Big news in the presidential campaign…and you won’t hear much about it in the mainstream media
I’ve spent a lot of time the past few days going to talks about foreign policy and national security here at Netroots Nation. Increasingly, I’ve come to believe that the simplistic debate on these issues that we hear in the national media has nothing to do with the realities that we face. Let me give you an example…
Although you wouldn’t know it from reading the New York Times or the Washington Post (let alone the Democrat and Chronicle), there was huge news regarding Iraq over the past few days:
Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki told a German magazine he supported prospective U.S. Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama’s proposal that U.S. troops should leave Iraq within 16 months.
In an interview with Der Spiegel released on Saturday, Maliki said he wanted U.S. troops to withdraw from Iraq as soon as possible.
“U.S. presidential candidate Barack Obama talks about 16 months. That, we think, would be the right timeframe for a withdrawal, with the possibility of slight changes.”
This is hardly isolated. McCain is now backing Obama’s plan to send more troops to Afghanistan. Even George Bush has embraced Obama’s (and other Democrats’) plans to negotiate with Iran.
In a large sense, the Iraqi government, the Bush administration, and John McCain are all increasingly in agreement with Obama’s foreign policy plans.
Nevertheless, the McCain campaign is attempting to make this election a referendum on foreign policy. Can this succeed for him now? Probably not, according to Marc Ambinder (who maintains an excellent nonpartisan political blog):
Via e-mail, a prominent Republican strategist who occasionally provides advice to the McCain campaign said, simply, “We’re f**ked.” No response yet from the McCain campaign…
The shifts we’ve seen the past few weeks will ultimately have an enormous impact on the presidential campaign. But I find it sad that we hear next to nothing about any of this in the mainstream media.
Related posts:
I agree that this is a huge development. “Victory” in Iraq is at hand — Saddam and the Baathists have been vanquished, and there’s a government that can stand up on its hind legs and tell us to get out of town. It puts the Bush administration and McCain in a tough spot, because their supposed goal has been achieved.
Bush invaded Iraq under false pretenses with manufactured intelligence that, despite the Administration’s lies, the greater majority of the world’s intelligence community DIDN’T agree with. Over 4,000 Americans were sacrificed for a war that never needed fighting. McCain flogged the invasion strategy like a rented mule and still wants to get it on with Iraq. Bush and McCain want an open-ended American military presence in a country that won’t accept it. The prime minister of that country openly said that Obama’s strategy is the one more acceptable to his country.
You got a strange definition of ‘victory’ and ‘achieved’.
Sorry, meant to post this on the earlier comment.
I saw this story on Huffington earlier. And then there’s this gem from ABC:
The White House this afternoon accidentally sent to its extensive distribution list a Reuters story headlined “Iraqi PM backs Obama troop exit plan - magazine.”
The story relayed how Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki told the German magazine Der Spiegel that “he supported prospective U.S. Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama’s proposal that U.S. troops should leave Iraq within 16 months … ‘U.S. presidential candidate Barack Obama talks about 16 months. That, we think, would be the right timeframe for a withdrawal, with the possibility of slight changes,’” the prime minister said.
The White House employee had intended to send the article to an internal distribution list, ABC News’ Martha Raddatz reports, but hit the wrong button.
The misfire comes at an odd time for Bush foreign policy, at a time when Obama’s campaign alleges the president is moving closer toward Obama’s recommendations about international relations — sending more U.S. troops to Afghanistan, discussing a “general time horizon” for U.S. troop withdrawal and launching talks with Iran.
http://blogs.abcnews.com/politicalpunch/2008/07/white-house-acc.html
These bozos couldn’t spell
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I understand that it isn’t a real victory. Here’s what I meant: The Iraqi government is doing is what a number of Democrats have advocated, namely, that we declare victory and leave. The Iraqis have declared victory for us, and they want us to leave.
Even though it is not a real victory, the declaration of victory puts McCain and the Bush Administration in a very tough spot. They have gotten what they said that they wanted. Now, what are they going to do?
Spencer Ackerman had an interesting take on all of this at the panel discussion I saw him in. He said that if going from the 9th circle of hell to the 3rd was your goal, then you could call the surge a real success.
The Ackerman quote is both funny and sad.
And, RC, I missed the import of the last sentence in your first post. I see your point now. Indeed, how do they justify their goal of staying in Iraq forever?VA:F [1.5.0_759]
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[...] but it really is quite remarkable: the national media is largely ignoring Iraqi PM Maliki’s endorsement of Obama’s withdrawl plan except for when it’s repeating Republican spin about it. Here’s the New Republic on [...]