"Let me be clear: There is no military solution in Iraq and there never was. The best way to protect our security and to pressure Iraq's leaders to resolve their civil war is to immediately begin to remove our combat troops. Not in six months or one year — now." Senator Barack Obama said that on December 12, 2007 in a speech in Clinton, Iowa. At the time he was still one of the pack of Democratic presidential candidates jostling and elbowing trying to get a knock out edge over the others for the Democratic presidential nomination. That included first and foremost Hillary Clinton. He mercilessly pounded her then and afterwards in speeches for backing the war and dutifully voting for war appropriations.Nine months later things had radically changed. Obama was no longer jostling with Hillary and the others for the top Democratic presidential nominee spot. He was now the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee and he said this: "I have always said I wouldlisten to the commanders on the ground. I have always said that the pace of withdrawal would be dictated by the safety and security of our troops and the need to maintain stability. That assessment has not changed. His very public record of his very public pledge to end the war NOW in stump speeches the year before he said that had changed, and his words and voting record on the war had changed too. This has caused much grief, anguish and disappointment among fervent Obama backers. The war was the single biggest reason why many of them bought his sale that as president he would do what no other Democrat or Republican in the White House would do and that was to immediately end the war. That was more than enough for them to flock to his banner, lustily cheer him on, and furiously hector anyone who dared poke at his twists, turns, shifts, and deep knee bends on Iraq.But even the most cursory look at Obama’s words, votes, and campaign pirouettes on Iraq paint a far different picture of a candidate for which Iraq was never the clear cut issue that many believed, or maybe wanted to believe. The Iraq flips started long before his Iowa pledge to get out now. It started even before he was in the Senate. At a Democratic forum outside Chicago during his Senate campaign in 2003 and 2004, Obama lambasted Bush for waging the war. He flatly said that if he had been in the Senate he would not have voted for $87 billion more to bankroll the war. Or, as he put it in an earlier speech, we have to say 'no' to George Bush." Once in the Senate that no quickly became yes. He promptly voted for four separate war appropriations that totaled more than $300 billion. A year before he pledged in Iowa to get the troops out now, he opposed a proposal by Senator John F. Kerry to withdraw most combat troops from Iraq by July 2007. Obama didn’t just cast a quiet vote against Kerry’s troop removal proposal he added the veiled chastisement that an "arbitrary deadline" could "compound" the Bush administration's mistake. A year later he joined with Republicans and backed their resolution that the Senate would not cut off funding for troops in Iraq.But money and votes aren’t the only issue in which Obama sent a different message then the impassioned get out of Iraq now speeches he still thundered before audiences. The other issue was when to withdraw. Obama backed up his end the war now rhetoric with another public demand that a firm timetable be set for withdrawal. In fact, a timetable with a specific withdrawal date was set by a Democratic senator. But that senator wasn’t Obama. It was Kerry. His bill set the goal of withdrawing combat troops from Iraq by the end of March 2008. In contrast, Obama’s withdrawal plan did not set firm deadlines and would keep troops in Iraq if the Bush administration and the Iraqi government met a laundry list of benchmarks.March has long since passed, the troops are still there and big buck spending with the Senate’s approval continues with no visible end in sight to it. Meanwhile Obama has added yet another wrinkle to his Iraq drama and that’s that he’ll go to Iraq and listen to what the commanders on the ground and military brass there have to say about where we need to go with the war.This sounds less like the hard line one time verbal antiwar advocate named Obama speaking then a certain Republican presidential rival named McCain speaking. But then again Obama has been consistent from the start on one thing on Iraq and that’s political expediency. Incidentally, some things at least rhetorically don’t change. An excerpt of Obama’s Iraq antiwar speech (cleansed of his Iraq war removal now call) is still on his official website. http://www.barackobama.com/issues/iraq/Earl Ofari Hutchinson is an author and political analyst. His forthcoming book is How the GOP Can Keep the White House, How the Democrats Can Take it Back (Middle Passage Press, August 2008).
http://earlofarihutchinson.blogspot.com/
Earl Ofari Hutchinson is a nationally acclaimed author and political analyst. He has authored ten books; his articles are published in newspapers and magazines nationally in the United States. Three of his books have been published in other languages. He is also a social and political analyst and he appears on such TV programs as CNN, MSBC, NPR, The O'Reilly Show, American Urban Radio Network, and local Los Angeles television and radio stations as well. He is an associate editor at New America Media and a regular contributor to Black News.com, Alternet.com, BlackAmericaWeb.Com and the Huffington Post. He does a weekly commentary on KJLH Radio in Los Angeles.
Why wasn't Obama's voting record on the Iraq War, Wall Street, etc. made public during the primary campaign? It seems as if the media and blogs, including OpEd News, had a "hands-off" approach on Obama.
His vascillations and triangulations are nothing new....Sad that they are just now coming out.
I am voting for Obama because McCain would be four more years of Bush, but the true progressive in this race was John Edwards...What an opportunity lost!
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Kathy Callan (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 8 comments)
on Sunday, July 6, 2008 at 8:43:35 PM
I don't have the announcement in front of me, but I understood what he meant. He was leaving the field to two qualified candidates, and he hoped they would include his issues regarding poverty. Boy, things have really slowed down since February, haven't they? I wonder if Obama and McCain will get minds around what is happening to people who are headed for the voting booths just when it's time to turn on the furnace.
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Margaret Bassett (25 articles, 1670 quicklinks, 29 diaries, 1011 comments)
on Sunday, July 6, 2008 at 11:40:06 PM
First, Ofari is a beautiful name. Makes me wonder.
Now, it's called "realpolitik", isn't it? In order to win, he has to enlist more than us fervent backers. Don't forget, the MSM isn't going to broadcast anything that contradicts the fabric of lies that constutes the "official version". Rocky won't get votes from those whose illusions he shatters. Kucinich can call for reality, but he has no chance amid the official version.
If you fervently support Rocky, you must comprehend that he can do much in office that he doesn't dare to suggest in the election. Why would a fervent supporter lose faith and begin the casting of aspersions so early? Maybe you don't get it. Maybe the necessities of human society among free and self-respecting men, in contrast to the abolition by Bush of all rights reserved to the people by common agreement, and set into law, mean we owe it to ourselves to try to resolve this dysfunction peacefully. There's no question most of the Bill of Rights has been abolished during the last eight years, but all avenues of action toward re-instatement of our rights can wait for an Obama administration. There's no point going commando unless Obama turns out to be another corporate stooge. If I grew up black, instead of merely having a single white mother, and received an education equivalent to teaching law at a university, I would see more acutely than most the inequities and slants of those who would try to abolish America.
If you're running against the machine, and you know the fix is in, you act like you're going along with the fiction until you can do something about it. One doesn't stick up one's head until one has a clear shot..
Stick with the candidate chosen by the MSM to be the weakest democratic candidate. Any one who votes against Obama is deluded, or corrupt.
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martinweiss (21 articles, 4 quicklinks, 11 diaries, 345 comments)
on Monday, July 7, 2008 at 12:05:15 AM
Every President since JFK has had strong ties to the CFR. Without their endorsement they aren't given a chance to even run. After all they can't take the chance that some "outsider" will get voted it.
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Dennis Kaiser (14 articles, 0 quicklinks, 11 diaries, 229 comments)
on Monday, July 7, 2008 at 8:13:51 AM
Then he backed the troops. (The bills in congress are so totally crooked that no one can say what anyone is voting for or against anymore.) I will continue to think that Obama is not a crook until there is enough evidence otherwise. Remember that our crook system of government always entails gatekeeper problems. Obama didn't invent it. The founding fatheads dreamed it up.
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John Hanks (1 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 1203 comments)
on Monday, July 7, 2008 at 2:28:02 PM
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