Sen. Obama Confronts Petraeus and Crocker on 'Major Strategic Blunder' in Iraq

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Tue Apr-08-08 09:31 PM
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Sen. Obama Confronts Petraeus and Crocker on 'Major Strategic Blunder' in Iraq

Edited on Tue Apr-08-08 10:13 PM by bigtree

Barack Obama barely got his moment with Gen. David Petraeus and U.S. Ambassador to Iraq in time to make the evening news today. (http://weblogs.baltimoresun.com/news/politics/blog/2008/04/obama_best_iraq_hope_may_be_me.html)

But his few minutes of questioning time offered a glimpse of what an Obama Administration might expect to achieve in Iraq: “a messy, sloppy status quo.”

“When you have finite resources, you've got to define your goals tightly and modestly,” Obama counseled the general and the ambassador, who spent the day vigorously defending the Bush Administration’s surge policy in Iraq before Congress.

Sen. Obama called for talks with Iran the same day the Islamic republic announced it was employing 6,000 new centrifuges to aid in uranium enrichment.

The talks with Iran would be part of a "diplomatic surge" Obama called for, in part to help stabilize Iraq as well.

"We should be talking to them as well," Obama told the top U.S. General in Iraq, David Petraeus, and U.S. ambassador to Baghdad Ryan Crocker.

"I do not believe we are going to be able to stabilize the situation without that" said Obama, adding that a plan for U.S. troop withdrawals was needed to force Iraqi factions to work together.

"I think that increased pressure in a measured way, in my mind, and this is where we disagree, includes a timetable for withdrawal. Nobody is asking for a precipitous withdrawal," Obama said.

At today’s Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing on Iraq, Obama raised a question that gets right to the heart of the debate that will play out in the presidential race – whether the United States could withdraw troops from Iraq without setting off a bloodbath even worse than the current violence. (http://blogs.cqpolitics.com/beyond/2008/04/obama-looks-for-endpoint.html)

Would it be possible to maintain the status quo, Obama asked – even a “messy, sloppy status quo” – with a force level as low as 30,000 troops?

“I can’t imagine the current status quo being sustainable with that kind of precipitous drawdown,” answered Ambassador Ryan C. Crocker, who was testifying in his second hearing of the day with General David H. Petraeus, the top U.S. commander in Iraq.

“I’m not suggesting that we yank all our troops out all the way,” Obama responded. “I’m trying to get to an endpoint.” The problem, he complained, is that the administration has set the bar for success so high – no Iranian influence in Iraq, a democracy that includes all of the sectarian groups, and no al Qaeda presence – that its vision “portends the possibility of us staying for 20 or 30 years.”

Obama called the Iraq war a “strategic blunder” in which Petraeus and Crocker were “cleaning up the mess.”

“I also think that the surge has reduced violence and provided breathing room, but that breathing room has not been taken the way we would all like it to be taken,” Obama said.

“The problem I have is the definition of success is so high,” he said. He then asked Petraeus: “Should we be successful, do we anticipate there is ever a time that al-Qaida in Iraq could not reconstitute itself?” (http://news.medill.northwestern.edu/washington/news.aspx?id=85159)

Obama said the troop “surge” helped reduce violence, but criticized the lack of political reconciliation. He called the decision to go into Iraq a “major strategic blunder” and renewed a call for a withdrawal timetable.

“There is a bipartisan consensus that we have finite resources. We are overstretched,” he said. “If we were able to have the status quo in Iraq without US troops, would that be OK or would that be considered a success?” he asked Crocker.

Obama argued that the bar for success in Iraq should be lowered and that the “status quo” may have to be an acceptable resolution to the war.

“The problem I have is that if the definition of success is so high, no traces of al Qaeda and no possibility of reconstitution, a highly effective Iraqi government, a democratic multiethnic, multisectarian functioning democracy, no Iranian influence, at least not the kind that we like, then that portends the possibility of us staying for 20 or 30 years,” Obama said.

“If, on the other hand, our criteria is a messy, sloppy status quo, but there’s not huge outbreaks of violence, there’s still corruption but the country is struggling along, but it’s not a threat to its neighbors and it’s not an al Qaeda base, that seems to me an achievable goal within a measured time frame.”

Obama Questions Petraeus at Senate Hearing
Senate Committee on Foreign Relations Hearing on Iraq- Transcript: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/04/08/AR2008040802607.html