Balderdash! The Dems have a very set... 
exit strategy! They learned it from "Newsweek."
Posted on 04/20/2008 11:38:19 AM PDT by The_Republican
Last week's Democratic debate between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama really depressed me. And not just because the moderators spent the first 40 minutes on "gotcha" questions with no relevance to the problems we face.
ABC News' Charles Gibson and George Stephanopoulos gave such short shrift to foreign policy queries, you'd think we had no overseas problems. Never mind that George W. Bush will leave behind a Mideast mess worse than any I've seen.
Even more frustrating: On the few questions involving Iraq, there was no effort to get the candidates to flesh out their thinking. Both Democrats are more realistic than Sen. John McCain in recognizing that U.S. troops can't remain forever. Unlike McCain, they know a "diplomatic surge" that includes Iran is vital to stabilizing the region.
The Democrats' main advantage is such new thinking. But neither has told us what they'd do if too swift a withdrawal leads to greater mayhem in Iraq and in the region, a possibility I think likely. Instead of probing the thinking behind these withdrawal plans, the ABC team goaded Clinton to confirm whether she'd pull out as fast as Obama, and by what date.
Folks, we are facing huge perils in the Mideast; the problems in Iraq won't be ended by the speed of our exit, but by how well we engineer it. So let me try to examine the candidates' plans in a way that Gibson and Stephanopoulos didn't.
On withdrawal plans: Obama has been the most concrete, saying he would withdraw all combat brigades in 16 months. Clinton has talked of removing "one to two brigades a month," but hasn't set a timeline for completing a pullout.
Until now, Clinton's approach has been the more responsible. Setting a date certainly will only entangle a Democratic president in a pledge he or she will wind up breaking. It's wishful thinking to believe a timeline will force Iraqi factions to reconcile. And wishful thinking is what led the Bush team to the current disastrous Iraq mess.
Setting an exit date now will encourage Iraqi factions to gear up for bigger battles as the Americans are leaving. It will prompt Iraq's neighbors to increase arms and support for their Sunni or Shiite proxies inside the country. This, in turn, will undermine prospects for the "diplomatic surge" we need to leave without a rout.
So, holding back on any date for final withdrawal makes sense. A timeline for U.S. withdrawal should be a card the next president uses in his or her diplomatic efforts to promote a new security arrangement in the region. It should await Election Day so that a newly chosen commander-in-chief can reexamine the situation on the ground.
Until recently, Clinton seemed to get this. I was told by former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, a Clinton adviser, that Clinton "has made very clear that putting a termination date doesn't make sense. Remember Bosnia," where U.S. troops were supposed to be out in one year, but stayed for nearly a decade.
"Her end point is to get out," said Albright, "but in a way permitting her to [first] deal with and listen to military people. I think she is very responsible in not putting a date."
Yet in the ABC debate, Clinton was goaded - with quotes from some of her advisers - to say whether she was committed to bringing one or two brigades out of Iraq every month no matter how bad the situation on the ground.
Her answer: "Yes, I am. . . ." Then she and Obama competed to stress that each, as president, would not just accept cues from military commanders (like Gen. David Petraeus). Making this kind of finite exit pledge now is foolish. Why should a Democrat want to lock himself or herself into a posture he or she may have to shift after becoming commander-in-chief?
The answer is . . . gotcha politics. Clinton has decried the words of a former Obama adviser, Samantha Power, who was fired, in part, for saying the obvious to a reporter: that the Illinois senator, if elected, would have to review his Iraq plans based on the situation in early 2009. So the New York senator has boxed herself into a spot where she can't make the same logical point.
Yet Obama made the same point as Power in a visit to The Inquirer and Daily News editorial boards: "I always reserve the right to listen to commanders on the ground and to adjust to changing circumstances," he told us. "It would be irresponsible of me to say otherwise." He added that every future president should learn this lesson from the Bush administration's errors: "If you ignore reality, it has this habit of biting you in the face."
He is right.
So I wish, instead of competing to prove which will be first to the Iraq exit, both Democrats would be more honest about what "responsible withdrawal" means. Done wrong, it is likely to be very messy and to drag us into new Mideast perils. Clinton should stick to her earlier position; Obama should rethink the merits of setting a timeline now.
Even the moderators were take aback by her comment and tone. So there was a follow up to clarify if she was saying she would ignore the advice of Generals on the ground.
She didn't change her answer much.
All Obama offers is another Hip-Hop Line about Exit strategy from Iraq: I have always been saying we should as careful on our way out as we were careless going in.
That's it. That is his exit strategy.
Polls and Campaign donations are Klintons' strategy.
Both losers. Both Liar. Both Cowards.
John McCain is the only one who WILL make sure we win!
week after week, Trudy Rubin proves she has little grasp of any thing going on anywhere in the world . She is a bozo.
exit strategies=cut and run
Agreed. I’ve been reading her tripe since she started writing for the Inky and I can think of maybe two or three columns in all those years where I thought she knew what she was talking about. She’s completely ignorant of Iranian politics, history, processes, etc. She knows little to nothing about the history (and thus backing) of Hizbollah, Hamas, Fatah, etc... She knows none of the languages, spent no time there, and basically is a typical white-wine Inquirer writer who wants peace in the middle east so she can take nice vacations on a Lebanese beach.
Her knowledge of eastern europe is even more woefully inadequate. You’d think in all these years she’d develop some actual experience, knowledge, justifiable opinions about something going on in the ME, but nothing...zip, nada, nothing. I don’t even care if I were to disagree with her; that’s fine. Point is, she never has any point to make about anything. She has no ideas and no knowledge of her own. A high schooler could write better columns based on nonsense culled from Wikipedia. She, like everything else about the Inquirer, is an embarassment to journalism.
if the questions were of no consequence to the voters, then why do the daily tracking polls show Obama tanking as a result of his disastrous performance? Oh, I get it ,Trudi, the voters don't count, we needed a policy forum where elitists like you could arrogate policy decisions to your own superior selves.
and don't forget her reservations to Davos '09!
Be sure and withdraw the armor first and then you can repeat Clinton's Somalia success. Oh well, the best case scenario for Iraq is that Iran pours in immediately to preserve law and order under Allah.
ROTFLMAO!
The fact of the matter is that you can’t believe a word either Hillary or Obama say on the campaign trail, so what’s the point in even trying to figure who has a “better plan”? They simply say what they think their audience wants to hear, and haven’t a clue as to what they would actually do if elected (their only concrete plans are for celebration at being elected).
Balderdash! The Dems have a very set... exit strategy! They learned it from "Newsweek."
Hmmmm.
I am still waiting for exit strategies on the War On Poverty, and War on Drugs. How many TRILLIONS have they cost us? There are just as many poor and always and I believe just as many people using drugs. It just costs more.
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