Does Obama Understand Defeat?
Where the candidates have real differences is over Iraq. Mr. Obama, as everyone knows, wants to remove American troops at a steady rate of one to two combat brigades a month, until they are all but gone, and “help Iraq reach a meaningful accord on national reconcilation.” Mr. McCain, as everyone also knows, will do just about everything it takes to win in Iraq and is prepared, on the Korean, West German or Japanese model, to deploy soldiers to the country for a century to preserve the peace.
Yet what distinguishes Mr. McCain’s foreign policy from Mr. Obama’s is not about the nature of America’s commitments in the Middle East. It is about their understanding of the consequences of defeat. Mr. McCain seems to have some. It’s not clear whether Mr. Obama does.
But here are questions for Mr. Obama: Could there be something worse than the indefinite maintenance of a flawed policy? What if, following a U.S. withdrawal, Iraq collapsed into chaos? What if U.S. embassy personnel have to be helicoptered to safety from the roof of the Baghdad embassy? It’s not as if this hasn’t happened before.
Nowhere in Mr. Obama’s speech is that scenario entertained, and one wonders why. Perhaps it is a function of biography. With the exception of a failed congressional bid in 2000, defeat has not formed a significant part of Mr. Obama’s upwardly mobile life experience. Or perhaps it is a function of philosophy. Not everyone share’s Mr. McCain’s view that the defeat in Vietnam was a “disgrace,” or that the result of a war carried out “Not In My Name” nonetheless has bearing on the worth of one’s country.
As for Somalia, Mr. McCain noted in one of his memoirs that “The decision to leave Aidid unpunished and to withdraw from Somalia had a disheartening effect on our military… . They wondered if we would ever be as committed to victory as they were in the causes we ordered them to serve. Somewhere in Sudan, Osama bin Laden observed our withdrawal from Somalia and concluded that America no longer had the stomach for war.”
In his spee