Matthew Yglesias: Maliki's Walk Forward

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Maliki's Walk Forward

Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's endorsement of Barack Obama's plan for U.S. troop withdrawal shows us the real shape of the debate to come.


Matthew Yglesias | July 21, 2008 | web only



Over the past several months, the reductions in violence associated with the administration's post-midterm change in tactics in Iraq have proven more durable than many liberals (myself included) anticipated. Consequently, the press and the right have issued a steady drumbeat demanding that Barack Obama drop his support for a phased withdrawal of U.S. combat forces from Iraq on a 16-month timeline.

"Mr. Obama can't afford to update his Iraq policy," sniffed a July 7 Washington Post editorial that simultaneously accused Obama of changing his position on Iraq and of not changing his position on Iraq enough. By July 15 it was clear that Obama was sticking to his guns, and the Post was mad, sneering that Obama "appears to have decided that sticking to his arbitrary, 16-month timetable is more important than adjusting to the dramatic changes in Iraq." Similar sentiments have been echoed on television and, of course, by the McCain campaign which deemed it "remarkable" that Obama "articulated and announced his policies and approach to Iraq before he went, not after."

But a funny thing happened while Obama's plane was en route to its first stop in Afghanistan -- Der Spiegel published an interview with Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki in which the Iraqi leader took a rather different view. "U.S. presidential candidate Barack Obama talks about 16 months," he observed, "that, we think, would be the right timeframe for a withdrawal, with the possibility of slight changes."

Politically, Maliki's statement is devastating for John McCain, who has endorsed an American presence in Iraq for 100 years or more. And, further, McCain has repeatedly argued that any fixed timeline (or, indeed, any policy based on the idea of leaving Iraq to the Iraqis) would constitute a form of surrender.

But there is a larger problem for Obama's critics -- the Iraqi embrace of something like Obama's schedule highlights the foolishness of condemning a 16-month timetable as arbitrary. The 16 month figure, of course, is somewhat arbitrary. But that is simply in the nature of any schedule -- shift things around a month or a week or a day or an hour in one direction or another and it probably wouldn't make much of a difference.

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http://www.prospect.org/cs/articles?article=malikis_walk_forward