Sen. Obama in The Middle East, Part I

It is hard to know exactly what Sen. Obama said to the various people with whom he met as he swept through Afghanistan, Iraq, Jordan, and Israel and visited the Palestinian Authority on what he called a “Senatorial fact-finding trip,” not a campaign trip. But what emerges is interesting. In Iraq, Sen. Obama ended a meeting with the Iraqi prime minister and announced that he and the prime minister agreed on a timetable for American withdrawal. What the prime minister actually said is the subject of some dispute and should be seen in the context of his own electoral issues.

It is hard to know exactly what Sen. Obama said to the various people with whom he met as he swept through Afghanistan, Iraq, Jordan, and Israel and visited the Palestinian Authority on what he called a “Senatorial fact-finding trip,” not a campaign trip. But what emerges is interesting. In Iraq, Sen. Obama ended a meeting with the Iraqi prime minister and announced that he and the prime minister agreed on a timetable for American withdrawal. What the prime minister actually said is the subject of some dispute and should be seen in the context of his own electoral issues. But it was, at a minimum, very indiscreet of Sen. Obama to quote to the press what al-Maliki told him in private. More important, the fact that a presidential candidate said he had engaged in diplomacy with a foreign leader at precisely the moment the President of the United States was engaged in diplomacy with that leader is unbecoming one-upsmanship. President Bush is Senator Obama’s President. Can’t the candidate even wait until the election?
Substantively, Sen. Obama acknowledged that Gen. Petraeus and the commanders on the ground do not want a fixed timetable for withdrawal, and that the Sunni leaders in Anbar agree. (Those would be the Sunni leaders who ousted al Qaeda from Iraq.) Sen. Obama said he would weigh their concerns against the requirements of Afghanistan and the United States economy. This leads to two thoughts: First, if we weigh our economic interests against our security interests and our economic interests win, they will win only temporarily. Second, how does Afghanistan come to have a higher priority than Iraq?

It is a Democratic mantra that Iraq is a “diversion” from the “real war” in Afghanistan. Why? Why are we obligated to Afghanistan, a collection of warlord-dominated regions that overlap the boundaries of the entity we call Pakistan, itself not clearly a country? Is it because the Taliban is there? So what? What threat exactly does the Taliban pose to American interests? Is it because al Qaeda is there? American intelligence officials, including the DIA and CIA directors, have told the Senate Intelligence Committee that al Qaeda is leaving Iraq primarily for Pakistan and using the tribal areas to mount attacks in Afghanistan. But American troops are prohibited by Pakistan from pursuing them there.

This leads to two thoughts: First, unless Sen. Obama is ready to declare war on Pakistan, or invade it without declaring war, increasing the U.S. and NATO presence in Afghanistan while denying them access to al Qaeda bases is a recipe for long-term instability and long-term casualties. That is an untenable situation and one from which we should consider withdrawing. Second, even if we can’t touch Pakistan, it is far, far better to have al Qaeda up in the badlands than it would have been if al Qaeda had established its operating base in Iraq, as it intended and as we prevented.

Iraq is part of the historical center of the Arab world – Baghdad was home to universities a millennium ago. It would seem reasonable for the West, and the U.S. in particular, to believe that the ouster of al Qaeda from the center to the fringes, and the emergence of a stable, democratic Iraq constitute a victory of strategic importance.

One would wish Sen. Obama could see it that way.

Next: Jordan, Israel and “Palestine”