Seven years after “Mission Acomplished,” President Obama ushered in his own formal end to the Iraq war last week. Speaking to the nation in his second-ever Oval Office address, the President declared the combat phase of Operation Iraqi Freedom to be officially over, and reminded the country that since his election, the US has “removed nearly 100,000 U.S. troops from Iraq,” as well as closing hundreds of American bases and moving “millions of pieces of equipment” from the region. With more to follow.
But not too much more. Though he never mentioned the figure in his speech, the President’s pullout plan will still retain 50,000 American troops in Iraq for at least one more year, for the purpose of, in Obama’s words “advising and assisting Iraq’s Security Forces; supporting Iraqi troops in targeted counter-terrorism missions; and protecting our civilians.” The strategy evokes memories of President Nixon’s 1969 “Vietnamization” plan, which did not particularly speed up the US withdrawal from that war, as we may recall.
Obama was destined, on some level to become a “war president” in the same way Nixon was. Both inherieted unpopular wars from their predecessors, and both were expected to decisively conclude them. The main difference is that while Nixon was fascinated with foreign policy and didn’t seem to mind the obligation, Obama just wants to forget the whole mess as quickly as possible.
Yet even as a cutter-and-runner, his overall war philosophy is a bit incoherent. After all, this is the same man who dramatically ratcheted up the American presence in Afghanistan — a “surge” style strategy which he explicitly opposed for Iraq while in Congress — and the same man who has already killed far more suspected enemy combatants in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan via robot drones than his warmongery predecessor.
So what kind of president does Obama actually want to be? Is he serious about ushering in the new era of peace he talked about in his Nobel Prize speech? Or does he fully intend to continue prosecuting the War on Terror as vigorously as possible, just in a somewhat less politically divisive, more out-of-sight-out-of-mind kinda way? I know this President likes to think that if you piss off both sides equally “you must be doing somethin’ right!” and that may indeed be true a lot of the time. But sometimes pissing off everyone simply means that you’re governing so strangely and erratically that no sane human can make heads or tails of your supposed agenda.
And that’s a criticism that can’t be shrugged off quite so easily.
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