One thing seems increasingly odd in Barack Obama’s Iraq positioning. He is terribly concerned and delighted to latch on the the Iraqi leaders pronouncements on the surge. Every glimmer of agreement is seized upon and held up as a prize. But he didn’t, and now reveals he still, doesn’t care about their country. Left up to him, he would have let them sink into the abyss of chaos and genocide. So why do their views matter at all?
If Iraq is a distraction, he shouldn’t care whether their leaders agree with him or not. He certainly didn’t care about their views when Maliki and others were supportive of the surge. Aside from the impropriety of engaging the Iraqis in our electoral politics (“See, Maliki is on my side, not McCain’s!”) he seems to have an odd view of exactly which countries’ views are determinative. Will he also fall into line with Israel’s views on Iran and Europe’s view on NATO force levels? And if they vocally disagree with his worldview, are we to discount it because, after all, other countries don’t call our tune and determine our self-interest? It is a recipe for disaster to go down the road of claiming wisdom based on the latest utterance from foreign leaders. But we certainly are getting an idea of what an Obama administration would be like.
