I like Marc Ambinder’s (The Atlantic) short and tight analysis. I think that it captures well Obama’s semantics and (possible) intent with regard to his Iraq plan. Here is Ambinder’s opinion. See my related opinion in http://kalyanaramgurumurthy.wordpress.com/
“The Obama campaign wants to finesse the debate about Iraq withdrawal by referring to Obama’s “tactical” flexibility; he’d like to begin immediately withdrawing one to two a month which would be sixteen months in total, and to ensure that we do it responsibly. (The phrase “Careful Out, Careless In” has become commonplace enough.) Tactics here do not apply to Obama’s vow, which is to order his generals to devise a strategy for immediate withdrawal. “I intend to end this war my first day in office I will bring the Joint Chiefs of Staff in and I will give them a new mission and that is to end this war.” Tactics mean how many “residual” troops might be needed to “in order to train the Iraqis to stand up,” to figure out how to best support political negotiations and the distribution of oil revenues. On the one hand, this is indeed the position that Obama had months ago — the position expressed by Obama when in a contemplative mode or by advisers when they were explaining his policy. (See an Obama campaign memo after the jump for examples.) On the other hand, it is also true that, many times, Obama and his advisers used his troop withdrawal promise — see David Plouffe’s “crystal” clarity — without nuance and deliberately in the sort of short hand that implies that the opinion of the generals in regards to Obama’s strategy won’t matter that much at all.”
Tags: Barack Obama, Iraq, Marc Ambinder, Troops withdrawal
