Legal Commentary

WaPo says Obama would be "pragmatic" to adopt Bush's Iraq policy and says Obama is "unreasonably wedded" to bug-out plans

By Beldar

In an incredible editorial sub-titled "After all, he doesn't see the region much differently than President Bush does," Saturday's WaPo notes, as I did yesterday, that over the course of the past week, Obama has flip-flopped into general alignment with the Bush Administration's position on Jerusalem and, more broadly, most of the Bush Administration's position on how to approach Iran.

It then predicts, amazingly, that Obama will soon also flip-flop himself into a betrayal of the Hard Left on Iraq:

The gap in Mr. Obama's Middle East policy remains Iraq. Mr. Obama has used his opposition to the war to distinguish himself politically from Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) and now from Mr. McCain. Yet, in doing so, he has become unreasonably wedded to a year-old proposal to rapidly withdraw all U.S. combat forces from the country ? a plan offered when he wrongly believed that the situation would only worsen as long as American troops remained. Remarkably, only a sentence or two about Iraq appeared in Mr. Obama's AIPAC speech, and advisers say he may visit the country in coming months. That would offer him the opportunity to outline a strategy based on sustaining the dramatic reduction in violence recorded this year. No, the left wouldn't like it, but it would be in keeping with Mr. Obama's pragmatic approach to the rest of the region.

I would pay good money to be able to hear Dick Cheney's guffaws as he reads this over breakfast. It's as close to an apology as he and Dubya will ever get from the WaPo.

Full post as published by BeldarBlog on June 07, 2008 (boomark / email).