Eugene Robinson: Wanted: Democratic Straight Talk on Iraq

xpost from d/pol

Wanted: Democratic Straight Talk on Iraq

By Eugene Robinson
Friday, September 28, 2007; Page A19

Yes, you heard it right: At the Dartmouth College debate Wednesday evening, not one of the three leading Democratic candidates could pledge that all U.S. combat troops would be out of Iraq by the end of his or her first term as president.

That's the end of a first term. Which would be January 2013. Which would be 5 1/2 years from now.

"It is very difficult to know what we're going to be inheriting," said Hillary Rodham Clinton.

"I think it's hard to project four years from now," said Barack Obama.

"I cannot make that commitment," said John Edwards.

Makes you wonder what kind of Kool-Aid they were serving backstage. Let me suggest that everyone stick to bottled water next time.

In geopolitical terms, I think the answer they all gave is wrong; I think this represents the same kind of old-paradigm thinking about foreign policy and America's role in the world that all three candidates claim to reject. In just-plain-political terms, I think such temporizing -- delivered with furrowed brow and an air of wise gravitas -- is, at the very least, unwisely premature. The time for a Democratic candidate to start taking the antiwar vote for granted and scurrying toward an imagined "center" is after securing the nomination, not before. Democratic primary voters are smart enough to recognize the difference between saying you oppose the war and pledging to end it.
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I'm also wondering what leads anyone to think that by the time the general election campaign gets underway, anything short of a clear promise to pull the plug on George W. Bush's debacle will look like a centrist position. By then, "U.S. troops out in a year" may look like the height of caution.

more...
Edit to fix link:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/09/27/AR2007092701658.html

political solution by the time I am president, then I would bring them out because all they are is fodder."

That would be January 20, 2009. Can't get much more explicit than that.

Here's your link so you don't have to ask:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_N5t512DL5U