Obama Spinning On The Surge Once More

It only took a year after everyone else had realized The Surge worked for Obama to come to grips with it:

The troop surge in Iraq has been more successful than anyone could have imagined, Barack Obama conceded Thursday in his first-ever interview on FOX News’ “The O’Reilly Factor.”

As recently as July, the Democratic presidential candidate declined to rate the surge a success, but said it had helped reduce violence in the country. On Thursday, Obama acknowledged the 2007 increase in U.S. troops has benefited the Iraqi people.

“I think that the surge has succeeded in ways that nobody anticipated,” Obama said while refusing to retract his initial opposition to the surge. “I’ve already said it’s succeeded beyond our wildest dreams.”

In ways NO ONE anticipated?

Now he wants to rewrite history as only the messiah can.

First, we know Obama has done his best in the past month or so to spin his disagreement on The Surge to mean that he really did think it would succeed. But we all know thats baloney:

“I am not persuaded that 20,000 additional troops in Iraq is going to solve the sectarian violence there. In fact, I think it will do the reverse.” (MSNBC’s “Response To The President’s Speech On Iraq,” 1/10/07)

We cannot impose a military solution on what has effectively become a civil war. And until we acknowledge that reality — we can send 15,000 more troops, 20,000 more troops, 30,000 more troops, I don’t know any expert on the region or any military officer that I’ve spoken to privately that believes that that is going to make a substantial difference on the situation on the ground.” (CBS’ “Face The Nation,” 1/14/07)

“[E]ven those who are supporting — but here’s the thing, Larry — even those who support the escalation have acknowledged that 20,000, 30,000, even 40,000 more troops placed temporarily in places like Baghdad are not going to make a long-term difference.” (CNN’s “Larry King Live,” 3/19/07)

“And what I know is that what our troops deserve is not just rhetoric, they deserve a new plan. Governor Romney and Senator McCain clearly believe that the course that we’re on in Iraq is working, I do not.” (Sen. Barack Obama, Remarks To The Coalition Of Black Trade Unionists Convention, Chicago, IL, 5/25/07)

“My assessment is that the surge has not worked and we will not see a different report eight weeks from now.” (NBC’s “The Today Show,” 7/18/07)

“Finally, in 2006-2007, we started to see that, even after an election, George Bush continued to want to pursue a course that didn’t withdraw troops from Iraq but actually doubled them and initiated a search and at that stage I said very clearly, not only have we not seen improvements, but we’re actually worsening, potentially, a situation there.” (NBC’s “Meet The Press,” 11/11/07)

Second, he tried to spin the success of The Awakening , as being due to the Democrats win in Congress in 2006.

And now he wants to forget that Bush, McCain and Petreaus all anticipated The Surge would work.

What all this really comes down to is Obama’s judgment on pretty much everything. Disregarding his lack of judgment on who he befriends, his lack of judgment on the security of this nation and the war we fight speaks volumes about the man. John Dickerson:

If Obama was wrong about the tactical gains that would be made by the new strategy and wrong about how the Iraqi political leaders would react, can his larger theory about how Iraqis will respond to a troop pullout remain intact? Perhaps, but he has the burden of explanation.

His lack of judgment is most clearly highlighted on his call to retreat from Iraq, just when a increase in troops was needed. The 2007 NIE spells this out quite clearly:

Coalition capabilities, including force levels, resources, and operations, remain an essential stabilizing element in Iraq. If Coalition forces were withdrawn rapidly during the term of this Estimate, we judge that this almost certainly would lead to a significant increase in the scale and scope of sectarian conflict in Iraq, intensify Sunni resistance to the Iraqi Government, and have adverse consequences for national reconciliation.

But still Obama pushed for a retreat, and denigrated The Surge.

This election it comes down between a man who never believed our country could win, and a man who knew we could win. Jeff Goldstein:

I simply must point out that this line, “I think that the surge has succeeded in ways that nobody anticipated,” is not really a political winner I suspect, especially given that the man he’s running against believed in the surge (as did those who planned it). Had they not, the charge Obama is making here is that the military was simply throwing away American lives on a strategy that they didn’t really think would work — and that they really just kinda lucked into success.

Doesn’t matter if Obama wants to spin history. History has been written on this subject and we all know which side of it Obama was.