I've just posted again, at the STANDPOINT magazine site, about developments in Iraq and how success there continues to throw up hard questions for Barack Obama.
Mickey Kaus has waggishly suggested that the looming "tipping point" in Iraq may lead to a "flipping point" on the part of Obama.
Obama himself has gamely allowed that when facts change he changes his opinion... and quite right.
The key question for him, and the Democratic party, is define which Iraq war it was they were against. As I say at Standpoint:
Is the Iraq War they opposed "the invasion of 2003, the subsequent counter-insurgency effort devised by General Petraeus and his strategist David Kilcullen in support of the pluralistic, democratically-elected government in Baghdad... or the long “engagement” dating from sporadic bombing inflicted by the US and UN on a recalcitrant Iraqi regime throughout the 1990s?
"Obama has pledged both to 'end the war' and 'support stability in Iraq.' Of course one way to accomplish those aims would be to WIN the various conflicts in Iraq, including those against al Qaeda, now composed of a rump collection of fighters being pummeled in their last urban redoubt in Mosul, as well the Shiite militias, confronted in Basra and aligned to some degree with Muqtada al Sadr and/or Iran, who may reach some other accommodation with the Iraqi government. Iraqi forces, along with the Coalition, look on the verge of accomplishing just such a win."
Please read the whole thing HERE.
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