Posted on 09/13/2007 10:33:46 AM PDT by Chi-townChief
Obama's disappointing speech lacks fresh ideas
CLINTON, Iowa -- The day after Gen. David Petraeus and Ryan Crocker, the U.S. ambassador to Iraq, appeared before two Senate committees to explain our dicey situation in that brutish part of the Middle East, Barack Obama came to Iowa to give his own brief on how things could be straightened out in Iraq.
It was his third major foreign policy speech since his announcement last February that he was going to run for the Democratic presidential nomination. While it was more detailed than his previous speeches, it contained very little that was really new.
In his words• ''The best way to protect our security and to pressure Iraq's leaders to resolve their civil war is to immediately begin to remove our combat troops. Not in six months or one year -- now." • ''We must get out strategically and carefully, removing troops from secure areas first and keeping troops in more volatile areas until later."
• ''The president would have us believe there are two choices: keep all of our troops in Iraq or abandon these Iraqis. I reject this choice.''
Nothing he offered could be disputed -- unlike his earlier suggestion about the possibility of a strike against Pakistan to root out terrorists -- but his ideas weren't fresh. They were very safe.
This was disappointing the day after Americans learned from Petraeus and Crocker that there has been little progress in Iraq, that the surge, while helping to improve safety conditions in Baghdad, has not been the coup de grace President Bush had hoped for.
Obama repeated his assertion that combat troops need to be withdrawn from Iraq. He provided a bit more detail: Troops should be removed from secure areas first, then the "drawdown should proceed at a steady pace of one or two brigades each month," allowing all combat forces to be out of Iraq by the end of next year.
This doesn't sound much different from the "phased redeployment" he advocated last November. Or his failed legislation to start bringing the troops home in May. That one put March 31, 2008, as the date when all combat brigades would be out of Iraq.
Other Democratic presidential candidates have offered similar suggestions. Sen. Joe Biden of Delaware warned at the Democratic debate in Des Moines last month that if America leaves Iraq precipitously and "we leave it in chaos, there'll be regional war."
On Wednesday, Obama also recommended that:
• • The muscle of the United Nations be used to help convene a new constitutional convention in Iraq to get the parties to agree how the country should look.
• • More diplomacy be used to draw other Middle East countries into the conversation about the region's future, and a regional compact should be considered.
• • More Iraqi refugees should be allowed into the United States, up to 7,000. (He said we, shamefully, only admitted one refugee in April.)
• • There must be a greater humanitarian undertaking in the country itself, including creating a U.N. commission to punish war criminals.
These are worthy ideas, if somewhat idealistic as far as the U.N. is concerned (New Mexico Gov. Richardson shares this idealism, too), but at this point, we need radical thinking about what to do in Iraq, and we're not getting it from the presidential candidates, Democratic or Republican.
There have been some efforts to mull over the future consequences of the American invasion, such as Biden's suggestion about allowing a confederation of three regions in Iraq -- Sunni, Shia and Kurd -- with a central government, and that is a worthy idea if one could get the Turks on board.
The Turks are extremely skittish about a more independent Kurdish province in Iraq, believing it would lead to an uprising of their own Kurdish population.
Obama should be given kudos for continuing to elaborate on a foreign policy, but the man who introduced him before his speech at Ashford University, Zbigniew Brzezinski, offered more passion and challenge than the main speaker.
Brzezinski -- former national security adviser to President Jimmy Carter -- said the United States is "engaged in what is a colonial war [in Iraq] in the post-colonial era." Whoa, we're getting into the idea of American imperialism here, a much harsher assessment than anyone in Congress has offered. The war, Brzezinski floridly asserted, "has been justified by mendacity, and it has discredited Americans worldwide." A fancy way of calling Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney liars.
Obama referred to Brzezinski -- who is endorsing him -- as one of the architects of the Camp David accords that led to peace between Egypt and Israel. But Carter's former foreign adviser was also one of the chief supporters of the failed venture to free American hostages in Iran in 1980, and he was in the saddle when arms were supplied to the mujaheddin in Afghanistan to fight the Soviet Union. That effort enticed foreign "freedom fighters" such as Osama bin Laden to Afghanistan and laid groundwork for some of the mess we are dealing with today.
mailto:jhunter@suntimes.com
Where does he get his brilliance? I am in awe................
The only thing Brzenski ever gave the world was a cute, but leftwingnut, daughter named Mika.
Are you kidding me?????
Uh-huh.
“This was disappointing the day after Americans learned from Petraeus and Crocker that there has been little progress in Iraq, that the surge, while helping to improve safety conditions in Baghdad, has not been the coup de grace President Bush had hoped for.”
What a load of spin
AOL poll..Who now has the initiative on the Iraq debate..supporters or anti-war forces?
Completely fraudulent statement. Reporter would get an F in any high school journalism class for inserting this line.
He probably, actually believes that the UN is a powerful, governmental body. He probably doesn’t even know that it is almost solely dependent on contributions from member states and voluntary use of their troops under the UN blue helmets..................
Say it loud! That ONE INCIDENT is now responsible for the deaths of possibly millions of people worldwide. Carter's hands are as bloody as any tyrant's ever were...............
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