| | |  Americas & Beyond | July 2008 
Obama Sticks to Timeline for Iraq Withdrawal
 Brian Knowlton & John M. Broder - International Herald Tribune
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| | Barack Obama making a foreign policy speech on Iraq at the Ronald Reagan Building and International Trade Center in Washington, D.C. on Tuesday. (Chris Kleponis/Bloomberg News) | | |
Washington - Senator Barack Obama said Tuesday that he remained determined to end the war in Iraq on a 16-month schedule, shrugging off sharp criticism of any timetable from his rival, Senator John McCain. But Obama called for increased efforts, including sizable nonmilitary contributions, in both Afghanistan and Pakistan.
In preparing for a trip next week to Europe and the Middle East, he also laid out a much broader foreign-policy vision that would reorient the American approach on the global challenges of terrorism, nuclear proliferation, climate change and energy dependence. The Illinois Democrat stressed the use of diplomacy and economic aid over the use of force and said that as president he would mend alliances in Europe, Asia and elsewhere that have frayed during the Bush administration.
"What's missing in our debate about Iraq, what has been missing since before the war began, is a discussion of the strategic consequences of Iraq and its dominance of our foreign policy," Obama said in a speech in Washington. "This war distracts us from every threat that we face and so many opportunities we could seize. This war diminishes our security, our standing in the world, our military, our economy and the resources that we need to confront the challenges of the 21st century.
"By any measure, our single-minded and open-ended focus on Iraq is not a sound strategy for keeping America safe."
Obama proposed a different relationship with Pakistan, moving "beyond a purely military alliance built on convenience," that would include a tripling of U.S. nonmilitary aid; the deployment of an additional two combat brigades to Afghanistan, a commitment he would use to leverage greater contributions from NATO allies; and a doubling of foreign aid worldwide by 2012.
The proposal for tripling nonmilitary aid to Pakistan was endorsed Tuesday by two co-sponsors of a bill to do just that, Senator Joe Biden, Democrat of Delaware, chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee; and the panel's ranking Republican, Senator Richard Lugar of Indiana.
Obama's remarks aimed to reinforce his claim to the national-security vision and expertise needed to be president. "I will pursue a tough, smart and principled national security strategy, one that recognizes that we have interests not just in Baghdad, but in Kandahar and Karachi, in Tokyo and London, in Beijing and Berlin," he said.
But McCain, his Republican rival for the presidency, laid out a more detailed approach on Afghanistan. Appearing in Albuquerque, New Mexico, he proposed sending one more brigade there than the additional two Obama has suggested, better unifying the persistently fragmented command of allied troops there, and appointing a separate U.S. war "czar" for Afghanistan.
Nor did the Arizona senator forgo a chance to tweak Obama over his youth and relative inexperience.
"Senator Obama is departing soon on a trip abroad that will include a fact-finding mission to Iraq and Afghanistan," McCain said, according to a prepared text released by his campaign. "And I note that he is speaking today about his plans for Iraq and Afghanistan before he has even left, before he has talked to General Petraeus, before he has seen the progress in Iraq, and before he has set foot in Afghanistan for the first time. In my experience, fact-finding missions usually work best the other way around: first you assess the facts on the ground, then you present a new strategy."
As Obama and McCain wrangled over two wars that, along with the languishing economy, will be at the heart of voters' concerns in November, a new opinion poll found that Americans are divided almost evenly between those who support Obama's 16-month withdrawal timeline and those who agree with McCain that events should decide when the troops can come home.
Fifty percent of those questioned in the Washington Post-ABC News poll said that they preferred a timeline; 49 percent said they favored no timeline. The survey, conducted July 10-13, had a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 3 percentage points.
But while 72 percent said McCain, a Vietnam War veteran, would make a good commander-in-chief, only 48 percent said the same about Obama.
Obama has asserted that the heavy demands of the Iraq conflict are hindering efforts to send more troops to Afghanistan, and President George W. Bush was asked at a news conference Tuesday whether this was so. He did not reply directly, but said that "we've got to succeed in both" wars.
Bush said Obama's travels would help him understand the realities on the ground. He encouraged him to listen intently to the generals in charge of American operations.
The president also said that he was adjusting troop levels to respond to improved conditions in Iraq and new threats in Afghanistan. "We're at war," Bush said, "and now is not the time to give up."
But Obama said the evidence was overwhelming that the pre-eminent focus on Iraq, where the United States has five times more troops stationed than in Afghanistan, had distracted Americans from what he called "the central front in the war on terror."
"It is unacceptable that almost seven years after nearly 3,000 Americans were killed on our soil, the terrorists who attacked us on 9/11 are still at large," he said.
Obama acknowledged that the addition of tens of thousands of combat troops sent to Iraq early last year - the so-called surge, which McCain has volubly supported from the beginning - had lowered violence in the country.
But he said that strengthened his case for a rapid withdrawal, not weakened it, as McCain has argued. During the 18 months of the surge, Obama said, the strain on American forces has increased, the cost in lives and money has grown and the situation in Afghanistan has worsened.
Obama said it was time for the United States to cut its losses.
"At some point," he said, "a judgment must be made. Iraq is not going to be a perfect place, and we do not have unlimited resources to try to make it one."
But McCain said that Obama "has it exactly backwards. It is precisely the success of the surge in Iraq that shows us the way to succeed in Afghanistan. It is by applying the tried and true principles of counterinsurgency used in the surge - which Senator Obama opposed - that we will win in Afghanistan."
He added: "I know how to win wars."
Obama had spoken late Monday in Cincinnati to a convention of the NAACP, the oldest U.S. civil rights group, and he was careful to pay homage to the giants of the movement who came before him.
He did not retreat from controversial remarks on personal responsibility, saying that while government had its role in providing education and employment opportunities for struggling families, parents had their own duty to turn off the television and attend parent-teacher conferences. His remarks, The Cincinnati Enquirer reported, were met with "unbridled enthusiasm and passion." |
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