Impact of Iraq,Middle East & Afpakistan on US Elections

[cyberianpan]

I looked back a bit and couldn't see a clear thread on this topic. Thus I'm proposing this thread to be the place to discuss what impact Iraq,Middle East & Afpakistan will have on the Presidential race and also Congressional where applicable.

President Nouri al-Maliki has thrown the cat amongst the pigeons with this one:

Washington Post : Wednesday, July 9, 2008

For the first time, Iraqi President Nouri al-Maliki said Monday in a statement that the two countries should consider deciding the future of U.S. troops with "a memorandum of understanding to put a timetable on their withdrawal."

Their party nominations in hand, Obama and McCain have calibrated their firm stands on Iraq to adapt to changing events on the ground, namely a post-"surge" reduction in violence, to target a more centrist audience. Obama plans to visit Baghdad in the weeks ahead

Maliki's comments suggest that there are trapdoors for McCain on Iraq as well. In speeches, town hall meetings, interviews and campaign commercials, he has said a timetable would provide terrorists the knowledge of how long they have to wait until U.S. troops are gone.

McCain has repeatedly said that setting a date for withdrawal would lead to "chaos, genocide and we will be back with greater sacrifice." And he accused both Obama and Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton of endangering Americans by advocating a specific timetable for withdrawal.

Obviously McCain's resurgence in the primaries was due in no small part to the success of the surge. Similarly Obama's position was consistently anti-war.

How important is Iraq to US public ?
Is it a winning issue for McCain .... Obama ?
As I suspect, does the above screw McCain ? Or does it prove "his" surge was so successful that the Iraqis are independent ?

cYp

[size=7]added Middle East & Afpakistan to the title as realised that tehse are interdependent[/size]

[gendjinn]

The TV news has almost completely dropped Iraq from their coverage this cycle here in the US. I have to go to juancole.com, Al Jazeera and other blogs to get any decent kind of coverage. Not that the TV coverage was that great before but at least there was some.

[LAAlex]

I don't know about tv coverage (don't watch), but the papers and radio provide regular coverage--I won't say good, because the media as a whole has really dropped the ball from the beginning on Iraq. But come on, gindjinn--you have to go to Al Jazeera?

As central to Bush's "War on Terror" and all of the ensuing fallout, Iraq in a sense underpins this entire election and it's judgment on the present administration. But in concrete terms of whether it's a winning issue for either candidate, I don't think so. There is no viable "solution" to a war that should never have been fought in the first place, that the country was led into under false pretenses, that has brought nothing but death and the destruction of so much for absolutely no gain whatsoever. Find me anyone (not on Fox TV) in the U.S. that doesn't believe that now, regardless of how they felt in 2003--I know of no one.

Having said that, we do need to hear a serious discussion from both candidates about what they plan to do (emphasis on "plan"--who knows what will be going on in January 2009), if for no other reason than to understand in which direction they plan to take their foreign policy.

[gendjinn]

I don't know about tv coverage (don't watch), but the papers and radio provide regular coverage--I won't say good, because the media as a whole has really dropped the ball from the beginning on Iraq. But come on, gindjinn--you have to go to Al Jazeera?

I don't *have* to go to Al Jazeera but it's about the only decent TV coverage/analysis of Iraq and the rest of the Middle East. juancole.com and some other blogs are great too. US TV news has always been a joke and as biased in its reporting as British media was/is about The Troubles. The papers of record like WashPost and NYTimes have been useless since 9/11. Have you seen the documentary "Control Room" made about Al Jazeera?

[LAAlex]

I don't *have* to go to Al Jazeera but it's about the only decent TV coverage/analysis of Iraq and the rest of the Middle East. juancole.com and some other blogs are great too. US TV news has always been a joke and as biased in its reporting as British media was/is about The Troubles. The papers of record like WashPost and NYTimes have been useless since 9/11. Have you seen the documentary "Control Room" made about Al Jazeera?

I haven't seen it. I'm not coming down on Al Jazeera...for a visual representation of the war, they are the only game in town, and they're a good one. But they're the flip side of Fox, really (and have a very similar motto!)--or CNN, if you want to take it up a (very small) notch--although they get points in my book for not trying to pretend they're presenting an objective viewpoint.

Blogs and the alternative/online media have been the only way to go on Iraq. The McClatchy Baghdad bloggers, Chris Hedges, Alternet, Salon for their work on Abu Ghraib, etc.

[gendjinn]

I don't *have* to go to Al Jazeera but it's about the only decent TV coverage/analysis of Iraq and the rest of the Middle East. juancole.com and some other blogs are great too. US TV news has always been a joke and as biased in its reporting as British media was/is about The Troubles. The papers of record like WashPost and NYTimes have been useless since 9/11. Have you seen the documentary "Control Room" made about Al Jazeera?

I haven't seen it. I'm not coming down on Al Jazeera...for a visual representation of the war, they are the only game in town, and they're a good one. But they're the flip side of Fox, really (and have a very similar motto!)--or CNN, if you want to take it up a (very small) notch--although they get points in my book for not trying to pretend they're presenting an objective viewpoint.

Now, steady on. Al Jazeera is not the flip of Fox news, only the baby Jesus could be. That's the propaganda line the US/UK want you to believe so that their reporting and analysis can dismissed without consideration. I'm speaking of Al Jazeera english not the original arabic language station which does have an unsavoury bias - the two are entirely separate networks. The round table debates are more like Jeremy Paxton than the dreck put on US news networks where there are opinions, facts and arguments made that are just not permitted on TV here.

[LAAlex]

Control Room--it's about AJ or AJ-English?

[gendjinn]

Control Room--it's about AJ or AJ-English?

AJ original. The movie was shot in '03 and released in '04. AJ English was launched in '06.

[LAAlex]

I know AJ-English...I work in a public affairs office, and they call us on a semi-regular basis. We're not encouraged to help them.

An op-ed by Barack Obama in today's NYTimes:

My Plan for Iraq

"The good news is that Iraq’s leaders want to take responsibility for their country by negotiating a timetable for the removal of American troops. Meanwhile, Lt. Gen. James Dubik, the American officer in charge of training Iraq’s security forces, estimates that the Iraqi Army and police will be ready to assume responsibility for security in 2009....As I’ve said many times, we must be as careful getting out of Iraq as we were careless getting in. We can safely redeploy our combat brigades at a pace that would remove them in 16 months. That would be the summer of 2010 — two years from now, and more than seven years after the war began. After this redeployment, a residual force in Iraq would perform limited missions: going after any remnants of Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, protecting American service members and, so long as the Iraqis make political progress, training Iraqi security forces. That would not be a precipitous withdrawal."

[FutureTaoiseach]

I think the closer we get to November the better it's likely to get for McCain. While opposed to the US war and presence in Iraq, I believe that only the most delusional could now deny that the "Surge" has succeeded in stabilising the security situation there. For that reason, Obama has moved away from his hardline withdrawal position from the primaries as he recognises that doing otherwise will harm his credibility as commander-in-chief. He has said he will "refine" his position on withdrawal in consultation with the generals. While it is true that most Americans want withdrawal from Iraq and oppose the war, their answers become more ambiguous when pollsters ask about the timeframe for such withdrawal. For example only a minority favours instant withdrawal, while the rest of those opposing the war favour withdrawal when the security situation is stable. McCain will no doubt trumpet the success of the surge and the fact that he was pushing for it when Rumsfeld and the Bush admin were sceptical (Rumsfeld was a proponent of an idea of war using smaller taskforces). Recognising these facts, and the need to appeal in more conservative parts of the country with large concentrations of military families, Obama is likely to tone down further his criticisms of the conduct of the war in Iraq, while emphasising the economic crisis at home instead, perhaps emphasising the question of affordability of the war during a recession/downturn.