Obama’s Brilliant Military Strategy: Cut and Run and Then Run Back

At the rate Barack Obama is going, his lack of qualification to serve as commander in chief of the U.S. armed forces will be painfully obvious long before November.

The man has far too few carefully considered opinions and far too many shoot-from-the-hip-and-hope-it-sounds-good opinions. Unfortunately, that weakness seems to be shared by the advisors with whom Obama has surrounded himself.

Obama’s latest pronouncements on Iraq are a good example of the problem.

From James Taranto at WSJ’s Best of the Web (emphasis added):

Cut and Run and Then Run Back

With Hillary Clinton being written off (perhaps prematurely), the eight-month general election campaign between John McCain and Barack Obama seems to be getting under way. Obama, apparently moving to the right, is now threatening military intervention in Iraq after years of demanding America’s immediate surrender. As the Associated Press reports:

McCain criticized Obama for saying in Tuesday night’s Democratic debate that, after U.S. troops were withdrawn, as president he would act “if al-Qaida is forming a base in Iraq.”

“I have some news. Al-Qaida is in Iraq. It’s called ‘al-Qaida in Iraq,’ ” McCain told a crowd in Tyler, Texas, drawing laughter at Obama’s expense. He said Obama’s statement was “pretty remarkable.”

Quips Glenn Reynolds: “In Obama’s defense, he probably reads the New York Times, which always calls it ‘Al Qaida in Mesopotamia.’ That may have confused him.”

Obama’s response to McCain, described in the same AP dispatch, makes even less sense:

“I do know that al-Qaida is in Iraq and that’s why I have said we should continue to strike al-Qaida targets,” he told a rally at Ohio State University in Columbus.

“But I have some news for John McCain,” Obama added. “There was no such thing as al-Qaida in Iraq until George Bush and John McCain decided to invade Iraq. . . . They took their eye off the people who were responsible for 9/11 and that would be al-Qaida in Afghanistan, that is stronger now than at any time since 2001.”

Obama said he intended to withdraw U.S. forces from Iraq “so we actually start going after al-Qaida in Afghanistan and in the hills of Pakistan like we should have been doing in the first place.”

So let’s see if we have this straight. Al Qaeda in Iraq isn’t worth fighting because it wouldn’t be there if it weren’t for Bush and McCain. Obama is going to pull all U.S. troops out of Iraq to go fight in Afghanistan and Pakistan, although he will send them back to Iraq if al Qaeda are there, even though he now wants to withdraw notwithstanding al Qaeda’s presence.

Yes, we can!

So Obama’s position on the Iraq war — the major public issue of the day on which he has staked hs campaign and his credibility — is to pull America’s troops out of Iraq right away, abandoning the country to Al Qaeda, only to have America’s troops fight their way back in to retake the same ground they previously won at a cost in human lives, and then to (someday) withdraw the same troops again.

Pure folly. Why doesn’t Obama show how easy it is to retake ground a second time by, say, giving up half his delegates won in the primaries? He can always win them back if Hillary Clinton makes any inroads, can’t he? Yes, we can!

At this point, I’m not sure Obama is qualified to coach a Little League team.

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