War and change
Senator Obama sometimes seems to go back and forth a little in his positions on Iraq, but this speech in Wyoming seemed clear enough:
I was opposed to this war in 2002. If it has been up to me we would have never been in this war. It was because of George Bush with an assist from Hillary Clinton and John McCain that we entered into this war…A war that should have never been authorized, a war that should have never been waged. I’ve been against it 2002, 2003, 2004, 5, 6, 7, 8. And I will bring this war to an end in 2009.
Questions: (a) will it really matter to Obama’s suppoorters if he carries through on the statement above, or finds that the “mess” he encounters in January 2009 requires a longer time commitment; (b) does the Hastert district loss, and the continuing fad of our times, mean that a majority of voters really do just want “change,” without caring too much (for the moment) what that “change” really is? (c) Does a majority of voters just want to be disengaged for a while from all the awfulness of the world — whether that is practical or not — and worry about the details later?
March 10th, 2008 at 1:46 pm
“Disengaged from the awfulness of this world?” Yes, I think alot of people would like to go back to the 1990s, when the administration and the news media sugarcoated life and the news (respectively) for us with no repercussions. The dot.com bubble, 9/11, the credit crisis — all George Bush’s fault. The Republican party is a joke, the Democrat party is a fantasy — our entire political establishment is ridiculous beyond comprehension.
March 10th, 2008 at 8:39 pm
This is the great benefit of being a pacifist. You can claim you never wanted to fight anyway. Which will suffice if you want a good excuse rather than a good outcome.
March 12th, 2008 at 5:28 am
Boston Globe:
In July of 2004, the day after his speech at the Democratic convention catapulted him into the national spotlight, Barack Obama told a group of reporters in Boston that the United States had an “absolute obligation” to remain in Iraq long enough to make it a success.
“The failure of the Iraqi state would be a disaster,” he said at a lunch sponsored by the Christian Science Monitor, according to an audiotape of the session. “It would dishonor the 900-plus men and women who have already died. . . . It would be a betrayal of the promise that we made to the Iraqi people, and it would be hugely destabilizing from a national security perspective.”
So Barack Che’ Hussein Obama was for the war… before he was against it.
“Why was Obama selected to speak at the 2004 Democratic Convention? At that time he had not yet won his current seat, let alone served a day in the Senate. So, it couldn’t be his experience. What was it that propelled him to national stature at that time, if not his race? I would be curious to hear his answer.” — Instapundit reader