The Case for Obama Pt. X

I decided to do a continuation of my previous discussion on Iraq. We will call this one:

"Thought from a distance, may be less tainted than getting up close and peronal"

Colleague after another set off on fact-finding missions to Vietnam, and each returned convinced that America could win the war. It is dangerous when travel is substituted for thought. Senator Jim Webb, a former Marine and Secretary of the Navy, called congressional Iraq visits a "dog and pony" show.

When you take a guided tour, your tour guide decides what you see. In Iraq today, as in Vietnam, they have an incentive to show good news; which isn't always the same as the truth. They (General Davis Patreaus and Ryan Crocker) report to the President, and unfortunately this war has been politicized along partisan lines so it's much easier for them to reinforce the Administration's view than to contradict it. By making Patreaus and Crocker the spokesmen for Iraq policy, the Bush Administration has encouraged Americans to believe they are independent analysts who just happen to agree.

The first priority of McCain and Obama's hosts are to ensure that the candidates leave Iraq alive, they would by necessity take them to places the U.S. and Iraq have made safe and avoid places they have not. Meetings would tilt heavily toward those Iraqis who want the U.S. to stay, and away from those who are trying to force America to leave.

This is not to say the security improvements in Iraq are an illusion. It's just that the realities of war are too elusive to grasp on a brief trip led by people with a vested interest in what you see. The wisest U.S. officials seek out journalists who have spent years traveling the country, and former diplomats and military officers who had the freedom to say what they really believed.

McCain thinks winning in Iraq is the single most important foreign policy challenge facing the next President. As a result, he's willing to spend billions more dollars, impose a far greater strain on the military and divert attention from other problems. Obama thinks Afghanistan and Pakistan are more central to the war on terrorism and that our resources in those countries would bring a higher rate of return.

If anyone knows that clarity often comes with distance, it's Obama, who spent 2002 and 2003 in Chicago, far from the secret briefings that persuaded many Democrats to back the war.