[Marxism] What Obama can learn from Gates

[Louis Proyect <lnp3@xxxxxxxxx>]

The author of this article is the national security correspondent for 
The Atlantic Monthly, a magazine with DLC type politics, in other 
words the same politics as Barack Obama. In November, 2001, he 
attended a secret meeting (along with Newsweek's Fareed Zakaria), 
organized by Paul Wolfowitz, for the purpose of producing a report 
for President Bush on Middle East policy which, among other things, 
outlined all the great reasons why we should invade Iraq.

http://thecurrent.theatlantic.com/archives/2008/06/gates-and-obama.php

What Obama Can Learn from Gates
As conditions in Iraq improve, Barack Obama has yet to adjust his 
proposed strategy for managing conflict in the region.
By Robert Kaplan

Like Sen. Barack Obama, Defense Secretary Robert Gates strongly 
doubted the wisdom of invading Iraq. Gates was a member of the Iraq 
Study Group, which, except for a throw-away sentence about a 
temporary surge of forces in Baghdad, was inclined to withdraw our 
forces from combat operations back in 2006. Therefore, when Gates 
became defense secretary, many assumed he would push for a retreat 
from our commitment to the Baghdad government. But he did the 
opposite. He aggressively prosecuted the war, fired his combatant 
commander for Central Command (who was less enthusiastic than Gates 
about winning in Iraq) and Air Force chief (who wasn't getting UAVs 
to the battlefield fast enough). Gates, who initially opposed the 
war, is fighting it with more gusto than his predecessor, Donald 
Rumsfeld, who supported the invasion.

This is not uncommon. Army Gen. David Petraeus and Amb. Ryan Crocker 
were likely not avid supporters of the invasion either, but both are 
now working not just to get America out of Iraq with our honor 
intact, but to win there. Sen. John McCain, who was cool to both the 
insertion of forces in Bosnia and the war in Kosovo in the 1990s, was 
vigorously in favor of winning those conflicts once troops were 
committed on the ground.

There is a lesson here for Barack Obama.

Obama was against the Iraq War and can forever claim credit for 
foreseeing its difficulties. Still, he may soon be in the same 
position as Gates, Petraeus, and Crocker -- that is, with 
bureaucratic responsibility for getting the best possible result out 
of our 2003 invasion. And Obama will not be alone: Former Secretary 
of State Madeleine Albright and former National Security Adviser 
Zbigniew Brzezinski have been saying repeatedly how disastrous the 
war has turned out to be. Obama, Albright, and Brzezinski are still 
acting as if the war was lost long ago, even as Gates, Petraeus, and 
Crocker have gradually, painstakingly turned it into a war that will 
be the Democrats' to lose.

The Democrats may well be right that the invasion was a strategic 
mistake that cost us greatly both in the Middle East and in the rest 
of the world. But their dire predictions from two years ago don't 
look very good in hindsight. And so they need to start thinking 
constructively about Iraq, not destructively. To wit, as former 
Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage -- another opponent of the 
war -- has said, the United States will be known and remembered as 
much by how it got out of Iraq as by how it got in. Armitage is 
thinking constructively in a way that Obama and company need to.

Obama can and should keep reminding voters about how he opposed the 
war from the beginning. But the less inclined he is to close the 
distance between what he will do next in Iraq and what Sen. John 
McCain will do next, the greater is the possibility that Iran will 
take advantage of the policy gap between the two candidates. McCain 
is publicly committed to staying the course that Gates and Petraeus 
have set the United States military on in Iraq. Obama is committed to 
getting all the troops out by 2010 no matter what. A precipitous 
withdrawal may be the last chance the Iranians will have to dominate 
Iraq to the degree that they had thought possible in 2006. If Obama 
heads into the fall campaign without visiting Iraq, without 
acknowledging progress there, and without altering his time-table for 
withdrawal, the Iranians may decide to help his electoral chances by 
initiating a new spate of bombings.

In other words, the closer we get to the election, the more 
consequences Obama's public position may have for events on the 
ground in Iraq. And Obama's position can surely evolve in a direction 
that acknowledges the need to stay tough there, even as he continues 
to claim credit for having been against the project from the 
beginning. Rather than blur the distinction between him and McCain, 
he can subtly shift on Iraq in a way that demonstrates just how 
serious a thinker he is on foreign policy.

Every email I get from troops deployed in Iraq talks about the 
improved situation on the ground. Obama should be aware that they 
think it is far from a lost cause.

? Robert D. Kaplan


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