Obama aide signals shift on Iraq policy

I do believe this is Obama's definition of "change". The question the voters have to ask is when he makes a statement in the future, what does it mean? Can you rely on him following through or if it gets to tough will he simply, clarify, compartmentalize it and move on? This lawyers consensus driven "change" model offers vulnerabilities in foreign policy that beg for exploitation.

Could it be that George Bush's decision to "stay the course" in Iraq was the correct one? Can it be true that in the end, Iraq will be transformed from a brutal dictatorship into a democracy? Imagine if Obama had been president during the past 4 years. If we take him at his word, he would have pulled out our troops long ago -- and where would Iraq be today? Wisdom is proved right by all her children.

This is not the first episode of vascilation and uncertainty on the part of Obama on the issue of the Iraq war. There is no doubt that he was initially opposed to the war in 2002,prior to his election to the US Senate. Of course, he wasn't in the Senate and thus didn't have to actually cast a vote on the issue. But, after the war was underway and he was in the Senate he began to have second thoughts about his opposition. For example, in his autobiographical book "The Audicity of Hope"(2006) he stated that he began to suspect that he might have been wrong in his opposition to the war. After the initial stunning US combat victory he told the Chicago Tribune in July 2004 that there was not that much difference between his position and that of President Bush at that point. In his 2004 campaign for the Senate he stated that simply pulling out of Iraq would only make things worse and that he would be willing to send more troops if necessary. Then when he started his campaign for the presidency an expedient way to set himself apart from his chief primary opponent, Hillary Clinton who supported the war at the start, was to change back to a position of strict opposition to the war in order to appeal to the Democratic Party anti-war leftwing. While he has been exceedingly cynical in his approach to the war, he is ,after all just a politician. If the policy shifts in the above article are accurate it at least suggests that he can be influenced by a rational assessment of the (improving) facts on the ground in Iraq. For more see Commentary Magazine April 2008 pp.29-33 I discuss more on Obama and the war on my National Security Blog on Blogger.com. See National Security:Where to Next

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