Obama on Iraq

Obama has recently come under fire from the premier liberal blogs for not having an absolutist enough policy on Iraq. A recent post by Matt Stoller at mydd.com says this:

"The Presidential contest has me in despair. As far as I can tell, all of our candidates except for Richardson and Dodd see no problem in keeping troops in Iraq. I hope Bill Richardson keeps talking up his plan. It appears that the Edwards plan for Iraq is very similar to the Obama plan; both assert that troops should remain in Iraq for humanitarian purposes."

Mr. Stoller's frustration with Obama's and other candidates' views is echoed by numerous other bloggers on both mydd.com and dailykos.com. Of course they are right to criticize the war in Iraq, both in its handling and in its inception. But now it is incumbent upon the President and the Congress to look toward the future of this conflict and how to best exit the country with minimal damage to both our military and the Iraqi people.

We entered this war under the premise that American lives are worth more than the lives of other people. The President explained to the American people that we had to fight the terrorists there before they could attack us over here, disregarding the fact that thousands of innocent Iraqi lives would be lost in the process. It is clear today that not only was this an immoral decision, it was a bad policy decision. We cannot continue to disregard other human beings' lives for the good our own country.

Pulling entirely out of Iraq could possibly lead to such a scenario. It is true that we are the face of evil in Iraq at this juncture, but that is primarily because we put an evil face on ourselves. Military solutions to situations such as the one in Iraq only beget more hatred and violence, as has been exemplified over the past four years. In contrast, humanitarian and diplomatic solutions to such conflicts are generally much more successful, and undoubtedly more moral.

What Barack Obama is saying with his Iraq policy is two-fold:

(1) We cannot disregard the lives of the Iraqi people just because we no longer want to be involved in the conflict and
(2) We cannot simply engage in a stalemate with President Bush just because it is politically savvy and/or it will ultimately force him to pull the troops out of Iraq. We are dealing with people's lives here. But, we also can't just hand him his war funding on a platter.THERE HAS TO BE ANOTHER WAY.

And that is exactly what Obama is talking about.

Defending Obama

This blog is being established to give a voice to progressive bloggers in support of Barack Obama's presidency and his policy positions on Iraq and future policy controversies that arise in the liberal blogosphere. The purpose of this blog is not to blindly defend all of Senator Obama's policy positions, nor is it to relentlessly bash such liberal blogs as dailykos.com and mydd.com. It is merely to give a voice to those who feel their opinions on the Senator are not being sufficiently represented by the aforementioned sites and their ilk.