What do you think when you hear Obama blaming the Iraqis for the situation they are in?

[NNN0LHI]

I understood having to to it during the campaign but I think its high time to put this line of BS to rest. Kind of makes our entire country look like idiots when he does it. And I think he needs to stop doing it.

http://www.alternet.org/waroniraq/119889/obama,_like_bush,_ignores_iraqi_will_at_his_own_peril/

Obama, Like Bush, Ignores Iraqi Will at His Own Peril

By Eric Stoner, Foreign Policy in Focus. Posted January 16, 2009

In discussing his plans for the Iraq War, one group that Obama seldom, if ever, mentioned was the Iraqi people.

In discussing his plans for the Iraq War during the presidential campaign, one group that Barack Obama seldom, if ever, mentioned as supporting his proposed policy was the Iraqi people.

Obama's campaign website, which differs only slightly from his transition website, lays out very clearly what he sees as problematic with the Iraq War. It highlights U.S. casualties -- without mentioning the hundreds of thousands (some studies estimate over one million) of Iraqi civilians who have died as a result of the invasion and occupation -- and the exorbitant financial cost of the war, while arguing from a strategic perspective that the diversion of troops and resources to Iraq "continues to set back our ability to finish the fight in Afghanistan."

Not only is Iraqi opinion completely ignored, but Obama's website actually blames the victim -- a popular line with both Democrats and Republicans -- by stating that "the Iraqi government has not stepped forward to lead the Iraqi people." How Iraqis are supposed to take control of their destiny with 146,000 U.S. troops -- and an even larger number of U.S. contractors -- in their country is apparently not a relevant question.

Failure to mention Iraqi opinion during the campaign, however, wasn't due to a lack of knowledge about what they think. In fact, since the war began, the Iraqis have been extensively polled and the results are telling. Below is a sampling of these poll results, each compared with the president-elect's proposed policy for the Iraq War.

1) A March 2008 poll by Opinion Business Research found that 70% of Iraqis wanted foreign troops to leave. Of that group, 65% said they wanted the troops to leave "immediately or as soon as possible," and another 13% responded "within six months." Such sentiment has remained fairly consistent since shortly after the U.S. invasion. In April 2004, for example, a USA Today/CNN/Gallup poll found that 57% of Iraqis wanted the U.S. and British forces to "leave immediately."

[Oregone]

1. Its what he had to do to get elected in a nation of idiots.

I hope he quits now. Those digs hurt.

[stillcool]

2. I think that there is no doubt..

that our interests in the middle east will remain a 'national security issue' as it has been since the 'Carter Doctrine'. I do not believe a President has the kind of clout needed to dismantle the empire. I think there is more than one way to bake a chocolate cake, and the needs of empire can be more in balance with the needs of that nation. I may be delusional, but I guess we'll see.

[babylonsister]

3. From his website:

this sure doesn't sound like the Iraqis are being ignored.

http://www.barackobama.com/issues/iraq/

snip//

Preventing Humanitarian Crisis

Barack Obama and Joe Biden believe that America has both a moral obligation and a responsibility for security that demands we confront Iraq’s humanitarian crisis—more than five million Iraqis are refugees or are displaced inside their own country. Obama and Biden will form an international working group to address this crisis. He will provide at least $2 billion to expand services to Iraqi refugees in neighboring countries, and ensure that Iraqis inside their own country can find sanctuary. Obama and Biden will also work with Iraqi authorities and the international community to hold the perpetrators of potential war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide accountable. They will reserve the right to intervene militarily, with our international partners, to suppress potential genocidal violence within Iraq.

[EFerrari]

5. How many times have you heard him saying the Iraqis need to stand up?

The poster up thread is probably right; it's what he needed to do to be elected in this country.

[EFerrari]

4. I think it's very unfortnate. n/t

[Ghost in the Machine]

6. I think President Obama should be reminded of this .....

On Saturday, July 14, 2007 Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki made a statement saying that "Iraqi forces are capable and US troops can leave any time they want". http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/5A77F64F-54C5-4524-AC77-7F922532C06D.htm


Just sayin'...

[gratuitous]

7. Is there anything beyond that?

Because, let us face reality at long last, there is no way the United States can order the affairs of Iraq or any other country except the United States. To say that the people of Iraq will need to "step forward" or "take responsibility" or whatever, is tautological. There is nobody else on the face of the planet who will decide how Iraq is to be run.

Get the troops out. They've been more target of opportunity and source of misery than anything else for five years. Get the contractors out. They've been a source of misery and resentment simply because they can not do otherwise. And then set up a schedule and start sending in the money. We've destroyed their country, and we owe them reparations. There should be a definite amount and a definite end date, and the number should be tens of billions if not hundreds of billions of dollars.

Then we step back and let the Iraqis step forward for themselves and their country. And what becomes of it is their sole responsibility.

[Occam Bandage]

8. I approve of it.

If Americans see America as the problem in Iraq, they are more likely to support keeping American troops in until "the job is done." Few Americans, after all, will accept the proposition that America power is inherently a problem and that it cannot possibly be used to fix a bad situation. On the other hand. if they believe that America has done its job in Iraq, and that the Iraqis must now be masters of their own fate, they are more likely to support a withdrawal.

[bigtree]

9. but we already have the support of 'the American people' for a withdrawal

What we lack is support from the obstructionist opposition in Congress who hasn't allowed passage of any withdrawal legislation. Obama can reduce the force there any time he wants to using the same autocratic 'authority' Bush used to commit the troops and hold them there. He's affording himself of the autocratically negotiated SOFA, so he obviously doesn't trust the issue to Congress (even though it's THEIR responsibility).

He's completely in control of whatever impression he holds about the paternal role the American military has been directed to assume in Iraq over the past seven years. He's completely in control of whatever posture the forces assume now. Waiting for some new consensus from Americans before deciding Iraqis can handle their own country without our military occupation is absurd. Obviously, he's determined that Iraqis still need that paternal presence of our military forces until sometime after their 'elections'.

[Occam Bandage]

10. So why force Americans who already support his policy to adopt an entirely new framework

of American power as regards Iraq? Obama has given absolutely no indication that he will govern without regard to the public; demanding he unnecessarily push a more ideologically pure political frame, and justifying doing so by pointing out that he can do what he wants regardless of the public will, is an uncomfortably Bush-like suggestion, and one I hope Obama rejects out of hand.

[bigtree]

12. The present 'framework' is a sham.

It supposes that we're defending some sort of Iraqi democracy. The heart of the occupation, however, is about preserving our own country's and it's agents' 'interests'.

Frankly, I find this business of referring to the expectations of a clean withdrawal from Iraq and an honest accounting of our motives there as 'ideological' to be 'Bush-like'.

'Moving forward' in Iraq with the same false rationales that the Bush administration used to justify continuing the occupation is folly and may well prove counterproductive if some notion of defending against 'al-Qaeda' in Iraq keeps our soldiers bogged down there.

Pres, Obama should do what's right in Iraq. In my view, that should be to begin to disengage our forces immediately and to resist shying away from his own initial assessment of the anti-democratic occupation he expressed in the opposition he touts that he held before his Senate run. That would at least be consistent with his own 'framework' that he campaigned on which assumes that responsibility for the deployment of forces and the perpetuation of the occupation resides in the presidency, not on the success or failure of the politics of the Iraqis.

[stray cat]

11. If we are not to be occupiers the Iraqis have to take ownership and not engage in massacres

the government can not be forming death squads instead of really giving legal rights. The iraqi people and government clearly have a role to play -there are many innocent Iraqis but their are also murderers carrying out sectarian violence.