Arguing Iraq

The other day I wrote about how the Democrat party (and more importantly, Barack Obama's campaign strategy) was dangerously out of touch with the situation in Iraq. Abe Greenwald at Commentary, poses similar questions, and in doing so highlights the danger of hitching your wagon to a pessimistic future and the assumption of failure.

In a nutshell:

John McCain has won the Iraq argument. The disagreement on Iraq between McCain and Barack Obama, indeed between Democrats and Republicans, was not about the future of American "neocolonialism" or about the candidates' sympathy for the Marines and soldiers eager to return home. It was about the strategic benefit of keeping active U.S. troops in the War. John McCain believed that a continued American troop presence would hasten Iraq's progress toward national security and political reconciliation. Barack Obama thought a speedy withdrawal would best achieve that goal.

Obama left himself so little wiggle room (as he should, because it was what he believed) that now there's the push to reframe the Iraq situation:

Indeed the Obama camp itself is publicly conflicted about how to move the Iraq argument forward. Yesterday at a Democratic think tank even, two of Obama's Iraq advisors disagreedwith each other on how to proceed after the success of the surge. Colin Kahl argued for leaving a large troop presence in Iraq, contingent upon continued political reconciliation. Brian Katulis argued for withdrawing all troops except for a small group left behind to defend the U.S. embassy.

It's clear that Obama and his supporters are guilty of the charge they'd grown accustomed to leveling at the Bush administration: no Iraq foresight. It's true that President Bush and Donald Rumsfeld had not come up with a plan B in the case of strong Iraqi resistance. Obama and Co. have failed to consider what their next move would be in the face of U.S. success.

What a strange thing it must be to have to try to walk back your main argument because you bet against the chances of your country winning a battle you needed it to lose.