So says Amir Taheri in an article in the New York Post:
WHILE campaigning in public for a speedy withdrawal of US troops from Iraq, Sen. Barack Obama has tried in private to persuade Iraqi leaders to delay an agreement on a draw-down of the American military presence. According to Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari, Obama made his demand for delay a key theme of his discussions with Iraqi leaders in Baghdad in July. “He asked why we were not prepared to delay an agreement until after the US elections and the formation of a new administration in Washington,” Zebari said in an interview.
The McCain campaign, in the person of Randy Scheunemann, had this to say:
At this point, it is not yet clear what official American negotiations Senator Obama tried to undermine with Iraqi leaders, but the possibility of such actions is unprecedented. It should be concerning to all that he reportedly urged that the democratically-elected Iraqi government listen to him rather than the US administration in power. If news reports are accurate, this is an egregious act of political interference by a presidential candidate seeking political advantage overseas. Senator Obama needs to reveal what he said to Iraq’s Foreign Minister during their closed door meeting. The charge that he sought to delay the withdrawal of Americans from Iraq raises serious questions about Senator Obama’s judgment and it demands an explanation.
The Obama campaign defended their candidate by saying that
in fact, Obama had told the Iraqis that they should not rush through a “Strategic Framework Agreement” governing the future of US forces until after President George W. Bush leaves office.
As a defense, that leaves much to be desired, since it essentially confirms Taheri’s report; they tried to split hairs over which agreement they were talking about and used the word “rush” instead of the word “delay.” It’s nothing more than spin, and pretty thin spin at that. What’s more, it may have been a mistake, as it provoked a rebuttal from Taheri in which he analyzed and dismantled the Obama campaign’s response.Technically speaking, Sen. Obama acted in violation of the Logan Act which “prohibits any private citizen or party from negotiating with a foreign power in matters of national policy or military action”; this has led to a few people asking if he should be prosecuted, though wiser heads have correctly said that criminalizing political conduct is a bad idea and should be avoided (even if Joe Biden didn’t get the memo). That said, his actions clearly merit some sort of censure or rebuke from the Senate, and call into question not only his judgment but his political integrity. Personally, I find the latter more disturbing than the former; Pete Hegseth, on the other hand, takes the opposite view:
I believe, rather, that the underlying naivety of Obama’s overtures is the more disturbing lesson to be distilled from this discovery.It’s not just that Sen. Obama doesn’t believe in the mission in Iraq, it’s that he still doesn’t get it (to plagiarize from the senator himself). Fundamentally, he doesn’t understand the mission in Iraq, what it takes to win a war, or the ramifications of the outcome of this war for the U.S.’s enduring national security. He just doesn’t get it.In Obama’s world, foreign-policy contorts to meet domestic politics, and commanding generals accommodate arbitrary political timelines. From his perspective, facts on a foreign battlefield exist to the extent they comport with his judgment, rather than his judgment comporting to facts on a foreign battlefield.Despite recognizing security gains in Iraq, Sen. Obama continues to declare the surge a strategic failure because it hasn’t created necessary political progress—an assertion that has been patently false for some time now. Nonetheless, Senator Obama won’t adjust his stance before the election because, as Taheri so aptly points out, “to be credible, his foreign-policy philosophy requires Iraq to be seen as a failure, a disaster, a quagmire.” . . .Once again, Sen. Obama and his fellow Democrats continue to insist that they know better than generals. They won’t let the facts get in the way of a good political narrative. Taheri’s article is the latest crack in the facade of Sen. Obama and his fellow travelers, and signals their flip, naïve, and self-serving approach to strategic objectives on the battlefield.
This is an explosive story. In considering all this, I can’t help thinking of the howls we’d be hearing if such a charge were laid against a Republican—and I’m not alone in that:
Obama should be compelled to provide some basic facts: who was present, what record of the meeting exists and what precisely was he communicating to the Iraqis. If we had an independent, truly adversarial press (that is one not adversarial just towards one candidate), they would be screaming for this plus access to those present at the meeting. Can you imagine if John McCain were accused of asking a foreign government to accelerate or retard progress on a matter of national security because of the upcoming election?That may or may not be what happened here. But it is time to start asking hard questions.