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Kathleen Parker is one of America's most popular opinion columnists, addressing the country's mental health through her views on current national ...
Read more about Kathleen Parker.
Kathleen Parker is one of America's most popular opinion columnists, addressing the country's mental health through her views on current national ...
Read more about Kathleen Parker.
Pride Clouds Obama's Vision
Kathleen Parker
WASHINGTON -- Barack Obama concedes that America's troops have
contributed to improvements on the ground in Iraq, but he still stands
by his vote against the surge.
Why not just admit that he was wrong?
Come on, senator, this is a lot easier than changing churches. Say: "As a proud American, I'm delighted that the surge has worked so we can move forward with my timetable for withdrawal. Look, if I'd known how successful it was going to be, I would have voted for it. At the time it didn't seem like a good bet, but prognosticators go broke in wartime."
See, that wasn't so bad.
Instead, Obama says that even knowing what he now knows, he still would have voted against the surge. Really? Even knowing that without the surge, he couldn't have safely visited Iraq?
Obama insists that, hypothetically, his own plan might have worked better than the surge: "We don't know what would have happened if I, if the plan that I put forward in January 2007, to put more pressure on the Iraqis to arrive at a political reconciliation, to begin a phased withdrawal, what would have happened had we pursued that strategy."
But we do know. Or at least we can wager with some confidence that had we withdrawn within 14 months, as Obama was proposing at the time -- before Sunni Arabs, once the insurgency's backbone, felt sufficiently secure to turn against the jihadists -- Iraq today would be in bloody chaos, al-Qaeda victorious, and the U.S. further diminished in the Arab world.
Obama voted against the surge, he said then, because he was convinced that inserting 20,000 more troops into Iraq was likely to make things worse, not better. Now trying to justify that miscall, he says he couldn't have anticipated the Sunni Awakening.
Wait. Obama could anticipate that the war in Iraq would go badly. He could anticipate that the surge wouldn't work. But he couldn't anticipate that the Sunnis would turn on al-Qaeda?
Actually, Obama had more information at his fingertips in assessing the probability of the surge's success than he did for any of his other predictions, including assurance from commanders on the ground that local tribal leaders were showing a willingness to take on al-Qaeda.
Most Americans, including many in Congress who approved the Iraq invasion, say that if they'd known then what they know now, they wouldn't have supported the war. Why is it so hard for Obama, knowing what he knows now, to say that he should have supported the surge?
To review Obama's statements on the surge since it began is to understand why: pride.
Over and over again -- even after Gen. David Petraeus reported in late 2007 that the surge was working -- Obama said: It's not working. It won't work. It's a mistake. He essentially was betting his presidential hopes on the surge's failure.
But the surge did work -- and the mistake is Obama's.
Most Americans would have little trouble forgiving Obama for not believing the surge would be effective. It was a gamble, as are all strategies in war. Even with reports on the ground that locals seemed increasingly willing to rise up, there was reason enough by 2007 to doubt the wisdom of America's commander in chief.
It is less easy to forgive the kind of wrongheaded stubbornness now on display. As recently as July 14, Obama wrote in a New York Times op-ed that "the same factors that led me to oppose the surge still hold true." He mentioned the deteriorating situation in Afghanistan, money spent in Iraq and said that the surge had failed to produce "political accommodation."
Fine. But the larger, more important point is that the surge was necessary and successful. Those facts outweigh all other considerations past and present. Moreover, a recent U.S. Embassy report stated that 15 of 18 benchmarks set by Congress for Iraq are being met in a "satisfactory" fashion.
Obama has fallen to pride in part because he has bought his own myth. By staking his future on a past of supernatural vision, he has made it difficult to admit human fault. The magic isn't working anymore. And Obama, the visionary one, can't even see what everyone else sees: He was wrong.
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Kathleen Parker's e-mail address is kparker@kparker.com
(c) 2008, Washington Post Writers Group
This news arrived on: 07/25/2008
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Posted Comments:
07-29-2008 10:34
Harry wrote:
Obama
The surge will not work! We should bring the troops home now. The Iraq's will never accomplish any of the benchmarks needed to consider their efforts worthwhile.For a man that has a dream, that is deploreable. Most great men, can admit they were wrong. Obama is above that, he is just too great, to have to admit a mistake. The media just gives him a pass! What a country! If you are too good, you don't make mistakes!
07-28-2008 15:53
CiCi wrote:
Big Foot
Well, well Ms.Kathleen Parker... It sure looks like you put you foot in your mouth on this one. A foot sooooo big it might not quite fit in there, oops sorry it' fit.
07-28-2008 15:34
AnneB-IL wrote:
Ken from Oregon - instead of giving us grades for stating our opinions (which I think we are still allowed to do here in the US), why don't you give us a discourse on where we are lacking in history, geography, etc. I think it's great that we have a forum where we can exchange views and the fact that yours is a put-down of the other writers puts you in the same category as you have so conveniently lumped us - arrogant and uneducated! Normally, I wouldn't even respond to comments like yours, but I really feel you are off the mark - substantiate your views or don't write!
07-28-2008 14:13
Ken from Oregon wrote:
Thank you!
I sincerely mean that. The responses here are some of the best examples I have ever seen to make the case of the total and absolute failure of our educational system!
I give most all of you a F- in History, an F- in social studies, an F- in geography, an F- in common sense, an F- in critical thinking.
You have displayed a total lack of comprehension of current events, and historical events.
You have shown the world the underlying arrogance that describes Americans to most people in the world by claiming to have all the answers and by claiming to know it all. Even in hindsight you don't have a clue to the real issues, let alone historical facts.
I am proud to be an American, but people like you make me question that pride occasionally, but I guess we have accept taht there will always be the arrogant and educationally challenged in our population.
I give most all of you a F- in History, an F- in social studies, an F- in geography, an F- in common sense, an F- in critical thinking.
You have displayed a total lack of comprehension of current events, and historical events.
You have shown the world the underlying arrogance that describes Americans to most people in the world by claiming to have all the answers and by claiming to know it all. Even in hindsight you don't have a clue to the real issues, let alone historical facts.
I am proud to be an American, but people like you make me question that pride occasionally, but I guess we have accept taht there will always be the arrogant and educationally challenged in our population.
07-28-2008 13:31
emma majebi wrote:
The surge success is fiction
To quote you "...America's troops have contributed to improvements on the ground in Iraq...." and yet Obama refuses to acknowledge them. This to me is a grand attempt to hide the truth amongst sweet smelling lillies. Who created the mess in th first place before the improvements on the ground became necessary?? Obama's point is that the troops should n ot have been in Iraq at all in the first place but in afghanisatn where the real battle lies!! just consider the other mess that Bush's bone headed invasion of Iraq gave birth to : 1. Making iran into a super power with no check (2) the collapse of the American economy (3) Runaway prices of oil in the international market.(4) Dsestruction of life time relationship between America and some of it's allies like France. (5) Loss by America of it's position as the foremost force for good in the world.(6) allowing undemcratic hardliners like China,Russia, Iran, e.tc to take over the leadership of the world via the decapitation of the US economy via the expenses on the Iraq war. This so called surge to me achieves nothing. The combatants in Iraq just got tired of the hostilities and decided to take a break. The damage has already been done and except America wants to remain in Iraq forever, ay day the American's leave be it in 16 months as Obama and Al maliki wants or in 100 years as McCain wants there is going to be a big rush and fight for the control of Iraq.
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