So if Barack Obama wins the presidential election, what will his policy toward Iraq actually be in 2009? The answer to this question is extremely important to our country and the world over the years, or decades, ahead. But despite the candidate’s generally sterling record of opposition to the original, 2003 invasion of Iraq, and his statements that he was to see the US begin a serious withdrawal soon after he takes office, still, the actual content of his policy remains shrouded in mystery.
Not least because of the extremely ill-advised comments that Samantha– then still a key Obama foreign-policy aide– made in early March to the effect that his public promises that he’ll get U.S. “combat forces” out of Iraq in 16 months is just a “best-case scenario” that would be “revisited” once he becomes president.
A month ago, The New Republic carried this excellent article in which Michael Crowley analyzed what is known about Obama’s actual thinking on Iraq. (Hat-tip Abu Aardvark.) It is not at all a reassuring picture, and underlines for me why it is important that people in the US antiwar movement continue to build our own strong and independent organization, to keep the pressure up both on the two candidates prior to November 4, and after that, on whoever it is that gets elected on that date.
Here, as a baseline, is what Obama has posted on his campaign website about his Iraq policy.
These are the most important paragraphs, numbered by myself:
- 1. Bringing Our Troops Home
Obama will immediately begin to remove our troops from Iraq. He will remove one to two combat brigades each month, and have all of our combat brigades out of Iraq within 16 months. Obama will make it clear that we will not build any permanent bases in Iraq. He will keep some troops in Iraq to protect our embassy and diplomats; if al Qaeda attempts to build a base within Iraq, he will keep troops in Iraq or elsewhere in the region to carry out targeted strikes on al Qaeda.
2. Press Iraq’s Leaders to Reconcile
The best way to press Iraq’s leaders to take responsibility for their future is to make it clear that we are leaving. As we remove our troops, Obama will engage representatives from all levels of Iraqi society – in and out of government – to seek a new accord on Iraq’s Constitution and governance. The United Nations will play a central role in this convention, which should not adjourn until a new national accord is reached addressing tough questions like federalism and oil revenue-sharing.
3. Regional Diplomacy
Obama will launch the most aggressive diplomatic effort in recent American history to reach a new compact on the stability of Iraq and the Middle East. This effort will include all of Iraq’s neighbors — including Iran and Syria. This compact will aim to secure Iraq’s borders; keep neighboring countries from meddling inside Iraq; isolate al Qaeda; support reconciliation among Iraq’s sectarian groups; and provide financial support for Iraq’s reconstruction.
4. Humanitarian Initiative
Obama believes that America has a moral and security responsibility to confront Iraq’s humanitarian crisis — two million Iraqis are refugees; two million more are displaced inside their own country. Obama will form an international working group to address this crisis. He will provide at least $2 billion to expand services to Iraqi refugees in neighboring countries, and ensure that Iraqis inside their own country can find a safe-haven.
There’s much to like there. I like the promise in para 2 that Obama wants to see the United Nations play a central role in convening the intra-Iraqi reconciliation process. That is welcome recognition of the fact that the US may be the party that is the least qualified of all to convene that process successfully. It is also a central pillar of the plan that I have been proposing steadfastly since 2005 for how the US can effect a withdrawal of troops from Iraq that is speedy, total, orderly, and generous.
If you haven’t seen any iterations of my plan you can access many of them through this portal.
I like the statement in para 4 that Americans have a responsibility to help address (though I wouldn’t have said “confront”) Iraq’s humanitarian crisis.
And I especially like what he says in para 3 there about launching “the most aggressive diplomatic effort in recent American history to reach a new compact on the stability of Iraq and the Middle East. This effort will include all of Iraq’s neighbors — including Iran and Syria.”
Here is a guy who really is prepared to think outside the Washington-bounded box. Even in the heat of a campaign in which anti-Iranian threats are generally seen as good for fundraising, he has not withdrawn fully from his commitment to try to talk to Iran and Syria about matters of mutual concern and mutual interest.
Of which, Iraq is most definitely one.
Of course, I wish he had gone further there. I wish that, rather than just timidly referring to trying to reach “a new compact” on Iraq and the Middle East, he had gone as far as the Iraq Study Group and spelled out that resolution of all outstanding tracks of the Israeli-Arab conflict is also a strong US interest that can help ease the distrust with which the vast majority of Middle Easterners view the US’s role and influence in their region.
I hope he understands that? Sadly, I have no way of knowing. I’d love to see more evidence that he’s done some good, hardheaded thinking on the need for a much more effective and fair-minded US stance on Arab-Israeli issues.
However, most of the attention in Washington– and perhaps throughout the US– has thus far been pinned on what he’s said about bringing (some of) the troops home.
Crowley’s article plumbs that issue in considerable depth, starting off from the ambiguity within which Obama has wrapped his actual intentions in this regard.
Crowley writes:
- The truth is Obama has no secret plan for Iraq. Interviews with nearly two dozen foreign policy and military experts, as well as Obama’s campaign advisers, and a close review of Obama’s own statements on Iraq, suggest something more nuanced. What he is offering is a basic vision of withdrawal with muddy particulars, one his advisers are still formulating and one that, if he is elected, is destined to meet an even muddier reality on the ground. Obama has set a clear direction for U.S. policy in Iraq: He wants us out of Iraq; but he’s not willing to do it at any cost–even if it means dashing the hopes of some of his more fervent and naïve supporters. And, when it comes to Iraq, whatever the merits of Obama’s withdrawal plan may be, “Yes, We Can” might ultimately yield to “No, we can’t.”
What I strongly suspect is that, Obama has not yet made up his mind on Iraq. He has, after all, been rather busy waging a tough primary campaign in recent months? But I hope he does so soon. And I hope, above everything, that he takes proactive steps to get advice and input from outside the deadening confines of the Washington DC foreign-policy echo chamber.
If you go 60% of the way down Crowley’s article, you can read his best understanding of who has been advising Obama on Iraq issues. (I have inserted some helpful links to source docs there.)
- This circle includes Clinton administration veterans Tony Lake, Susan Rice, and Greg Craig; Denis McDonough, former foreign policy adviser to Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle; speechwriter [Ben] Rhodes, a former aide to Lee Hamilton; former Pentagon counterinsurgency expert Sarah Sewell; and military men like former Clinton Navy secretary Richard Danzig, former Air Force officer Scott Gration, and former Air Force general Merrill McPeak. The personal views on Iraq of all these people isn’t known, but this is not a homogenous or doctrinaire bunch. Danzig, a potential Obama defense secretary, recently told The Washington Post that he personally supports setting a negotiable exit date based on political progress. Rhodes’s mentor, Hamilton, opposes a fixed timetable. Lake, who opposed the war from the start, expressed concern about the consequences of withdrawal in a February 2004 op-ed. “[T]o walk away [from Iraq], leaving chaos, would be a strategic and moral disaster,” he wrote.
Obama also draws advice from an outer ring of Iraq-specific advisers who are effectively auditioning to become the State Department and Pentagon policymakers in his administration. Closest to the Obama camp are the determined withdrawal advocates at the Center for American Progress (CAP), which is home to McDonough, as well as Iraq specialists and campaign advisers Larry Korb and Brian Katulis. Korb and Katulis co-authored CAP’s signature Iraq plan, which they call “strategic reset” and which calls for a swift exit accompanied by intensified diplomacy and a token U.S. force of perhaps 10,000 in the Kurdish north. Strategic reset also proposes to cancel training and funding for Iraqi forces unless some national political reconciliation is reached. (That approach diverts from some mainstream foreign policy thinking, including the Iraq Study Group, which emphasized the importance of training Iraqi forces.) “Strategic reset” ultimately looks a lot like the Obama plan.
But Obama also draws expertise from a more centrist Washington policy shop, the Center for a New American Security (CNAS), which has issued a plan envisioning up to 60,000 troops in Iraq for several years, though with an increased training role. Danzig is a CNAS board member, and its fellows include Colin Kahl, who leads Obama’s Iraq working group. (The group is a semi-formal assemblage of ten to twelve experts who distill information and assist with tasks like debate preparation, Kahl says, rather than make policy.) Kahl is a proponent of the middle-ground concept of “conditional engagement,” which incentivizes and rewards the political progress by Iraqi leaders with a larger U.S. troop presence to help them provide security.
I should note that this last sentence is unintentionally hilarious. The idea that you could “reward” US-desired political progress from Iraqi leaders with a larger US troop presence is one that, as of the summer of 2008, is completely cockamamie.
Well, I guess Kahl did make that statement before the events of the past 10 days, which have shown pretty definitively that the political tides inside Iraq have “surged” away from the pro-US position and toward the nationalist, anti-occupation position. But still, even in early May, when Crowley presumably interviewed Kahl for his article, it was certainly clear to any informed observer of Iraq affairs that the idea of using a larger US troop presence as a positive incentive had little credibility on the ground in Iraq.
And in a sense, this is the problem with all these people listed in the article as Obama’s “key advisors” or whatever, on Iraq. Honestly, there is not a one of them who has ever provided any evidence that he (or she) knows very much of anything about Iraq itself.
Some of them have track records as fairly smart or well-informed analysts of US strategic policy, whether in Iraq or more broadly. But what do they know of Iraq: of the many political currents and tides swirling around that country; of the complex and subtle interactions of Iranian, Gulf-Arab, Saudi, nationalist and/or sectarian-nationalist groups and interests within it?
Darned if I know.
Does any of them speak or read Arabic? Does any of them regularly give evidence in their work that they are familiar with the major sources of information and analysis about Iraqi internal affairs? No. The vast majority of them– or possibly, all of them– work and write almost totally within the confined echo-chamber of inside-the-Beltway politics.
We should note that the removal of any trace of the relevant regional expertise from within Obama’s advisory “inner circles” has also been the result of relentless efforts undertaken by the pro-Israeli lobbying groups inside Washington. That removal will have very real consequences on his ability to craft effective policies.
Marc Lynch, by the way, has an interesting account here of a discussion on future Iraq policy held at the center for National Security on June 11, in which CNAS’s Kalh, CAP’s Katulis, and the pro-Bush defense hawk Gen. Jack Keane all participated. (You can read Robert Dreyfuss’s account of the discussion here.)
Lynch reported that Katulis pressed Kahl to explain exactly how his idea of the US using “you do what we say or we’ll pull out our troops” pressure on the Iraqi politicians might actually work.
He added:
- [Katulis] also pointed to the [current] Iraqi uproar over the US-Iraqi negotiations to make a wider point: US engagement may not be quite the “carrot” that Kahl thinks it is, at least to anyone other than the narrow group of Green Zone politicians who depend on US military support to survive politically.
So maybe Katulis has a little bit of interest in and familiarity with the ground-truth reality in Iraq that are required?
Lynch wrote that a suggestion from one of the questioners that the plan (PDF) introduced at the conference by Kahl represented Obama’s “real” position,
- misses the point. Katulis would have just as strong a claim to represent Obama’s “real” position, as would a number of others. The more accurate takeaway is that there is serious thinking about Iraq going on within Democratic circles and within the campaign, with tough arguments and sharp, pragmatic analysis.
Well, let’s hope so. And let’s hope that this thinking includes people who can take into account the whole range of international (including Middle Eastern) developments that have been occurring far beyond the Washington echo-chamber, and of which most of the denizens of the echo-chamber seem woefully– and perhaps in many cases, wilfully– ignorant.
Actually, based solely on the content of his four-point platform, Obama himself already seems noticeably clearer and better informed on many of the points about the limits on US power in Iraq than are most of the Washingtonians who are clamoring to be his advisers.
“Obama will immediately begin to remove our troops from Iraq. He will remove one to two combat brigades each month, and have all of our combat brigades out of Iraq within 16 months.”
You can’t rely on what a candidate says on his website. Elsewhere Obama has clearly spelled out that he intends to leave a “residual force” in Iraq for an indefinite period. Military experts have estimated that the “missions” he has described for those “residual forces”, which include several that clearly will require combat 1) troops, will require 50,000-75,000 troops to remain. There is no way he can remove all combat troops within 16 months if he intends his “residual force” to engage in combat.
Perhaps he is engaging in a bit of verbal sleight of hand here. He has said nothing that I know of about how many replacement troops he will be sending into Iraq while he is removing one or two brigades a month.
“Obama will make it clear that we will not build any permanent bases in Iraq.”
Obvious verbal sleight of hand here. Obama will not HAVE to build permanent bases in Iraq, because permanent bases are already there, built by George W. Bush. Has Obama said he will not USE those permanent bases for the 50-75,000 troops he will be keeping in Iraq indefinitely? Not that I know of. Surely he does not intend to leave those huge, multi-billion-dollar, beautifully appointed American-city-like bases (complete with American recreation facilities such as miniature golf courses) empty and make his troops live in tents out in the desert.
“He will keep some troops in Iraq to protect our embassy and diplomats;”
1) That is not the only thing he has said he will keep “some troops” in Iraq to do. 2) If he does not intend to continue to occupy and attempt to control Iraq, he should dismantle the Regional Imperial Command and Control Center (risibly called an embassy), not keep tens of thousands of troops there ostensibly to protect it.
“if al Qaeda attempts to build a base within Iraq, he will keep troops in Iraq or elsewhere in the region to carry out targeted strikes on al Qaeda.”
And wouldn’t those be combat troops?
The long and the short of it is that Obama intends to continue the occupation of Iraq, albeit with a reduced force, and therefore a lower profile, which presumably would make it more tolerable to the American people (and, he probably hopes, to the Iraqi people – he is wrong about that). He also clearly intends to maintain the Regional Imperial Command and Control Center in Baghdad, which he has to know is not really an embassy.
The bottom line is that, based on his own description of his plan (though NOT stated on his campaign P.R. web site), Obama intends to continue to occupy and to control Iraq.
OK, McCain is far worse than Obama in almost every way, but let’s try to be realistic about what we can really expect from Obama.
Shirin, I certainly agree with the last thought you express there. You should go read the whole of the Crowley article. I think he has a generally excellent analysis of the fuzziness (or worse) in Obama’s position on Iraq. Including on the points you raise re “combat brigades”, etc etc
However, I really don’t think he has finished thinking through his position. So we all need to do what we can to keep educating him! (And meanwhile, keep on building a nationwide antiwar movement quite separate from his campaign, in order to keep up the pressure on him.
Here we go again, wondering what the new Decider will decide to do. Shades of Woodrow Wilson. Who stole my democracy?
No need to wonder, Don. Obama has spelled it out pretty clearly, and he has decided to continue the occupation indefinitely with about one third to one half the forces as there were at the height of The Surge™. A portion of those forces will have to be combat forces based on the “missions” he has described.
Helena, I agree that it is important to try to educate, and pressure Obama. However, I also think we need to stop seeing Obama as anything but a clever, talented, and very ambitious politician whose primary concern is furthering his own career.
Obama must realize that there is no way more certain to lose his base of supporters–them that got him to where he is–than to renege on Iraq. He can buy time, but his presidency is doomed if he stiffs his his best friends.
Also, he cannot possibly address enormouse domestic problems unless the US budget stops hemorrhaging via out of control defense spending. The media loves to whip “entitlement spending,” but Social Security is still generating a surplus. Defense spending is what is necessitating the extraordinary borrowing from China. Obama’s presidency is doomed if he cannot address that problem, and the solution starts with getting out of Iraq.
I’ll go with Shirin.
Obama has two choices. He can be progressive in foreign affairs, or he can continue the US belligerent status quo. The smart money (literally) is on the latter. Obama has already told us that he’s not progressive, that he will side with Israel and be harsh on America’s perceived enemies, that he will expand and modernize the military and that he will cooperate with the Repubs and not contest them. He has little choice. Going against the grain would be going against his own party and he would be politically destroyed by them as Carter was thirty years ago.
Begin a serious withdrawal from Iraq? Shades of Vietnamization, when the casualty lists doubled during four years of resisting the inevitable, except under the new paradigm of endless war it looks like Iraq and Afghanistan will never end.
The US is struck helpless by the drug of war and only serious rehab, which young Obama is incapable of, will cure her. Change you can believe in? Dream on.
Oh, and Obama must realize that he can’t stiff his supporters? He won’t do what Bill Clinton did? He’ll be new and unique? Fairy tales might come true, if you’re young at heart–Frank Sinatra. It’s just a song.
“Obama must realize that there is no way more certain to lose his base of supporters–them that got him to where he is–than to renege on Iraq.”
And what would he be reneging on exactly? The deceptive sound bytes intended to give the impression he plans to end the occupation and “bring all the troops home”, or the plan he has spelled out specifically that he plans to continue the occupation with a “residual force”, including “missions” that involve combat?
Stop relying on the P.R. sound bytes in the political ads, and the stuff his P.R. people are putting on his campaign website, and get more complete information. Those of us who have know what to expect from him. Those of you who have not are in for a lot of disappointment.
“I also think we need to stop seeing Obama as anything but a clever, talented, and very ambitious politician whose primary concern is furthering his own career.”
Goodness! Shirin please tell us which dull, ungifted, apathetic loser you are supporting in this election. Or are there no candidates who meet your criteria?
Well, John C., if you are satisfied with just another politician who will pander to AIPAC and the military industrial complex, and work to keep the corporations happy while MAYBE throwing the citizens of the country a bone now and then to keep them quiet, by all means enjoy yourself.
Or are you one of those who sees Obama as some kind of saint and saviour who is going to lead this country out of the darkness into the light? I am afraid I am a bit more realistic. He is a politician. He will promise one thing and do another. If we are lucky he will not do too much harm, and might do a few good things. Granted he will almost certainly be better than Bush, but then that is not difficult to do.
And the beat goes on.
Hey Shirin, you didn’t answer the question. I like Obama in this election. How about you?
For me this is not about liking or not liking someone. It is about looking at their history, their record, and listening to what they say. In that regard I find Obama not as bad as McCain.
“Does any of them speak or read Arabic? Does any of them regularly give evidence in their work that they are familiar with the major sources of information and analysis about Iraqi internal affairs? No. The vast majority of them– or possibly, all of them– work and write almost totally within the confined echo-chamber of inside-the-Beltway politics.”
Helena,
I think you’re being a little unfair on Katulis here. He actually does speak Arabic and has spent considerable time in the Middle East including a two year stint in the mid 90’s living in Ramallah and, from 2003 on I believe, has made repeat medium term trips to Iraq
Molly and I had an all too brief conversation with him over coffee a couple of weeks back and he displayed an excellent knowledge and – more importantly – genuine understanding of a broader Arab position in the ME and specifically of the non-exile, non-Green Zone Iraqi’s.
My own projection on the CAP position – based only on one conversation and a general sense of where Katulis is coming from – is that the Strategic Reset document falls short of what you and many others desire, not because the authors wouldn’t prefer to go further but because of a refusal by more inner-circle campaign people to get out in front of a public that isn’t quite ready to face the reality of American failure in Iraq.
As we’ve been traveling around the country for the past year we’ve noticed certain trends among the people who have come to see the film. Probably the most notable is that even within the most staunchly anti-war grouping there is a great fear that a US withdrawal from Iraq will inexorably lead to a genocidal campaign by some undefined Iraqi grouping against another. This is hardly surprising given that for the most part even those who struggle to remain well informed are bottle-fed COIN manual approved Information Operations by a media – both mainstream and alternative – that prefers to believe that ancient sectarian hatreds lurk around each and every Baghdad street corner rather than report on the blatantly obvious fact that the goals and methods of foreign occupation have created, fomented and reinforced the dynamics of conflict within Iraqi society.
In that context, even attempting to have a conversation in the country requires a complete reset in the national understanding of the conflict itself. That is what we should be hoping for in the coming months but I’m not going to hold my breath.
Steve
Was that an Obama endorsement by Shirin?
Katulis and Kahl had a good online debate about Iraq on Lynch’s Abu Aardvark website back in the fall last year (I think). Lynch keeps an archive of these things.
There is clearly a difference between the policy implications of each one’s “Iraq Plans,” and this is important to watch should Obama win the election and start appointing Pentagon/State Dept. Staff to work on withdrawing troops from Iraq. Katulis would more likely bring a change in direction; Kahl would more likely stay the Bush course.
Saying this it is also true that Katulis works closely with Larry Korb at CAP, and Korb was a Pentagon official in Reagan years (and possibly Bush I). Korb spoke on the same panel I referenced earlier where Peter Galbraith talked about his “End of Iraq” book and his partition plan inspired by Kurdification and the San Remo conference at the end of the first world war.
My concern is that whatever choices Barack Obama makes in staffing and cabinet appointments (should he move into the White House as the best of the two-party candidates by far), there may be greater risk that a Democratic administration 1) will contribute to the partitioning of Iraq, as opposed to 2) failing to withdraw US troops.
In other words people in the camp who never supported Bush’s war policy and protested for peace need to start organizing and mobilizing forces around the issue of 1) supporting Iraqi nationalists who want to keep their country united, while also continuing to advocate the issue of 2) withdrawing US troops.
I would not call Obama the “best by far”, I would call him the less awful option. If you want to think of that as an endorsement, that is fine, but I am not sure I can hold my nose hard enough to vote for him in Nov. I may have to make a protest vote for a third party candidate – again – as I have done in previous elections. I did not vote for either Hillary OR Obama in the primary, even though everyone else had dropped out by then.
Helena, I saw the same hilarity in the idea of rewarding Iraqis with more troops. One would have to be spectacularly out of touch to think that this would be any kind of incentive to bend to U.S. will.
By the same token the idea of making “reconciliation” a condition for withdrawal is backward thinking. As the overwhelming majority of Iraqis understand very well, the primary cause of internal conflict is, as Steve put it so well, “the goals and methods of foreign occupation”. As part of that same idea, the Americans are the ones who created the current politics of identity (as opposed to common ideology, or common goals) in Iraq, and will continue to perpetuate it as long as they are involved. Therefore, political “reconciliation” is extremely unlikely as long as the Americans are mucking about in Iraqi politics enforcing a false and destructive basis for its political system.
I have long said that only the Iraqis can resolve the problems that have been created in Iraq by the United States, but they cannot do that until and unless the U.S. gets out of their business altogether. According to polls the great majority of Iraqis who are living there agree with me on this. The fact that nationalists on all sides are gaining strength and coming together DESPITE U.S. interference is, I believe, and indication of the real nature and desires of Iraqis coming through in spite of everything the U.S. has done and is doing to divide the country and its people. It is one of the few encouraging signs I have seen.