Liberty ‘08

Obama is Anti-War! Kinda.

Many voters may not be aware that while Obama has never opted for “staying the course” in Iraq, he has also never committed to a unilateral withdrawl. During the primaries he had many opportunities to clarify his position and it is one that is decidedly moderate, not radical, in regards to bringing our troops home. Consider also that while Barack’s stand on continuing to engage Al Qaeda in Iraq may not be well known, his determination to ramp up the war in Afghanistan has received major press coverage. If you believe that an Obama presidency will mean the end of American Imperialism and Interventionism, keep dreaming.

Q. You’ve argued that the United States should leave behind residual force in Iraq and the region. How large would the force be and how much would be inside Iraq versus the Persian Gulf Region?

A. I have not ascribed particular numbers to that and I won’t for precisely the reason I was just talking to Michael about. I want to talk to military folks on the ground, No. 1. No. 2, a lot of it depends on what’s happened on the political front and the diplomatic front. Even something as simple as protecting our embassy is going to be dependent on what is the security environment in Baghdad. If there is some sense of security, then that means one level of force. If you continue to have significant sectarian conflict, that means another, but this is an area where Senator Clinton and I do have a significant contrast.

I do not believe that we can remove troops at the pace, for example, that Governor Richardson was talking about. I do think it is important for us not only to protect our embassy, but also to engage in counter-terrorism activities. We’ve seen progress against AQI [Al Qaeda in Iraq], but they are a resilient group and there’s the possibility that they might try to set up new bases. I think that we should have some strike capability. But that is a very narrow mission, that we get in the business of counter terrorism as opposed to counter insurgency and even on the training and logistics front, what I have said is, if we have not seen progress politically, then our training approach should be greatly circumscribed or eliminated.

I am happy to train a government that is functioning as a national government. I do not want us to be in the business of training and equipping factions or militias that are going to be turning on each other. I want to be absolutely clear about this, because this has come up in a series of debates: I will remove all our combat troops, we will have troops there to protect our embassies and our civilian forces and we will engage in counter terrorism activities. How large that force is, whether it’s located inside Iraq or as an over the horizon force is going to depend on what our military situation is.

What we’re not going to be doing is engaging in broad-based counter insurgency. We’re not going to be providing long-term and constant embedded training operations and logistical training operations and the sort that, I think, Senator Clinton has in some cases talked about. We’re certainly not going to be engaging in what I consider mission creep, where we are structuring our forces based on preventing Iranian influence in Iraq, something that Senator Clinton has talked about as a possibility in a previous interview. We’re not going to be using forces there to strike at what she’s called other terrorist organizations, without being clear as to whether those are just terrorist organizations inside Iraq or terrorist organizations outside Iraq. We’re going to be focused very narrowly on making sure that Al Qaeda in Iraq and terrorist activities in Iraq are prevented.”

(emphasis added)
read the rest of the interview at the NYT website.

The above photo was made by Ken Hood and is freely available for re-use and re-mixing under a CC 3.0 By-SA License. The source image was retrieved from Flickr user “Philgarlic,” at this link.