Edward 4Obama's War Policy: Nieve or Just What We Need?
July 14th 2008 18:06
Can the young senator live up to the hype?
I'll be the first to admit that Obama makes me nervous. He's new and untested, a young and ambitious liberal who's set on changing the way our country is governed and the way we see ourselves as Americans. The only assurance Obama supporters have is the amount of wisdom and judgment he's shown in the past and in the present race for the White House.
One of the reasons that Obama is finding so much support from democrats and independents (and even some conservatives) is his stance on war. Unlike McCain who pledges a long term involvement in Iraq, Obama sees that Iraq is not only a waste of time, money, and lives; but also a distraction from where the real threat brews these days, Afghanistan and Pakistan.
Obama has always seen Iraq for what it really is and was, a threat, yes, but a minor threat compared to the presence of Al-Qaeda and the Taliban in Pakistan and Afghanistan. Obama recognized the contrived connection of Iraq to the war on terror when he voted against invading Iraq in 2003. And today is no different.
Recently, Iraq's Prime Minister Nuri Al-Maliki announced that the Iraqi government would like a timetable for American withdrawal from Iraq. Obama sees this proclamation as "an enormous opportunity" to move forward with a refocusing of American troops into areas of the world where Al-Qaeda and the Taliban are more of a threat. As Adm. Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, recently said, "We won't have sufficient resources to finish the job in Afghanistan until we reduce our commitment to Iraq."
In an op-ed piece in the New York Times, Obama outlined his plans for the Iraqi war, "As I've said many times, we must be as careful getting out of Iraq as we were careless getting in. We can safely redeploy our combat brigades at a pace that would remove them in 16 months. That would be the summer of 2010 - two years from now, and more than seven years after the war began. A "residual force" would remain in Iraq to "perform limited missions: going after any remnants of Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, protecting American service members and, so long as the Iraqis make political progress, training Iraqi security forces," Obama wrote.
Despite the conservative assertions that Obama would immediately and without strategy remove all our troops from Iraq, he has instead outlined a very prudent and intelligent plan for war policy reform. He would not remove the U.S. from the war on terror completely, as many fear, but instead refocus our efforts to where they're needed most to combat terrorism and capture such high priority targets as Bin Laden. These are the kind of common sense answers that Republicans lack and that will ensure Obama's rise to the White House. Let's just hope he makes good on his promises.
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Comment by Anonymous
Glad to hear you've joined the ranks.
To perpetuate the war we fight which has now dwindled us down to our knees in shame.
To feed the glutton machine which we dreamed up in the far imaginations of our minds.
To destroy in holocaust that which has is by human nature the enemy of ourselves.
Honor becomes you who join the party ranks.
Honor rewards you who fight in the New American Civil War.
Let the blood of your crimes not cling too thick to your soft hands. Beloved.
Comment by Edward 4
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