Winning Battles, Winning Wars

I think Maliki's endorsement of a 16 month timetable for withdrawal (Obama's Iraq plan, essentially) is great news. Firstly, it reflects the confidence of the Iraqi central government in the country's future - in 2006, you would not have seen this kind of discussion. Secondly, it validates my opinion that electoral pressures do not make for good foreign policies.

Why isn't this an unquestionable win for Obama? Well, because, as I mentioned earlier, in 2006, you would not have seen this kind of discussion between Bush and Maliki or Maliki and anyone else. Obama was wrong when he endorsed rapid withdrawal before the surge. Assuming all these reports are accurate: McCain was right on the surge, Obama was wrong; Now, McCain is wrong on withdrawal, and Obama is right. Ironically, both candidates have, at times, hinted of deviating from their stances. As mentioned earlier, there has long been suspicion that Obama wouldn't stick to 16 months if the "situation on the ground" didn't favor it. And McCain said he would support leaving Iraq if the government requested it.

After all the political "flip-flopping" on Iraq (and on other issues) in recent months, the message I am coming away with is notthat any particular candidate is more correct - though it seems barring a major reversal, Obama is certain to win - but that the next foreign policy is not going to be a drastically significant "improvement" - if you hadn't figured it out already.

One of the McCain staff's early responses to news of Maliki supporting a 16 month withdrawal was that Maliki was speaking out of "domestic political pressures" or something similar. Yet it appears that after examining the long, sordid history of both Obama and McCain, we can take away the same message. Given McCain's admissions and criticisms in the war of 2004, I think it is almost unquestionable that McCain has trapped himself on this issue by refusing to concede anything to the center for fear of angering his party's base.

In the spirit of The Shock Doctrine, I'll make a pretty questionable claim about foreign policy and the democratic system: the American democratic systems impede effective, transformative foreign policies. Ancient emperors didn't have to get elected, nor did William III of England. Bismarck and Metternich were not monarchs, but neither did they inhabit a democratic system. The internationalism of Wilson could not succeed until FDR marginalized the Republican Party and refused to follow the two-term limit tradition. Even the British prime ministers can adjust the times for general elections and have much more flexibility about the lengths of their government. There are obviously some exceptions - Nixon's foreign policy was a pretty big break, and he wasn't in power that long. But for many, his system was not necessarily a good or moral one, and as I've said, the grandest systems rely in large part on their creators, and you need only look to Bismarck to see the consequences of what happens when a system fails. Perhaps, even if we would like a Great Man as President, it is better we have the threat of popular referendum to adulturate their aspirations. After all, for every potential great policy, we have even more failures, with disastrous consequences.

Nevertheless, if John McCain's transition from having all the right policies on Iraq to the farthest right positions on Iraq (barring a pride-swallowing admission that would probably kill his campaign anyway) is something of a tragedy; then that this downfall was made possible by the vindication of his ideas is a suitably dramatic twist. If John McCain does not go back four years and state what he believed (believes, we can only hope), then all he will have left is to say he was right about the surge.

But he should think carefully before attempting to gain credit from past insights made obsolete:

Obama, after all, was right about the war.