First of all, he didn't rewrite a plan. Secondly, i dont see how anyone would think that being open and pragmatic is a bad quality for a president to have. I suppose there are some of you who still drive around with w stickers on your cars.
This whole game of trying to catch somebody in a flip-flop is ridiculous, in both directions. If John McCain wants to step back from his earlier committment to comprehensive immigration reform, then fine. He's allowed to refine his stance on an issue. Same goes for Obama. Even though I don't think he's changing his position, if he needs to clarify his position on ending the Iraq War, then fine. To expect either candidate to take a stance committing to a stance on any issue, particularly something as fluid as the war, without allowing any room for changes in the situation is usually just self-serving. To endorse a school of thought that disallows changes in thoughts or beliefs is even more silly.
This thread fails. FAILS HARD! Shall I bring out the YouTubes? Obama has not really changed his stance on Iraq.
He has always said we will be out from 16 to 18 months after he is elected...What is everybodyy saying he changed?he never said he was changing his mind on ending the war, he is talking about how many troops to pull out a month.mccain on the other hand, want's to stay for another 50 to 100 years
We're talking about Obama, not McCain bigtexx. Obama wants to bring the troops home (but will listen to the commanders on the ground). McCain wants to stay for 100 years. So yes, McCain would continue the policies of GWB - you are right there. But again, we're talking about Obama in this case who is willing to change course if a mistake is made. Invading Iraq was a careless mistake. But Obama has even said, dating back to the primaries "we need to be as carefull getting out of iraq as were were careless getting into it"
If you are suggesting the McCain wants to have an active war with this number of troops over there for 100 years, then you are delusional. What McCain envisions is a presence in Iraq as a peacekeeper. This is no different than what we have had in Germany and Korea since the 1940s and 1950s respectively.
Correct. McCain isn't suggesting fighting there for 50 - 100 years. That makes his position even worse. The hundred years wont' start until the situation has been stabilized. It is even more difficult to stabilize with Iraqis(who want us out) know that the President wants to keep our troops there for hundreds of years. Our troops will only add to destabilization, especially with McCain saying he wants to keep them there for hundreds of years.
How is this different than keeping a troop pesence anywhere we have been in war? It isn't. The idea that McCain is throwing out there isn't something new. It has been our operating procedure over the last century or so.
I don't have any problem with this and I wish Obama and his supporters wouldn't keep pushing the 100 year thing. It's disingenuous to characterize that as how long the war will last since McCain was clear that the 100 years (or however long) was post-violence. What I want to know is when that 100 years is supposed to start.
That is a fair question. I would hope that either McCain or Obama would listen to the decision makers on the ground and meet with the Iraqui government before deciding when that is.
It's different in that we didn't start those wars. Certainly in the case of Korea we were welcome to be there, and they were initially for the most part very happy to have us there. In Iraq we weren't there to save them from invasion, and for the most part haven't been welcome there. The people don't want us to stay. The govt. may want us to, because the U.S. is bribing them by forgiving debt owed in exchange for allowing us to keep military bases etc. In addition we were fighting nations in the other wars, we aren't fighting a nation in this war. So the whole idea of stabilizing the country is completely different than in the other wars. It's harder to think of ways in which the situations are simliar than it is to think of ways they are the same.
Last time I read my history book, Germany never attacked us. Japan did. So why were we in Germany? Do you think after the war that the people wanted us there? In Korea, it was a VERY unstable place after the war. Same goes for Iraq.
Germany didn't attack us but did declare war on us, and was an actual nation. The people in Germany weren't opposed to the point they were in armed combat against the troops. It is a far different situation in Iraq.
Flip-flop guide How Barack Obama and John McCain have changed track http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/7474558.stm US candidates practise their U-turns By Max Deveson BBC News, Washington In order to pass their political driving test, successful politicians need to be masters of one tricky manoeuvre in particular - the U-turn. The contenders in this year's US presidential election are no exceptions - both John McCain and Barack Obama have engaged in some nifty repositioning. Mr McCain's U-turns have mostly increased his appeal to the Republican Party's base, placing him on a rightward trajectory. Barack Obama has been performing a more traditional manoeuvre: running to the left during the primaries, when party activists need to be wooed, then shifting to the centre once the nomination is clinched. Flip-flopping politicians will always attract charges of hypocrisy and opportunism: it may be worth it if it helps them win over undecided voters in the middle, but when the goal is to shore up their political base, the benefits are much less clear. Here are some examples. JOHN MCCAIN Having long been a member of his party's more moderate wing on a number of issues, Mr McCain began adopting more right-wing positions during the primary campaign. Immigration Last year, Mr McCain was one of the key backers of President Bush's plan for "comprehensive immigration reform", which would have created "paths to citizenship" for illegal immigrants, while investing more money in border security. The plan was very unpopular with the Republican rank-and-file, and Senate Republicans succeeded in blocking the scheme. During the primaries, Mr McCain announced that his immigration focus would be on securing America's borders, rather than on giving illegal immigrants the chance to become US citizens. "I understand why you would call it a, quote, shift," McCain told reporters in November 2007. "I say it is a lesson learned about what the American people's priorities are. And their priority is to secure the borders." Christian right Another McCain, quote, shift was in his relationship with the religious right of his party. During his 2000 bid for the Republican nomination, relations between Mr McCain and Christian Coalition founder Jerry Falwell were notoriously fractious. The Arizona senator memorably described Mr Falwell and fellow members of the religious right as "agents of intolerance". But in 2006, ahead of his second presidential run, Mr McCain delivered the commencement address at Mr Falwell's Liberty University, after which he attended a small private party hosted by his former political adversary. Interrogation rules More recently, Mr McCain angered his former allies in the political centre by supporting a bill exempting the CIA from following the same rules on interrogation as the US Army. Guantanamo Mr McCain was one of the most prominent Republican voices opposed to the Bush administration's detention policy in Guantanamo Bay. But when the Supreme Court recently ruled that Guantanamo detainees should have access to US courts, Mr McCain described it as "one of the worst decisions in the history of the country". Oil drilling Since sewing up the Republican nomination in March, Mr McCain - one of only a few prominent Republicans to accept the argument that human activity is causing climate change - has dropped his previous objection to lifting the ban on oil exploration off the coast of the US. BARACK OBAMA Since clinching the Democratic nomination, Barack Obama has also been making headlines for his policy shifts. Campaign finance Last month he announced that he would be rejecting public financing for his campaign, and would instead rely on private donations. The McCain camp accused Mr Obama of "going back on his word", although Mr Obama insisted that he had never made a promise to stay in the public finance system. Surveillance programme Mr Obama also raised eyebrows when he announced that he would not be opposing a bill going through Congress giving immunity to telephone companies involved in the Bush administration's controversial warrantless wiretap programme. His decision angered many of his supporters on the left, who accused him of going back on his 2007 pledge "to support a filibuster of any bill that includes retroactive immunity for telecommunications companies". Gun control When the Supreme Court decided to overturn Washington DC's handgun ban, Mr Obama declared that the ruling "provide[d] much-needed guidance", despite having previously argued (in a written answer that he says was drafted by an aide and which he had not approved) that the ban was constitutional. Iraq Withdrawing troops from Iraq has long been one of the central planks of Mr Obama's campaign, and was something that set him apart from other Democratic candidates running for the party's presidential nomination. Since his campaign began, however, conditions in Iraq have changed, violence has reduced, and some commentators have suggested that Mr Obama's position is out of date. Mr Obama himself has announced that he plans to visit Iraq, where he will make "a thorough assessment" which could lead him to "refine" his policy. Some critics have seized on this as an indication that Mr Obama is laying the groundwork for a change in position. Free trade Mr Obama recently hinted to Fortune magazine that his strong anti-free trade rhetoric during the primaries may not be reflected in his actual trade policy should he become president. His remarks are a neat summation of the pressures and temptations that lead politicians to shift their positions during the process of running for office. "Sometimes during campaigns the rhetoric gets overheated and amplified," he said. "Politicians are always guilty of that, and I don't exempt myself."
I told my wife a few days ago, that if Obama were to get into the whitehouse (or before), he'd be privy to information that would change his view on immediate withdrawal.......or perhaps he knew all along... In any case, it's the right approach, and I'm not a supporter of Obama.
Yet the instability following the war is exactly the same. If we just pulled all troops out of Iraq the result would be a cluster **ck that would make the war itself look sane. The main reason that the German people weren't in armed combat against our troops is that they didn't have arms. Hitler took all unregistered guns out of the hands of the people in 1938. It isn't like everybody and their dog had an AK-47. The Iraqui dissidents, OOTH, are very well armed.
With all due respect, does anyone still study history in school? This isn't the first time I've seen the origins of WWII misrepresented here. FYI, Germany and Japan were allies. Japan attacked the United States (and a bunch of other nations). We, in turn, declared war on Japan. A few days later Hitler, without consulting with his general staff (that's what I remember, anyway), declared war on the United States. Then we declared war on Germany. Had Hitler not declared war on the US, which would have been the smart thing to do (Japan never attacking the USSR from the east, like Hitler wanted them to do), it is very likely that it could have been months, even years before the US and Germany actually went to war, except for some skirmishes at sea. Isolationist feelings were very, very strong before Pearl Harbor. FDR had to be very crafty to get what aid he could manage to Britain, because of the reluctance of Congress to "get involved."
who attacked who and who was cool with who isn't the reason the wwii analogy is such a bad analogy. a democracy albeit weak elected hitler, that's the reason its a bad analogy. japan is homogenous society, that's the reason its a bad analogy.
A few words from Josh to clear the air! -- Stepping Back I believe we're at one of those moments when it is a help to step back from the rhetorical flurry and see where each side stands -- call it clearing away the Fog of Spin. The Iraq War is very unpopular. The majority of the country believes it was a mistake to have invaded in the first place. And the great majority want to get all of our troops out of Iraq in the near future. These are facts amply supported by what is now years of public opinion data. While it is true that the reduction in violence over the last 8-9 months has led to some shift in how people think 'things are going' in Iraq, it has had no measurable effect on the key questions: should we be there in the first place (no) and should we leave now (yes.) This is the only backdrop against which to understand the current jousting over the semantics of the Iraq debate. We have two candidates with starkly different positions. Barack Obama is for an orderly and considered withdrawal of all US combat forces in Iraq, a process he says he will begin immediately upon taking office. John McCain supports a permanent garrisoning of US troops on military bases in Iraq -- a long-term 'presence' which he hopes will require a constantly-diminishing amount of actual combat and thus an ever-diminishing toll in American lives. This is, I believe, a fair and even generous description of each candidate's essential position. And the recital makes the key point clear: McCain's position is squarely on the wrong side of public opinion -- in fact, to an overwhelming degree. This is why the McCain campaign spends what seems almost literally to be all its time (with tractable reporters in tow) scrutinizing the rhetorical entrails of Obama's every statement trying to find some movement or contradiction or frankly anything that can be talked about to keep everybody's attention (press, commentators, citizens, precocious teenagers) off the fact that McCain's position on Iraq is wildly unpopular and even more what McCain's position actually is. Because of this, on Iraq, McCain's entire campaign is based on a strategy of constant obfuscation -- a strategy that has become much more aggressive in the wake of what the McCain campaign is calling last week's "relaunch" with a new staff based around Rove proteges from President Bush's 2004 reelection campaign. Now, before concluding, let me say a few words more about the nature of this dodge. As noted yesterday, despite the AP's sloppy reporting, Obama has been quite consistent on proposing a 16 month timetable for withdrawal from Iraq. But let's back up and come at the question another way. If 16 months is no good, is there anyone out there ideologically committed to 12 or 20 months. Or for that matter, since few of us in the general population have a good understanding of the operational details of how you withdraw well over 100,000 military personnel from a country like Iraq, why is it not enough for a presidential candidate simply to say, I'll change the policy on the day I get into office. And that means I'm going to begin an orderly and considered withdrawal of our troops and have it done as soon as possible. Now, I can already hear a lot of people rising to the bait and saying, 'No, we need specifics, a timetable, a date certain, because we've been hearing this for years -- that we'll be out as soon as we can, as soon as this that or the other happens.' And I'd agree. But this makes the point. Most people who are so keyed into specifics and hard deadlines are that way because we've had five years of a policy of deliberate deception in which vague promises of bringing the troops home in the pretty near future are hung out in front of the public's collective nose as a means of obscuring the real policy of keeping American troops in Iraq permanently as a way of securing oil reserves and projecting US power and in the region. And that brings us squarely to our other point. What McCain's offering is exactly the same thing -- vague suggestions about troops coming home to toss dust in people's eyes about his real policy (which he's occasionally candid about) which is keeping US troops in Iraq permanently. So for instance, last week, when McCain's campaign pushed the nonsensical claim that Obama had embraced McCain's position, their release stated that Obama had... Again, a few clauses floating in the air to try to game people into thinking that McCain's actually for withdrawing American troops from Iraq too, just a bit more responsibly, with a little more "concern for conditions on the ground" and so forth, when in fact he's for keeping American troops there permanently. Even the fine scrutiny of Obama's language threads back to the last five years of policy by deliberate lying, which McCain is now carrying on. --Josh Marshall
