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Will it be “The Big One”? J-Mart reports (per The Weekly Standard’s Bill Kristol and The New Yorker writer George Packer) that Obama is poised to flip-flop on Iraq:
The next, and perhaps most significant, Obama move to the middle could be on the issue which initially sparked his campaign: Iraq.
Observers from the Weekly Standard’s Bill Kristol to George Packer, the New Yorker writer and author of “The Assassins Gate” can already see it coming:
Said Kristol yesterday on Fox News Sunday:
The next big flip for Obama, and this will make Brit even more astonished, will be on Iraq. He’s going to go to Iraq, meet with General Petraeus, decide the surge is working and walk back from his immediate unconditioned withdrawal. And suddenly, it’s going to be, “Well, we’re going to be very careful, gradual.” “Honorable withdrawal,” Obama said the other day — an honorable conclusion to the Iraq war.
And Packer in this week’s New Yorker:
Obama, whatever the idealistic yearnings of his admirers, has turned out to be a cold-eyed, shrewd politician. The same pragmatism that prompted him last month to forgo public financing of his campaign will surely lead him, if he becomes President, to recalibrate his stance on Iraq. He doubtless realizes that his original plan, if implemented now, could revive the badly wounded Al Qaeda in Iraq, reënergize the Sunni insurgency, embolden Moqtada al-Sadr to recoup his militia’s recent losses to the Iraqi Army, and return the central government to a state of collapse. The question is whether Obama will publicly change course before November. So far, he has offered nothing more concrete than this: “We must be as careful getting out of Iraq as we were careless getting in.”
A different kind of politician indeed…
June 30th, 2008 at 5:45 pm
Wouldn’t it be rich to watch the MoveOn crowd turn against Obama!
This shows the man has some sense.
June 30th, 2008 at 5:49 pm
Of course Obama is going to flip-flop on Iraq. No person can continue to hold the “the surge has failed” position, and retain credibility, even with a complicit MSM. Also, it helps that his base would still vote for him if he pledged to attack 5 separate countries the morning after his inauguration. When you have an army of mindless drones, you don’t have to worry about silly things like principle, honesty, or integrity.
June 30th, 2008 at 6:33 pm
I agree that the far left will stay with Obama no matter what. I wonder, though, what the effect of all these reversals (and especially this one, if it happens) will have on the enthusiasm gap between McCain and Obama.
June 30th, 2008 at 6:36 pm
Kristol and Packer are just now seeing this coming?
I pointed this out two weeks ago.
June 30th, 2008 at 6:43 pm
Hey J-Mart,
If you’re reading this, how ’bout a hat tip?
From June 12th on Race 4 2008:
Susan Rice, Obama’s national security advisor told Marc Ambinder today:
“Those who opposed the war thought it was a massive strategic blunder, but that doesn’t mean we didn’t want the U.S. to succeed.”
“It was, in my personal estimation, and I imagine that Sen. Obama had this in his mind too, that it was way too soon [to conclude] that there was no way that a bad situation couldn’t be ameliorated, at least partially.”
Ironically, Rice, herself, in that statement, just committed a massive strategic blunder by using the word “didn’t”, conceding that Obama no longer wants the U.S. to succeed in Iraq, despite all the irrefutable current progress, both military and political, resulting from the surge. Denying success in Iraq will be an untenable position for Obama to maintain entering the general election. To conclude that the situation in Iraq cannot be ‘partially ameliorated’, especially when American casualties have come down to the lowest levels since 2004, exposes a profound willful ignorance that will undoubtedly raise further questions about the first term Illinois senator’s judgment.
If Obama is truly interested in becoming this nation’s Commander in Chief, it is imperative that he travel to Iraq to meet with General Petraeus, and acknowledge that a positive outcome is presently being achieved, and understand, seeing with his own eyes that the transfer of sovereignty is nearing completion. Another irony is that it could well be a President Obama who could proudly run for reelection in 2012, with a genuine Mission Accomplished banner behind him.
June 30th, 2008 at 6:47 pm
Kristol is being dishonest because Obama has never called for an “immediate, unconditioned withdrawal.” This came up on another Sunday program and the two ladies representing the democrats said Obama has always said the withdrawal must be careful and gradual.
June 30th, 2008 at 7:37 pm
Sue-Ellen,
Obama stated this in just about every Democratic debate from last November to April of 2008.
June 30th, 2008 at 8:49 pm
LogcabinGOP #7,
Yeah… I was going to ask if I just imagined all of those debates!
June 30th, 2008 at 10:00 pm
Sue-Ellen,
Keep drinking the Kool-Aid my friend!
July 1st, 2008 at 7:55 am
Is this anything like declaring DC’s gun ban constitutional before the SC ruled on it, then saying you’re glad the SC has come to your view on gun control when they rule against it? For some strange reason, I don’t see the two positions as being the same thing. I suppose I should just trust Sen Obama to be telling me the truth.