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Generational Dynamics Web Log for 27-Jul-2008
Obama continues to damage his candidacy with his Iraq policy.

Web Log - July, 2008

Obama continues to damage his candidacy with his Iraq policy.

Obama is hurting himself by bobbing and weaving on the success of the "surge."

Some people have been accusing me of an "ideology" biased in support of John McCain for President. So let me make clear that I do not support either McCain or Barack Obama. My only "ideology" is the one that has appeared on the home page of this web site for six years: I am "pro-American."

I've taken no position on health care policy, immigration policy, economic policy, trade policy, the New Yorker, or other "hot" political issues. Most of what politicians of either party say on these issues is fatuous political nonsense, and rarely even makes sense, so I leave it to others to reach monumental conclusions.

My concern on this web site is the survival of the United States in the coming financial crisis and "Clash of Civilizations" world war. To that end, I expect American politicians to support America's interests.

So in the 2004 presidential campaign, I thought it was outrageous that John Kerry refused to repudiate his 1971 testimony to Congress, in which he essentially accused the American armed forces in Vietnam of being the equivalent of Nazi storm troopers, committing atrocities and war crimes on a day to day basis, with the full awareness of officers at all levels of command.

I was (and am) absolutely infuriated by those views, and I stated at the time that unless he repudiates those views, then he's not qualified to be President. How can the President lead America's war against terror if he believes that the American soldiers are worse than the terrorists?

Kerry has repeatedly whined that he was "swift-boated," referring to political ads criticizing his actions while serving in Vietnam. He claimed that the accusations were false, but what he never understood, and still doesn't understand, is that the accusations were credible because he refused to repudiate his 1971 testimony. In fact, in 2006, Kerry finally reaffirmed his belief that American soldiers in Vietnam were just a bunch of torturers, rapists and murderers. Let us all be grateful that this man never became President, and I'm still ashamed that a man with those beliefs represents my state of Massachusetts in the Senate.

The point I'm making here is that Kerry shot himself in the foot by refusing to repudiate his 1971 testimony, and now Obama is doing the same by refusing to repudiate his earlier comments about the "surge" in Iraq.

There are evidently many, many other people who feel the same way. On Meet the Press on Sunday morning, where the entire show was devoted to an interview with Obama, he bobbed and weaved about his attitudes about the "surge" under questioning by Tom Brokaw.

Here's a brief excerpt from the transcript:

"MR. BROKAW: Do you believe that President Maliki would be in a position to more or less endorse your timetable of getting troops out within 16 months if it had not been for the surge?

SEN. OBAMA: You know, we don't know, because in my earlier statements--I mean, I know that there's that little snippet that you ran, but there were also statements made during the course of this debate in which I said there's no doubt that additional U.S. troops could temporarily quell the violence. But unless we saw an underlying change in the politics of the country, unless Sunni, Shia, Kurd made different decisions, then we were going to have a civil war and we could not stop a civil war simply with more troops. Now, I, I..."

It went on in this vein for several more questions.

During this portion of the interview, there were several screens displayed that showed how lacking in credibility Obama is:

Meet the Press screen shots

Meet the Press screen shots

What all of this shows is that Obama, who is doing so well on other issues, is hurting himself badly on the issues surrounding his Iraq policy.

In fact, Democrats have almost no credibility on Iraq. It's worth remembering that John Kerry's position on the Iraq war in 2004 was almost identical to George Bush's. The Democrats supported the war in 2002 and 2003, when it was popular to do so, they started equivocating in 2004 when they weren't sure what would be popular, they opposed the war in 2006 and 2007 when it was popular to do so. And now, after taking the politically expedient position at every time in the last six years, now that the "surge" has succeeded, Obama is claiming that he was right all along.

Let's excerpt another part of Obama's interview:

"SEN. OBAMA: Well, the--well, the--look, there's no doubt, and I've said this repeatedly, that our troops make a difference. If--you know, they do extraordinary work. The troops that I met, they were proud of their work, they had made enormous sacrifices, they had fought, they had helped to construct schools and, and rebuilt the countryside. But, for example, in Anbar Province, where we went to visit, the Sunni awakening took place before the surge started, and tribal leaders made a decision that, instead of fighting the Americans, we're going to work with the Americans against al-Qaeda. That was a political decision that was made that has made a huge difference in this entire process."

We should note in passing that Obama is not making the same mistake that Kerry made in saying that American soldiers are no better than a bunch of torturers, rapists and murderers. He makes a point of expressing his pride in America's soldiers every chance he gets.

However, the second part of his answer is an insult to everyone's intelligence, since he's implying that the Anbar Awakening was part of his calculation when he opposed the "surge." I don't think anyone doubts that he was making a politically expedient decision at the time.

In fact, at some level I find this response to be personally insulting. In my 2003 article, "Terrorist suicide bombings in Iraq may backfire against terrorists," I wrote that Iraq was in a generational Awakening era, and that "During an awakening period, terrorist acts cause masses of people to shrink from more violence." I said that, "The massive bombings of the United Headquarters headquarters, oil pipelines, and the Jordanian embassy may backfire against the terrorists by causing the population, currently going through an awakening period, to turn against the terrorists."

If you go back and read that article, you'll find that I was absolutely right about what was going to happen in Iraq. I repeated those predictions many times after 2003, even at times when they seemed a fantasy. My Iraq predictions have been completely right, over and over, and I don't know of anyone else in the world who has gotten Iraq right. And that was only one of numerous predictions that I got completely right, following the Generational Dynamics forecasting methodologies.

(See "List of major Generational Dynamics predictions" for more information about these predictions.)

When I wrote "Iraqi Sunnis are turning against al-Qaeda in Iraq,", and again with "The 'Anbar Awakening' may be good news in Iraq," I was describing exactly this phenomenon. The Anbar Awakening, which even used the generational word "Awakening," was the fulfillment of exactly what I predicted in 2003.

But the Democrats had no idea of this when they were voting on the "surge." Here are some of the things that I wrote about at the time:

Both Republicans and Democrats, politicians, journalists and analysts, in Washington and London, were abysmally ignorant about even the simplest facts about Iraq. This conclusion is based on research by the Congressional Quarterly.
For example, Silvestre Reyes, a 5-term Democratic Congressman, who had been on the House Intelligence Committee for five years, and was about to become its Chairman, when asked whether al-Qaeda was a Sunni or Shiite organization, said, "Predominantly — probably Shiite." This was a leading Congressional expert, and yet could not possibly have had a single clue about the Anbar Awakening.

Lawrence F. Kaplan, senior editor at the liberal, pro-Democratic opinion magazine, The New Republic, pointed out that Congressional leaders: go out of their way to avoid learning anything; make up any "facts" they want, since they don't know anything; and couldn't care less what happens in Iraq, since they just want votes. And so, according to a leading pro-Democratic opinion magazine, this is what was going on at the time that the Anbar Awakening was actually going on.

At the time that the Anbar Awakening was going on, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said:

"I believe myself that the Secretary of State, Secretary of Defense and — you have to make your own decisions as to what the President knows — that this war is lost and the surge is not accomplishing anything as indicated by the extreme violence in Iraq."

So we can be pretty sure that Senator Reid didn't know anything about the Anbar Awakening when he stated his opinions about the "surge."

I wrote many articles on this subject at the time, giving many more examples of this type of stuff. And I said many times that it's an absolute disgrace that these congressmen, as well as many other politicians and journalists and analysts -- and web sites like http://moveon.org and http://dailykos.com -- have committed their careers and credibility to America's defeat and humiliation in Iraq. These people were openly aiding and abetting the enemy, in a manner that was close to being treasonous.

So now, here comes Senator Obama, saying that he was right all along because of the Anbar Awakening. He must think that I and a lot of other people were born yesterday to believe that crap.

As I've said many times, the coming financial and war crises will be coming irrespective of who is President. Nobody can predict which of McCain or Obama would be better able to ensure America's survival during these crises. McCain would be steadier and Obama would be likely to overreact, but even that observation doesn't indicate who would be the better President. From the point of view of Generational Dynamics, the choice of President has no PREDICTABLE effect on the outcome of the financial crisis or the Clash of Civilizations world war, and so I personally do not have any preference.

Based on the polls and what I've seen so far in the campaign, Senator Obama has a very good chance of winning the Presidential election. But if he loses, it will probably be because of his handling of the Iraq issue.

In the screen shots of Sunday's Meet the Press above, there's a quote from a USA Today editorial asking these questions: "Why ... can't Obama bring himself to acknowledge the surge worked better than he and other skeptics ... thought it would? What does that stubbornness say about the kind of president he'd be?"

That's exactly the question I'm asking. (27-Jul-2008) Permanent Link
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Generational Dynamics Web Log for 27-Jul-2008 Obama continues to damage his candidacy with his Iraq policy.

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Generational Dynamics Web Log for 27-Jul-2008
Obama continues to damage his candidacy with his Iraq policy.