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Wednesday, January 31, 2007

Obama throws down the gauntlet
Posted by Jill | 7:33 AM
OK, grab your popcorn, because this ought to be good:

Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois, one of the most prominent Democrats in the 2008 presidential field, proposed for the first time setting a deadline for withdrawing troops from Iraq, as part of a broader plan aimed at bolstering the freshman senator's foreign policy credentials.

Obama's legislation, offered on the Senate floor last night, would remove all combat brigades from Iraq by March 31, 2008. The date falls within the parameters offered by the bipartisan Iraq Study Group, which recommended the removal of combat troops by the first quarter of next year.

The days of our open-ended commitment must come to a close," Obama said in his speech. "It is time for us to fundamentally change our policy. It is time to give Iraqis their country back."


The Obama plan, called the Iraq War De-escalation Act of 2007, would begin a troop withdrawal no later than May 1, 2007, but it includes several caveats that could forestall a clean break:

It would leave a limited number of troops in place to conduct counterterrorism activities and train Iraqi forces. And the withdrawal could be temporarily suspended if the Iraqi government meets a series of benchmarks laid out by the Bush administration. That list includes a reduction in sectarian violence; the equitable distribution of oil revenue; government reforms; and democratic, Iraqi-driven reconstruction and economic development efforts. Obama's proposal also would reverse Bush's troop-increase plan....Obama described his proposal as a mainstream package of well-vetted ideas, consistent with the Iraq Study Group's recommendations and "with what the American people demanded in the November election," when they voted Republicans out of power in both the House and the Senate.


The details of the Obama plan are here. Good for Obama for doing this. My beef with him has been his excessive caution and unwillingness to take a stand on anything. While this plan still allows far too many American soldiers to die for this failed war between now and 2008, it at least describes concrete steps for extricating the U.S. from this disastrous civil war, and reminds the Crawford Caligula just who is in charge of the pursestrings. Nice. The one giant gaping hole in the plan as put forth in Obama's web site is what the consequences might be for Iraq FAILING to meet the benchmarks. As yet, no one seems willing to address that possibility. The absence of such consequences here has echoes of the same delusion that Bush has: "It will work because it has to."

In contrast, Hillary Clinton not only does not have any position papers on Iraq (or anything else for that matter) on her campaign wab site, but so far her position on Iraq is "Hey, George, clean it up before you leave." This demonstrates that she still doesn't get what she's dealing with in this Administration. She voted for this war and has still not expressed regret for that vote, claiming that "if we knew then what we know now there never would have been a vote. I never would have voted to give this president that authority."

Sorry, Hill, but that just won't wash. I knew that Bush was determined to go to war. So did a half-million people who marched in New York City in February 2002 and millions more nationwide. If I, a mere citizen knew what you were dealing with in 2002, why didn't you?

This is a Big Bold Move for Obama, perhaps the first of his Senate career. It dares Hillary Clinton to take a stand, and positions Obama in stark contrast to John McCain (who may not be the one to watch at this point).

It'll be interesting to see how this plays out on both sides of the aisle.

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