Most Americans will support President Obama’s call for patience in Afghanistan and his policy of continuing the long-planned drawdown in Iraq.
But there was something bizarre about his entire Iraq speech — it was as if it were being delivered by an exhausted Obama factotum, rather than the animate Obama of old. So we got a flat Iraq / flat Afghanistan / flat hope-and-change recession address. It almost seemed a chore.
Perhaps Obama’s ennui arises from the impossibility of squaring his circle. How could an erstwhile fierce critic of Iraq — as well as his diplomatic team (e.g., Biden with his loud wish to trisect Iraq, and Hillary Clinton with her “suspension of disbelief”)—convince us that Iraq was a “remarkable chapter”?
In September 2007, Senator Obama wanted all combat troops home by March 2008; a little later, he modified that by repeating that the U.S. should “immediately begin to remove our combat troops.” He declared that the surge, which saved Iraq, was not working and would have stopped it had he the power, and, indeed, cut off all funding. The point here is not hypocrisy, but rather an explanation of why Obama tonight seemed so unimpressed with his own argument.
Also, the general framework of withdrawal was scheduled as part of the Bush/Petraeus status of force agreements with the Iraqis. Obama is to be congratulated for keeping to it, but chastised for suggesting that it was his own — and more so for not referencing the surge that made it all possible. So, again, it was a weird moment: Are we supposed to think that after 20 months a president is responsible for his own record (e.g., Bush need not be credited for his lonely, but critical support for the surge that allowed the withdrawal), but not quite responsible when it is inconvenient (Bush must be blamed for leaving a bad economy that Obama’s borrowing cannot cure)?
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