Obama Campaign Theme In Afghanistan Speech

The President began with a reminder of the strong justification for the Afghanistan operation.

We did not ask for this fight. On September 11, 2001, 19 men hijacked four airplanes and used them to murder nearly 3,000 people…As we know, these men belonged to al Qaeda…Al Qaeda’s base of operations was in Afghanistan, where they were harbored by the Taliban — a ruthless, repressive and radical movement that seized control of that country after it was ravaged by years of Soviet occupation and civil war, and after the attention of America and our friends had turned elsewhere.

He then took a detour to summarize the old anti-Bush, anti-war argument against deposing Saddam’s regime and establishing a new consensual government in Iraq:

The wrenching debate over the Iraq war is well-known and need not be repeated here.  It’s enough to say that for the next six years, the Iraq war drew the dominant share of our troops, our resources, our diplomacy, and our national attention — and that the decision to go into Iraq caused substantial rifts between America and much of the world.

Today, after extraordinary costs we are bringing the Iraq war to a responsible end.

What Obama insists on calling an “end” should be called victory.  In fact, there were three victories.  First, A ruthless dictator was deposed and a country was set free.  Then, Al Qaeda recruited young men from all over the Middle East to come into Iraq and terrorize the population.

After a period of miscalculation and ineffective strategies – common to every war in human history – America finally got it right with a troop surge and new strategies, scoring a the second victory, this time over terrorists and insurgents.   In a third victory, US troops trained and equipped Iraqi forces to take over responsibility for their nation’s security.

Al Qaeda, the enemy Obama claims to be fighting, suffered a crushing defeat in Iraq.   Al Qaeda leaders had vowed that Iraq would be the place they showed the world that America was “the weak horse.”  Instead Al Qaeda was humiliated and Iraq proved to be a killing field where the lives of recruits from all over the Middle East were sacrificed for a lost cause.  Thus, Iraq humiliation has become a barrier to Al Qaeda recruiting

But Obama based his candidacy for the Democratic nomination for President on his claim that, from his seat in the Illinois legislature, he opposed use of military force against Saddam, while Hillary Clinton, from her seat in the U.S. Senate, had voted for it.  Therefore he had to oppose the troop surge and the change in strategies.  He made numerous public statements predicting failure, even as the troops were involved in daily, high stakes combat. Throughout the campaign he promised to “end” the Iraq operation.  He never promised success.

For Obama the success achieved by American troops in Iraq is an embarrassment to be diminished, not a victory to be celebrated.