Obama needs to upgrade Iraq policy

Obama is saying things about Iraq that don’t seem to jibe with what’s going on there right now. Back in January 2007, Obama told Bob Shieffer: “We cannot impose a military solution on what has effectively become a civil war. And until we acknowledge that reality, we can send 15,000 more troops, 20,000 more troops, 30,000 more troops. I don’t know any expert on the region or any military officer that I’ve spoken to privately that believe that that is going to make a substantial difference on the situation on the ground.” What sounded right back then doesn’t quite ring true anymore.

I haven’t heard Obama use the words “civil war” in a while. But he does say that US policy has not changed in Iraq. The so-called surge might not be the biggest reason why things have gotten better but it’s hard to argue that it wasn’t one of them. And that it represented a real shift in US strategy. Obama says he would bring about a reponsible withdrawal. But how much leeway would he give for changes in the situation on the ground? He says some kind of US counterterrorism force would have stay in the region. But what would that force look like and where would it be based in the region? These are some of the questions facing Obama as he prepares to travel to Iraq and make an argument that he would make a better war president than John McCain.

George Packer at the New Yorker has a piece about all this here. Packer sums up this way: “If Obama truly wants to be seen as a figure of change, he needs to talk less about the past and more about the future: not the war that should never have been fought but the war that he, alone of the two candidates, can find an honorable way to end.”

BBC radio correspondent, Kevin Connelly also made a similar point when I interviewed him for this week’s Election 2008 podcast.