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Along with "hope" and "change," one of the strategic pillars of Senator Barack Obama's campaign for the presidency is that he alone among the three remaining candidates was against the Iraq War "from the beginning."
What exactly in Obama's record justifies him presenting himself as the most anti-war of the three candidates?
Obama's claim to anti-war credentials rests almost exclusively on one speech he gave in 2002. He was an Illinois state legislator and law professor at the time. He did not organize rallies, sit-ins, or teach-ins, as did so many of us in academia. He gave one speech at a gathering of anti-war demonstrators.
I personally was actively engaged in the effort to stop the war from happening. I have to say, in all candor, that Obama's 2002 speech was tepid at best in its anti-war stance and, especially, in the quality of understanding it reveals in relationship to the main arguments against the war that existed at the time. He had more to say about NOT opposing war in general than he had to say about opposing the invasion of Iraq.
In his 2002 speech, Obama's main argument against the war was the following: "What I am opposed to is the attempt by political hacks like Karl Rove to distract us from a rise in the uninsured, a rise in the poverty rate, a drop in the median income, to distract us from corporate scandals and a stock market that has just gone through the worst month since the Great Depression."
Where is his outrage in relation to the immorality of the war, for the unprecedented step of America undertaking a unilateral and unprovoked war? The Iraq War was not wrong primarily because it interfered with domestic priorities. It was wrong because it was unnecessary, unprovoked, unilateral, and strategically unsound. It has caused hundreds of thousands of Iraqi deaths, in addition to the roughly 4000 American deaths (so far). Obama's 2002 speech clearly reveals that he had very little understanding, at the time, of the most compelling arguments against initiating the war.
There is perhaps good reason that the "unilaterality" problem did not weigh into the thinking of the young, Illinois Senator, Barack Obama, in 2002. It continues to elude his understanding to the present time. In his first Iraq speech this week, Obama indicated his intent to open up a new "central front" in the war in the Middle East: along the border of Afghanistan and Pakistan. He then goes on to say, "To succeed in Afghanistan, we also need to fundamentally rethink our Pakistan policy." "That is why I stood up last summer and said we cannot base our entire Pakistan policy of President Musharraf." Make no mistake about it! A vote for Obama is a vote to open up a new central front in the war in the Middle East, even if that means violating the national borders of an ally and alienating its head of state. This is the same kind of reckless cowboy mentality that another young, inexperienced President exhibited in another era and which led to the catastrophic Bay of Pigs fiasco. It is the kind of mentality that led to the Iraqi War.
When the initiation of the Iraq War was being debated, many of us who were leading the anti-war effort were motivated to study the writings of the neoconservatives who formed the central clique of advisors for the Bush administration. Most of the time, liberals prefer not to wade through the rantings coming out of right-wing think-tanks, but we had no choice in 2002. It was only then that liberals discovered that the seeds of War in Iraq had already been planted before Bush was even elected and that all of us could have anticipated the impending crisis had we been paying closer attention to the "words" published by the war-mongers. Senator Obama is right when he says, "Words matter." Voters today have the same opportunity that existed in 1999/2000 (but which was overlooked) to anticipate what Senator Obama is likely to do if he is elected. We will have no one else to blame but ourselves if we fail to pay attention to his words. Obama will be expanding the troop commitment to Afghanistan and justifying incursions into Pakistan, even if they require unilateral action on the part of American forces.
From a political point of view, Obama's frequent references to Senator Clinton's vote to authorize deployment of troops in Iraq is strategically effective, but it is also dishonest. Did Obama truly believe that opposing the war was an obvious decision for Democratic legislators? "Asked by National Public Radio about the pro-war votes of the Democratic presidential and vice presidential nominees, Sens. John Kerry, D-Mass., and John Edwards, D-N.C., Obama said, 'I don't consider that to have been an easy decision, and certainly, I wasn't in the position to actually cast a vote on it. I think that there is room for disagreement in that initial decision.'" Now, conveniently, he believes that there was no such room for honest disagreement.
Between 2002 and his announcement that he was running for the presidency, Obama's record shows no evidence of leading the opposition to the Iraqi War: no stirring speeches and no bills introduced to end the war. Barack Obama did not oppose the war "from the beginning" but only "at the beginning," and then not again until his present campaign.
One of Obama's former campaign aides told the British press that Obama would not necessarily keep his pledge to begin withdrawing troops within 4 months of taking office. In his latest speech, Obama has changed his language to suggest he will begin withdrawing troops "immediately," another political expediency to enable him to match the promise already put forth by Senator Clinton.
Obama characterizes the problems in the Middle East as "emanating from the perverse and hateful ideologies of radical Islam," which is the kind of incendiary language befitting Bush and the neoconservatives -- the kind of language Obama may have learned from twenty years under the tutelage of Rev. Wright.
One of Obama's strongest points in his 2002 anti-war speech takes on new meaning, now, in light of his current political campaign, when he describes the Iraq war as "A war based not on reason but on passion, not on principle but on politics." Senator Obama has based his entire campaign around exciting passion, rather than encouraging an exercise of reason among the American electorate. As a law school professor, he should know better. An educator's job is to teach the young to use their critical thinking skills instead of giving into fear and hysteria. Obamania is exactly the kind of blind follower-ship that invites new wrong choices, like that fateful decision to go to war in Iraq, in 2002/3.
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