Posted by
Andrews on Saturday, July 19, 2008 6:43:38 PM
I was watching the nightly news and saw the talking heads' summary of Obama's defense plans. Apparently he is going to completely remove our troops from Iraq (or maybe leave a few companies in the area or something, but effectively cut the loose), but he is going to ship a significant number of troops to Afghanistan.
So, if I understand this, Obama doesn't care whether or not terrorists establish a very real stronghold in Iraq, so long as he can achieve the PR victory of capturing Osama.
Now many will say that capturing Osama will be a major victory, but I disagree. Osama's death would create a martyr and his trial would just give him a platform to preach*. And even if he is gone, so what? There are plenty of clever leaders out there, he is hardly the only leader we have to fear. Terrorism existed before Osama and will after.
What would be a major victory would be fighting the terrorists to a standstill in Iraq while establishing a democratic middle eastern state. But that has been made a non-priority in Obama's plan.
And he is presenting this plan as a way to prove he is NOT inexperienced in foreign policy?
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* I know some will ask, if we shouldn't kill Osama and shouldn't try him, what should we do. My thought has always been, if we know where Osama is, our best plan would be to watch him and use his contacts to track down the lower echelons of his organization. In fact, I often argued we may be doing just that now. However, barring that, the best way to do him in would be something that looked like an accident, or maybe a major catastrophe such as a cave in, which prevented the creation of a martyr. Anything else will either give him a platform or martyrdom, which is not in our interest.
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UPDATE
I do hope the press and Obama campaign keep playing up his plan to deploy more troops to Afghanistan, though. It won't make him appeal to the center, as McCain is no slouch on defense, but ti WILL serve to continue alienating Obama's anti-war supporters on the left. Should those supporters jump ship and flee to McKinney or Nader, Obama, having little success with independents, will be left with no supporters at all.