American Elephants

Barack Obama has been campaigning in public for months for a speedy withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq.  In private, Senator Obama has tried to persuade Iraqi leaders that they should delay any agreement on a draw-down of American troops.  Obama, apparently believing that his election is inevitable, is trying to effect his own foreign policy, in direct opposition to the United States Government.

Amir Taheri, has been an authoritative columnist on the Middle East.  He was born in Iran, educated in Tehran, and is located in Europe.  He writes of this shocking development in today’s New York Post.

According to Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari, Obama made his demand for delay a key theme of his discussions with Iraqi leaders in Baghdad in July.

“He asked why we were not prepared to delay an agreement until after the US elections and the formation of a new administration in Washington” Zebari said in an interview.

Obama insisted that Congress should be involved in negotiations on the status of U.S. troops — and that it was in the interests of both sides not to have an agreement negotiated by the Bush administration in its “state of weakness and political confusion.”

Obama’s latest position is that U.S. combat troops should be out by 2010. (Foreign Policy 101, you don’t tell an enemy when you are leaving) His efforts to privately delay an agreement would make that date impossible to meet. Obama’s attempt to surreptitiously damage American foreign policy are disgraceful and completely dishonorable.  Amir Taheri continues:

Obama has given Iraqis the impression that he doesn’t want Iraq to appear anything like a success, let alone a victory, for America.  The reason “He fears that the perception of U.S. victory there might revive the Bush Doctrine of “pre-emptive” war — that is, removing a threat before it strikes at America.

Despite some usual equivocations on the subject, Obama rejects pre-emption as a legitimate form of self defense.  To be credible, his foreign-policy philosophy requires Iraq to be seen as a failure, a disaster, a quagmire, a pig with lipstick or any of the apocalyptic adjectives used by the American defeat industry in the past five years.

Yet Iraq is doing much better than its friends hoped and its enemies feared.  The UN mandate will be extended in December, and we may yet get an agreement on the status of forces before President Bush leaves the White House in January.

Amir Taheri has been an excellent source for accurate information on the Middle East because he has so many contacts there. If this is correct, Obama is carrying out his own foreign policy in direct opposition to the foreign policy of the United States of America, and in opposition to his own ‘public’ position on Iraq.  His aim is to bring about failure, rather than success, in Iraq.

Please read the whole article linked above. Barack Obama’s record on Iraq has long been disgraceful, but this is really beyond the pale.