The Case for Obama Pt. IX

Finally, I am kicking off the part of the series that begins to evaluate the candidates, their parties, and the electorate that support each. My main goal is to point out the major policy difference that exist on the issues that matter most to the American people, and to shed some light on some common misconceptions that Republicans get credit for without actually achieving any legislation to support their position on the issue. I will start the series off with this one:

"Closing the gap between the world as it is, and the world as it should be."

This year's general-election race features vastly different approaches on so many political issues. There will be a clearer choice this year than there has been in a generation.

The contrasts between McCain, 71, a white former Navy pilot and Vietnam POW, and Obama, 46, a black Harvard Law School graduate and former community organizer, go far beyond the personal.

Most evident on the issue I will cover today: the Iraq War

McCain was a prominent and ardent supporter of the decision to invade Iraq and vows to keep U.S. troops there until the war is won. In recanting his highly publicized comment of "A hundred year war," he offered 2013 as a reasonable date for achieving that goal and ending U.S. involvement. Obama, was an early opponent of the war who has promised to remove U.S. combat troops from Iraq within 16 months of taking office.

McCain as well as most Republicans are ignoring the obvious. The goal of this war is not to win? This is not a football game. The initial mission was supposedly to rid Iraq of Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD), then to remove an evil dictator. Both far contrasts from the mission everyone initially supported which I can scarcely remember but I believe it was "actively seeking out and destroying terrorist regimes every where they exist in the world.

As Obama said we took our eye off the ball, and now we have to pull the bus out of the ditch before we can get on the road again. While we were searching for WMD in underground and in caves in Iraq; Iran and North Korea had WMD in broad daylight. Each more capable and likely to use them than Iraq would have ever been. The presence of terrorist groups in the Middle East alone has actually increased during the time we have spent in Iraq.

The entire discussion of whether the surge is working has became a partisan outcry. Taking the lives of young American men and women and putting them in extreme danger, poor living conditions, and away from their family for multiple tours of duty is a non-partisan decision to the people that are affected.

Of course the surge is working, it's not because the Republicans supported it, it's because it is a logical idea that was crafted by the Commanders on the ground in Iraq who Bush chose not to listen to until his approval ratings plummeted to the point it has put in jeopardy almost every elected office currently held by a Republican. I believe the fundamental principles of Counterinsurgency are extraordinary, “Be professional, be polite, be prepared to kill.” The problem with this rhetoric is when we say the surge is working, what exactly does that mean? Do we even know the purpose of the surge? How could we when we are uncertain about the purpose of the war. Is the purpose to bring stability to the very society that we de-stabilized with this war? What political gains have been achieved?

The central reality in Iraq is this: The Iraqi government is failing to serve the needs of the people or to provide security. Real military progress won't matter very much if political progress is lagging. At this point even the Iraqi government has called for a timetable for withdrawal. So now what? Are we going to refuse to allow the very government we put into power to establish itself? How dare they attempt to set forth conditions to re-establish their "own" country, they can't do that on their terms, they have to do it on our terms... Makes you say were they ever really concerned at all about the people of Iraq?