Obama's Pragmatic Idealism

Obama's statement today that his visit to Iraq this month will help him "further refine" his policy towards Iraq started a deluge of criticism from the McCain camp (and was picked up by the media) that he was flip-flopping on his primary campaign promise of withdrawing all combat troops from Iraq within 16 months, with 1-2 brigades per month. It is important that every time they come after Obama with their worn out attacks, which they shout out in lieu of any ideas for the betterment of the country, we stand unequivocally behind him.

So, let me say, unequivocally: I believe Obama to be a pragmatic idealist. Meaning, he deeply believes in the ideas he espouses and with which he hopes to bring this country together in solving our everyday problems and improving our image in the world. At the same time, he is not an ideologue like Bush who, despite the deteriorating situation in Iraq did not change the course until hundreds of thousands Iraqis had been killed and the country thrown into a brutal civil war. Let's remember that it was dogmatism that led the Bush administration to cook the books on WMD and lead this country into the war; it was their dogmatism that led to Guantanamo, secret CIA prisons across Eastern Europe; it was their dogmatism that led to the lack of any effort to slow down global warming or move this country towards energy independence. We don't need more dogmatism from Obama. We need pragmatic idealism. In the specific case of Iraq this means doubling our efforts to withdraw all our troops from the country as quickly as we can, but at the same time, making sure we don't cause another outbreak of the civil war. When the Democrats took up the mantra of unconditional withdrawal, sometime in 2005-6, I became nervous that they would withdraw all troops without any regard to the situation on the ground.

But Obama has always been consistent. He plans to start withdrawing troops, put pressure on the Iraqi government to create a political solution, and monitor the situation, always willing to slow down the withdrawal or change policy if the situation changes. I certainly wish the Clinton administration had been this pragmatic when Bosnia was in flames. Instead, they waited until the Srebrenica massacre to intervene.

In case you think Obama has flip-flopped on this issue, look at this video during one of the primary debates in September 2007 when he refuses to be put into a time-table straightjacket. Tim Russert asks him if he would pledge to withdraw the troops, he says: "I think it's hard to project four years from now. I think it would be irresponsible. We don't know what contingency would be out there." Here is the full video:



And if this is the kind of attacks the McCain campaign will run against Obama's foreign policy plan, the same exhausted flip-flop rhetoric, then we are really in for a pleasurable Obama landslide in November.