Obama: “I will bring this war to an end in 2009, so don’t be confused.”
To mark the fifth anniversary of the start of the Iraq war, Barack Obama went to Fayetteville Technical Community College in North Carolina, a short distance from Fort Bragg and Pope Air Force Base, to deliver his second keynote speech in as many days. If his preceding speech on race was largely defensive, this speech was a full frontal attack on President Bush, Sen. John McCain, and Sen. Hillary Clinton.
Of course, as one might expect, all three also made contributions to the debate about Iraq. President Bush claimed that the war was being won and that America needs to keep fighting until it results in final victory. He failed, as he always does, to define what the goal is and therefore what constitutes a victory, which is why two-thirds of his citizens oppose both him and the war.
John McCain, who is currently touring the Middle East and Europe, likes to emphasise his foreign policy experience but marked the day with a huge blunder: Several times he claimed that Iran (a Shiite country) was helping Al Qaeda (a Sunni organization), which is obviously incorrect. In doing so he demonstrated his determination to be the candidate who follows both the policies and the propaganda of George W. Bush.
This wasn’t lost on Barack Obama, who said:
“We heard Sen. McCain confuse Sunni and Shiite, Iran and Al Qaeda… Maybe that is why he voted to go to war with a country that had no Al Qaeda ties. Maybe that is why he completely fails to understand that the war in Iraq has done more to embolden America’s enemies than any strategic choice that we have made in decades.
Hillary Clinton also delivered a speech on Iraq, although for all the notice anybody took it might have been better to save her breath. That’s because yesterday belonged to Obama. Able to demonstrate his superior judgment on this issue, opposing the war from the start, he fired a broadside against his challenger:
“”Ask yourself, who do you trust to end a war: someone who opposed the war from the beginning, or someone who started opposing it when they started preparing a run for president?”
“What we need in our next commander-in-chief is not a stubborn refusal to acknowledge reality or empty rhetoric about 3 a.m. phone calls. What we need is a pragmatic strategy that focuses on fighting our real enemies, rebuilding alliances and renewing our engagement with the world’s people.”
There is little doubt that the Iraq war will play a major part in the Presidential race, and Obama once again demonstrated that Hillary Clinton was not the best candidate to battle McCain on this issue, being vulnerable to the charge that her new found opposition to the war was the result of personal political expediency, rather than principled opposition from the outset.
“This is why the judgment that matters most on Iraq — and on any decision to deploy military force — is the judgment made first”.