If Iran knows that the United States would not hesitate to massively retaliate against an Iranian nuclear test or against Iran’s nuclear program should we even suspect they have a bomb, that creates a powerful incentive not to take that final step. However, if they think that the US will roll over and let them obtain nuclear weapons, they will do so. In a time when we need to present a united diplomatic front that makes it clear that Iranian nukes are unacceptable, Democrats are playing politics. This is another key example of why the majority of the Democratic Party still can’t be trusted on national security issues—a party so willing to sacrifice the broad national interest for partisan gain is not sufficiently responsible to lead.

We cannot allow Iran to possess nuclear weapons. An unstable regime with that kind of power is a threat to everyone’s security. The world has a choice: either stand united or face worse consequences down the road. There is a slim chance that diplomatic and political pressure can stall Tehran’s run towards the bomb. So long as that chance remains, it’s unlikely that either the US or Israel will risk an attack. However, if Tehran remains intransigent, the clock will eventually run down and we’ll have no choice.

We have one last chance to prevent the necessity of attacking Iran. However, we can’t do that in an environment where our own politicians are preemptively rolling over to Tehran’s nuclear ambitions. We have to be strong and united on this issue to forestall a war: and when partisan politics is trumping national security it only makes the necessity of military conflict that much greater.