The Thirst for Freedom

I just watched President Obama’s speech on Iraq.

I appreciated that he did not seem to be diving into any “I told you so” kind of talk.

The speech seemed mostly consisting of patriotic rhetoric.

So… Did America win the war in Iraq?

1. Saddam Hussein was removed from power.
2. Iraqi WMDs are either gone or in Syria, but they don’t have them now.
3. Iraq has a government. I am not sure that the U.S. can do anything more militarily to ensure that. I agree with the President that this is ultimately up to the Iraqi people and their natural leadership.

Perhaps we should have pulled out a bit more slowly and it certainly should have been done with much less “we’re losing, it was wrong, so let’s leave” kind of rhetoric (as in what happened in the last presidential campaign).

I think if John McCain would have been elected, the timing of our withdrawal would have been historically similar. That is, it would have only been a few years longer before we pulled out of Iraq. That may be a long time in terms of U.S. Presidential Elections, but it would not have been that long in terms of history.

In other words, President Obama’s election has very little to do in real history with the draw down in Iraq.

I give all of the credit to President Bush and the troops. The results in Iraq would have been disastrous if John Kerry had won in 2004 and actually pulled us out then. (I doubt he would have actually pulled us out.)

I am glad that Obama didn’t pull out as fast as he seemed to think we should during the campaign.

Summary: The U.S. and its coalition of friends has won the war in Iraq as far as achieving the major objectives is concerned. We are pulling out pre-maturely, but only barely pre-maturely (by perhaps 2-3 years).

I’m not an expert on military but there are my thoughts. For free.

So, is Barack Obama showing a bit of sense by keeping Gates as S of D?

Is this a message from him that in fact he is not going to rush troops out of Iraq?

That would be good and bad.

It would be bad because it would show that Barack Obama is willing to say one thing to get elected and then do another. Disgusting but not the first time a politician has done that.

It would be good because it would send the world a great message if the United States finished well in Iraq. It is possible to do so.

Stay until it’s done. That won’t take forever. Perhaps just a few more years.

From CNN.com:

Liberal blogger Chris Bowers of The Open Left says the message sent by the selection of Gates undermines Democrats.

“The message would be clear,” he writes in his blog. “Even Democrats agree that Democrats can’t run the military.”

Obama’s outspoken opposition to the Iraq war before he became a U.S. senator was one of the reasons he was embraced early in the presidential race by the anti-war faction of the Democratic Party’s base, so his apparent decision to keep a Bush adviser as defense secretary for at least a year has raised some eyebrows within that faction. [Read More]