Mon, 07/28/2008 - 9:02am — vastleft
"Ours is a conditions-based strategy."
Our next C-in-C, Barack Obama:
Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama said in an interview published on Saturday the size of a residual U.S. force left in Iraq after the withdrawal of combat troops would be "entirely conditions-based.""It's hard to anticipate where we may be six months from now, or a year from now, or a year and a half from now."
"Barack Obama is ultimately articulating a position of sustained troop levels in Iraq based on the conditions on the ground and the security of the country. That is the very same position that John McCain has long held," said McCain spokesman Tucker Bounds.
Conditioned response:
When Obama was running against Hillary Clinton for the nomination, we heard repeatedly how he had opposed the invasion of Iraq, and she hadn't. Now he's running against John McCain. McCain has recently claimed on many occasions that his judgment on Iraq has been vindicated, because "the surge worked." Now without arguing about the truth of that claim, the rather obvious rejoinder from Obama would be that no, his judgment on Iraq has long been vindicated, since if the invasion had never happened, 4400+ Americans and allies and more than a million Iraqis would still be alive, and millions more wouldn't have been driven from their homes. But, in case you haven't noticed, Obama has not responded to McCain in that way. Some will say he's just pretending to move to the right in order to appeal to the "center" for votes. Some also believe in the tooth fairy.
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But I thought we were moving the war to Afghanistan?
It's all so confusing. It's like a shell game or something.
[ ] Very tepidly voting for Obama [ ] ?????. [ ] Any mullah-sucking billionaire-teabagging torture-loving pus-encrusted spawn of Cthulhu, bless his (R) heart.
A question no one will want to ask
Obama is running to the right to secure votes. Hence there is a good chance his loyalties will be there if elected. Further, he is going out of his way, along with much of the Dem establishment, to push Hillary's working class coalition out of the way.
McCain is nominally trying to attract Hillary's working class coalition, showing at least some interest in that constituency.
Given the opposite trajectories of the two candidates, which one is more likely to be persuadable from the standpoint of Hillary's coalition.?
That's a serious question. ObamaCo has shown increasing hostility to Hillary supporters and has shown a penchant for going after opponents for slight criticism (e.g. Krugman). Also, his supporters are showing an increasing ability to go along with and JUSTIFY Obama's shift to the right.
Wasn't Obama's shift
predicted? By a few here?
Its not the shift, per se
it's the justification and lack of accountability that I find disheartening. Part of Bush's problem is that his die-hards justified and defended everything he did and attacked any critics relentlessly as unpatriotic--even when they didn't agree with what he was doing. The tool to quiet Obama critics is racism. Without any accountability from a pol's "base", the potential for abuse of power increases substantially.
both staying in Iraq and expanding Afghanistan
--it's a two-fer -- of horror and death -- and billions more to defense contractors naturally.