[Updated]

In an earlier post, I endorsed Barack Obama as the best choice for Democratic nominee, but that doesn’t mean I think he should be president. The two most important issues for me are the economy (which I’ll address in a later post) and the War against Militant Islamism, and the most important part of the war is Iraq. I have serious problems with Obama’s “plan” and statements and political record on the subject. In last Tuesday’s debate, Obama brought up the familiar refrain about judgment and the choice to go to war in the first place. Quote:

Obama’s brilliant answer killed a flock of birds with one stone: He differentiated himself from an opponent where there is little real daylight between the two, he made clear that his opinions are more closely aligned with the party base, and he successfully skirted around the fact that he is a freshman Senator with basically two years of legislative experience on the national stage. Most importantly, he successfully diverted the discussion away from his judgment on an issue of equal (if not greater) importance: Whether to draw down our troops or make a fundamental change in the strategy. In January 2007, during Iraq’s darkest hour, Obama was clearly against the surge strategy.

Obama’s comment betrayed a lack of understanding of what the strategy was really about, because the whole point of the COIN strategy is to create an environment where insurgents will choose to resolve differences through the political process rather than by violence. Either that or he was being less than honest. Obama had the chance to further examine Petraeus' strategy, and in hypocritical fashion, Obama voted "yea" in confirming Petraeus to four-star general yet four days later he introduced process-oriented legislation that would gut the Petraeus plan.

Wanting to learn a little more, I checked his campaign website and was even more disappointed, starting with this sentence:

The statement is flatly and factually false, as seen in the graphs below (hat tip to Engram for the graphs).

Suicide bombings—which are the exclusive province of al Qaeda—killed 213 of 566 civilians last month, or 38% of the total, and al Qaeda was responsible for 291 killings or 51% of the total. Despite comparatively small numbers, they remain lethal. Shiite hit squads are also a problem. There were 97 extra-judicial killings last month, meaning that these groups hunted down military-age Sunni males and killed them execution-style. But basically, there are 1,000 fewer civilian deaths per month under the current surge strategy. Under the Obama “plan”, there is every reason to believe civilian casualties would have looked like this.

Why? Because going by Obama’s proposed legislation, his “plan” called for unilateral troop draw downs during a time when terrorist attacks and extra-judicial killings were raging. Of course, the trend lines are arguable, but the conclusions in the April 2006 National Intelligence Estimate are not, which said:

It couldn’t be clearer to me that the McCain/Petraeus plan has made significant strides in convincing jihadists that they are failing in Iraq. Obama’s so-called plan, which called for cutting and running when suicide bombings were peaking,

would have signaled our defeat at the hands of these terrorists. Obama’s short-sightedness on troop withdrawals would likely have inspired al Qaeda & Co. to carry on the fight, using Iraq as a propaganda tool for recruiting more terrorists into their fold. I am convinced that there would be more militant Islamists today if Obama got what he wanted back in January 2007. Then there’s his next sentence, which is a whopper:

Muqtada al-Sadr is a political leader, and he stood down his JAM militias last August and he recently extended his ceasefire. That's political progress. Although progress has been halting, political leaders in the national government have made significant strides at resolving political differences. Although no oil revenue sharing bill has passed, political leaders have set up a system for sharing oil revenues. When Sunni tribal sheiks joined the coalition and turned their collective backs on al Qaeda, political progress was made. Obviously, much work remains to be done, the fact remains that Obama’s statement is outrageously untrue.

Also, it is arguable that there is a civil war in Iraq, but Obama and the Democratic Party continue to trot out this storyline. There are competing factions, to be sure, and those factions frequently resort to violence. But calling Iraq a civil war glosses over the actions of al Qaeda, whose primary goal is to foment a civil war between Shiites and Sunnis, and they are failing in that endeavor. It ignores the fact that northern Iraq is stable. It ignores the fact that southern Iraq is virtually all Shiite and run by Shiites. It ignores the fact that Anbar province is virtually all Sunni and is run by Sunnis. The fact of the matter is that there are mixed Sunni-Shiite areas in Iraq, especially Baghdad, where sectarian violence has occurred and has sparked a refugee problem. Calling it a “civil war” is a matter of opinion, not fact, and that’s what Obama does all too often. He conveys opinions, giving the impression to impressionable voters that they are facts when they are really not. It is slickness reminiscent of Slick Willie himself. More from Obama’s campaign website:

Obama was not a candidate for the U.S. Senate in 2002. He ran for a U.S. House seat in 2000 and lost, and in 2004, he resigned from the State Senate to run for the U.S. Senate. In 2002, Obama was running for reelection to the State Senate, a position he held since 1996. His district has a huge Democratic majority, so he was an incumbent with a safe seat; therefore it is ridiculous for him to claim that he put his career on the line. Obama continued this lie in last Tuesday’s debate when he said, "My objections to the war in Iraq were simply -- not simply a speech [referring to his October 2002 speech against invading Iraq]. I was in the midst of a U.S. Senate campaign." Obama’s "career on the line" nonsense is under the section titled "judgment you can trust" on his website, which leads me this question: How can you trust a man’s judgment when you cannot justifiably trust his facts?

[Update:] Having seen Wagster's diary, I checked a little further. In mid-2002, Obama formed a campaign committee to challenge Peter Fitzgerald. He did not form an actual campaign. Obama was interested in the job, and he was preparing to run for the job, but he hadn't entered the race at that time. Another blogger checked some history and came to the conclusion that Obama's statements were deceptive, and I agree.

Emphases mine. Obama surely wanted to be a candidate, and he was preparing to be a candidate, and I'm sure that he felt like he was a candidate in his own mind. But on October 29th, 2002, Barack Obama wasn't a candidate for the 2004 U.S. Senate seat. He was a potential candidate. A pre-candidate. Thinking about it another way, if Carol Moseley-Braun had sais "yes" to running instead of "no", do you think it is plausible that Obama could still claim that he was a candidate in 2002 for the 2004 race for the U.S. Senate? Or that he was in the "midst of a campaign"? The answer, to me, is no.

It looks to me like Obama was trying to backdate his Senatorial campaign to make it sound like he was a U.S. Senator and candidate for longer than he really was. I don't believe that this is a "Change We Can Believe In", to paraphrase his little slogan. Some are going to quibble that there's no real difference between a candidate and a potential candidate, but as Bildstein notes, if you're interviewing a couple of fellas for a college-level job, all other factors being equal, are you going to go with the college graduate or the potential college graduate? The difference is pretty fundamental. As I keep telling my conservative friends when it comes to "amnesty" and my liberal friends when it comes to "fascism", words mean things. [/end Update]

Again going by his campaign website, Obama believes the following:

This is troubling on multiple levels, first because Obama says not a word about strategy and tactics. It’s all about sending troops home, nothing about the situation on the ground. Second, Obama’s timeline conflicts with General Petraeus’ timeline. Finally, Obama's large and precipitous withdrawals conflict with the latest National Intelligence Estimate, which says the following:

Obama’s logic is the exact opposite of the NIE, and he is on the wrong side of the issue. Finally, Obama's phased surrender plan conflicts with his own words in 2004:

Now his mantra is that, by leaving, reconciliation among Iraqis will happen and everything will get better, even though such significant withdrawals will likely destabilize the country, reintroduce chaos and reignite sectarian violence. The environment Obama seeks is the very same one which allowed al Qaeda to grow and fester. Here’s some more illogic:

Newsflash. Al Qaeda is in Iraq right now. They’re the ones responsible for 51% of civilian deaths last month, and they’re the ones who General Petraeus still considers our biggest challenge there. Obama’s statement makes no sense because it assumes that al Qaeda is already gone.

Obama also wants to "surge our diplomacy". Another newsflash. It’s already happening. Ambassador Crocker is in Iraq, coordinating his efforts with General Petraeus and working constantly with the various Iraqi factions to help them achieve their political benchmarks.

Obama’s statements on Iraq lead me to believe that he would be a foreign policy disaster for America. If he gets his way, Iraq would destabilize, reversing all the hard-fought gains made and adversely affecting our national security. Even if you accept that he made the right judgment in 2002, his judgments in 2007 and 2008 on the surge strategy are more important because they are current and because losing in Iraq could have calamitous repercussions on our country. Vietnam was bad enough. As Tom Maguire notes, Obama is not running in 2002 and he’s not running against George W. Bush. The issue on the table is what Obama would do in Iraq today. To me, it looks like he'd rather surrender, no matter all the remarkable gains we've made since September.
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The heart of the wise inclines to the right, but the heart of the fool to the left -- Ecclesiastes 10:2

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"I want America to know that I'm, like, totally ready to lead." -- Paris Hilton