If Obama Could Do It All Over Again He’d Still Oppose The Surge
Despite the fact that it, you know, actually worked. Something tacitly confirmed by Obama’s deletion of criticism of the surge from his website.
Video here, transcript of the pertinent part below:
Q: If you had to do it over again, knowing what you know now, would you support the surge?
A: No, because, keep in mind that…
Q: You wouldn’t?
A: Keep in mind… These kinds of hypotheticals are very difficult. Hindsight is 20/20. But I think that, what I’m absolutely convinced of, is that at that time we had to change the political debate because the view of the Bush administration at that time was one that I just disagreed with.
So Obama would still oppose the surge, despite evidence that it has worked, because the debate needed to be changed? Changed in which direction, Senator? Towards defeat despite the fact (as we know now) that victory was possible?
Marc Ambinder has additional Obama quotes from the ABC interview and these make it seem as though Obama is actually admitting that the surge has made things better in Iraq (though he seems to credit the “Sunni awakening” more than the surge, as though there were a distinction between the two.
Personally, I think this all sounds like spin from a man who knows he was wrong but can’t admit it.
