Tag: speech

Liveblogging Obama’s Iraq Address

I’ll be liveblogging President Obama’s address to the nation on the topic of Iraq. This will be a new kind of liveblog for this site. Updates will happen automatically, there’s no need to refresh the page. Don’t forget to read about Obama’s record on Iraq. After the speech, I’ll be assembling some commentary from around the blogosphere.

You can also follow the liveblog on my Twitter feed if you are so inclined.

6:24 pm I’m ending the liveblog for now. Click here to see some post-speech reactions from across the blogosphere.
 
6:20 pm This was a speech that sounded very much like something Bush would have given. Again, I mean that as a compliment.
 
6:19 pm “Our troops are the steel of our ship of state.” I love that line.
 
6:18 pm Obama seems to be getting a bit emotional describing the casualties of this war. As anyone would be. It’s very humanizing.
 
6:17 pm The stuff about a new GI Bill is nice, but how to pay for all of it?
 
6:15 pm The economic stuff seems tacked on and artificial. The Iraq section was quite good, but this part doesn’t live up to the tone that Obama set earlier.
 
6:13 pm Obama’s transitioning to the economy. This makes sense, to a point, but it’s a jarring transition.
 
6:12 pm The problem with Afghanistan is that it’s much less developed than Iraq was. Afghan civil society is nowhere near what Iraq’s was, even after decades of Ba’athist rule.
 
6:11 pm This is a speech I could see Bush giving. And I mean that as a compliment.
 
6:09 pm President Obama gives a nice tribute to President Bush. That’s quite classy, but will piss off the left to no end. I like it for both.
 
6:09 pm So far this is one of the most Presidential addresses that Obama has given.
 
6:08 pm “Iraqis are a proud people. They have rejected sectarian war.”
 
6:07 pm All U.S. troops to leave by the end of next year, pursuant to the Status of Forces Agreement.
 
6:06 pm “Our combat mission is ending. Our commitment to Iraq’s future is not.” Let’s hope that’s true.
 
6:06 pm The emphasis on the Iraqi people is good. This wasn’t just a victory for us, it was a victory for the people of Iraq. We did this together.
 
6:05 pm No, Mr. President, this wasn’t your campaign promise. The withdrawal date was set before you became President. It was in the 2008 SOFA.
 
6:04 pm “Tonight, I am announcing that the American combat mission in Iraq has ended.” Operation Iraqi Freedom is over.
 
6:04 pm The President’s tone in regard to the troops is exactly what’s needed here. He came close to blaming Bush, but didn’t do so directly.
 
6:01 pm Will talking about Iraq now make Obama seem out of touch? By focusing on Iraq, does it make the President look like he’s not concentrating on the economy?
 
6:00 pm The speech should begin shortly.
 
5:58 pm I’m guessing that ratings will be low for this speech. It’s the middle of summer, and people are more concerned about the economy than Iraq.
 
5:53 pm This is only the second time Obama has addressed the nation from the Oval Office. The first time was in response to the Gulf oil spill.
 
5:52 pm ABC News has excerpts from tonight’s speech on Iraq. President Obama will be speaking from the Oval Office.
 
5:46 pm Just a reminder, you don’t need to refresh this page. You should be able to get updates automatically. Obama’s speech will begin in about 15 minutes, at 8PM EST/7PM CST.
 

Post-Speech Reactions

This was a workmanlike speech that was delivered well. What’s striking about the speech is how much President Obama sounded like President Bush. Some of the rhetoric was downright stirring. I’m (obviously!) disinclined to like the President, but I found myself mostly liking this speech. But the weakest part was the part discussing the economy. For one, it was a digression from the topic of the speech. And for another, it was too generic to mean anything. What does Obama intend to do about the economy? Because what’s been done so far hasn’t exactly done much good. Stephen Green drunkblogged the speech and found it rather bland, other than some stirring rhetoric. I’m not so sure that it was that bad—the President let himself show just a crack of emotion, which helps him. Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK) found Obama’s speech to be “awkward”. Apparently Rachel Maddow is positively livid that President Obama had anything good to say about President Bush. I have to admit, if Obama’s pissed off Maddow, that makes me like him more. Lawprof William Jacobson distills Obama’s speech into one sentence. At The Daily Kos, praise for the economic section of the speech. What’s interesting about that section is how mushy-mouthed it really is? Exactly what is meant by the President’s desire to “strengthen the middle class?” It’s a boilerplate phrase, which is probably why some want to read more into it than is actually there. Off-topic, but tonight’s liveblogging was brought by this great liveblogging plugin for WordPress. It’s a great plugin, and the Twitter integration was a definite plus. I highly recommend it. In speaking of Twitter, the speech wasn’t even one of the trending topics. I’m not sure very many people were paying attention to it. Jonah Goldberg found much of the speech to be “offensive.”

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.