Obama's goofy approach to Iraq

Washington Times:

Sen. John McCain on Tuesday ridiculed Sen. Barack Obama for scrubbing his campaign Web site of past criticisms about the U.S. troop "surge" into Iraq, and lashed his Democratic presidential opponent for laying out strategies on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan before consulting with military leaders on the ground.

Meanwhile, Mr. Obama slammed his Republican opponent as having only a "strategy for staying in Iraq," and declared that "the central front in the war on terror is not Iraq - and it never was." His assertion, however, runs counter to the view of the top U.S. commander in Iraq, Gen. David H. Petraeus, whom the senator praised.

For a second straight day, the two candidates went toe to toe on Iraq and Afghanistan, this time laying out comprehensive strategies for each. While the two agreed that more troops need to be deployed in Afghanistan - and both criticized President Bush's handling of the war there - Mr. McCain and Mr. Obama differed sharply on Iraq, and neither budged from his hard-line stance.

"I strongly stand by my plan to end this war," Mr. Obama said in a speech at the Ronald Reagan Building and International Trade Center in Washington. "This war distracts us from every threat that we face and so many opportunities that we could seize."

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The very suggestion that you can end a war by retreating ignores reality. You end wars by winning or losing. Retreating from Iraq will only make winning more difficult which is Obama's purpose because many of his supporters are desperate to lose that war.

Rewriting history by scrubbing his web site of his past predictions of failure shows a basic dishonesty about the war issue. It is also an attempt to cover up his current position that "everyone knew that adding troops would reduce violence." That is just the opposite of what he had said in the scrubbed statements. If the mainstream media was doing its job this should be headline news.

Obama's statement that McCain has a strategy for staying in Iraq is absurd and also dishonest. McCain's strategy is to defeat the enemy with the help of the Iraqis. McCain should also challenge Obama on one of his central premises that we never should have gone into Iraq. He should do it by asking whether the Maliki government is better or worse for US interest in Iraq than the Saddam Hussein government.