Bascially, he [Obama] made a complete hash of things this evening heading into the holiday weekend. ~Tom Bevan

To be fair, the charge of inconsistency on Iraq can be exaggerated.  That said, it seems to me that the charge that Obama committed a first-class political blunder going into a long weekend is basically right.  Having already given substance to the idea that he will abandon important pledges made during the primaries with his flips on the FISA legislation and public financing, and having apparently reversed himself on at least a couple other questions in the space of a few weeks, it was an unusually poor time to be “inartful,” as they like to call it, about one of the central policy questions of the day.  Even if Obama’s remarks were completely consistent with past statements, which I think is not the case, he had nonetheless set himself up over the last few weeks to be attacked for yet another shift on a major policy.  If the McCain campaign has a problem coming up with a coherent message, Obama’s campaign has its own problems with message discipline.  Having just shaken the confidence of many of his supporters over the FISA bill and having opened himself up to being portrayed as opportunistic on something as fundamental as constitutional protections, this was hardly the time to start talking about “refining” anything.  The Obama campaign wants the candidate to display thoughtfulness, but they don’t seem to think very much about how the candidate’s phrases will be interpreted by supporters and critics alike. 

While I think the latest remarks did indicate some change in position, it is worth remembering that Samantha Power had already said that the 16-month timetable was a “best-case scenario.”  That had occurred back around the same time as the Goolsbee/NAFTA business, which overshadowed it, and since Power was no longer formally associated with the campaign the remarks did not create that many waves.  In the heat of the Clinton v. Obama contest, journalists were inclined not to dwell on this acknowledgement that the timetable was ultimately meaningless.  If the timetable is meaningless, and withdrawal is contingent on the stability of Iraq, the withdrawal can and will be deferred for many years.  There is a reason why war supporters are happy with Obama’s recent remarks, and it is not purely a matter of partisan spin, just as there was a reason why neoconservatives were very excited by his Council of Global Affairs speech last year and his AIPAC audience was very excited by his remarks about Jerusalem.  They can detect concessions to their position, even if his starry-eyed supporters cannot.  So I suppose you can count me as one of those who never thought much of Obama’s position on Iraq, so for me these latest remarks just confirm that his earlier position was as unattractive as I thought it was.  

This question of timetables touches on an important point: candidates who want you to think they will end a deployment talk about timetables to prevent just this sort of ”pragmatic” kicking of the can down the road based on changing conditions.  Withdrawing combat forces from a war zone will always involve risk and there will be consequences, both foreseeable and unforeseeable, to such an action, but the point of following a timetable for withdrawal is to ensure that there will be a certain date after which the withdrawal will be complete.  This keeps an administration accountable to its pledges, yes, but it has a more practical value as well.  The potential dangers to the soliders from a withdrawal make it all the more important to make the withdrawal as fast as possible.  Withdrawal that can be interrupted or halted because of changing conditions in the country is the worst of both worlds: having signalled the readiness to leave, you then stop leaving and put yourself in a position where you may even have to recall some of the forces you have already withdrawn.  The desire to appear empirical and “pragmatic” is so great in the Obama campaign, as part of its ongoing bad habit of adopting certain positions simply to demonstrate how un-Bush-like the candidate is, that it is pushing them to adopt what is substantively probably the worst of three options.  Those three are expeditious withdrawal, indefinitely maintaining a large military presence in Iraq and the half-a-loaf withdrawal-only-so-long-as-there-is-stability position that Obama has staked out.  This is why any administration that tries to to both end the war in Iraq and premise withdrawal on stability in Iraq is not likely going to be able to end the war, because it has put Iraqi stability ahead of the American interest and defined acceptable conditions for withdrawal in such a way that withdrawal will never be possible.   

People who make an idol out of “pragmatism,” as many Obama supporters now feel compelled to do, are making a similar kind of blunder as those who make an idol out of “resolve” or “bipartisanship” or “toughness.”  In themselves, these things may or may not be desirable in a given situation.  It is the context and the end to which pragmatism is being put that determine whether or not it is desirable to be pragmatic.  In fact, there are times when it pays to be resolute, just as there are times when it pays to be flexible, but typically pragmatists are frequently in danger of always opting for flexibility and “refinining” things in perpetuity.    

Filed under: foreign policy, politics