Campaign Promise Watch
Posted by Joshua Claybourn on 27 February 2009 | 8 responses
During the presidential campaign, then-candidate Barack Obama pledged to remove all American troops from Iraq within sixteen months of assuming office. That promise has since been discarded by pushing the withdraw date back over a year to December 31, 2011.
Oh, and 50,000 troops will also be remaining in Iraq indefinitely. Is this the change we can believe in?
Meanwhile earmarks continue, including those attached to Obama for $7.7 million for “Tribally Controlled Postsecondary Vocational Institutions”.
8 Responses to “Campaign Promise Watch”
“Barack Obama pledged to remove all American troops from Iraq within sixteen months of assuming office” No, he did not. His explicit goal was having all _combat brigades_ out in 16 months, so the 50,000 _support_ troops that he’s talking about leaving are entirely consistent with that. Also, very importantly, he consistently included during his campaign statements on Iraq the key caveat that he was (sensibly) going to do a thorough review of the facts about the situation and not commit himself to a strict deadline, but to let the particulars of the policy be dictated by what made sense given facts on the ground. Indeed, he took flak from his left about exactly this issue during the campaign, so it is just plain _bizarre_ to accuse him now of breaking a kind of rigid promise that he got in trouble for _not_ making last year!
So, what you have branded here a breaking of a campaign promise is, in fact, a statement of his keeping of it.
Also, as has been the case with other GOP babbling about budget items (marsh mice! mag-leve to Disneyland!), reports of Obama’s earmarking has been greatly exaggerated:
http://voices.washingtonpost.com/sleuth/2009/02/obama_catches_grief_for_spendi.html?hpid=topnews
Someone let me know when we get a non-silly opposition in place. We could sure use one, but by all signs, it isn’t going to happen until after the 2010 elections at the earliest.
No, he did not. His explicit goal was having all _combat brigades_ out in 16 months
Yes, but all combat brigades will not be out within 16 months. I think that is the crux of the problem, no?
Why do you even bother with stuff like this? Most campaign promises are things a president simply doesn’t have the authority to do, and others will go out the window once the candidate is actually responsible for doing the job, rather than criticizing the person doing it.
Love the Barack W. Bush photo (or is it George Hussein Walker Obama?) – did you make that yourself or find it somewhere?
I have to admit that a driving force behind this post was having an excuse to post the photo. I didn’t create it but I’ve been wanting to post it for quite a while.
I’ve included a link and quote to your page from the articles we have regarding Obama’s Promises … Obama’s “Just Words” speeches
While the President pledged to have all combat brigades out of Iraq by 2010, he also made a very clear, coherent, and definite statement that is going to be very hard for him to back away from.
“Under the Status of Forces Agreement with the Iraqi government, I intend to remove all U.S. troops from Iraq by the end of 2011. We will complete this transition to Iraqi responsibility, and we will bring our troops home with the honor that they have earned.”
That’s about as specific of a goal as you can get and it calls for every single U.S. soldier to be out by 2011. Certainly not indefinitely, as this post states. The only way around that would be a revision of the SOFA.
Let’s take a look at the status of that well run, professional detention facility down south, say, a year from now. Then we’ll talk about definite statements we can’t back away from.
“Yes, but all combat brigades will not be out within 16 months.” First of all, let’s be clear what you’ve done here: you’ve basically taken back the relevance of this text in the initial post: “Oh, and 50,000 troops will also be remaining in Iraq indefinitely. Is this the change we can believe in?” Now that you see that that the implication of that text is flat-out false, perhaps you should put an update or a correction or something.
And — as I already said, and I don’t know why you chose to ignore it — Obama had _already_ left himself some slack to adjust somewhat in response to facts on the ground and in consultation with the military. So, one more time: there’s nothing here that contradicts his campaign stance. Nothing. Nada. Zip. His decision that this should take two more months than originally planned just isn’t inconsistent with his campaign stance, and at this point, to imply otherwise is simply dishonest. (And to imply that Obama’s sensible consistency is somehow Bushian is just just _daft_.)