If, however, Obama is now linking a U.S. troop presence to “stability,” that’s a very big deal. ~Michael Crowley

Quite right, as I was saying the other day.  Crowley continues later in his post:

This still begs the questions of what Obama would do about those “more volatile areas.” He says here that he would withdraw from them “later.” Just how much later is the key question. 

Remarkably, his supporters seem to be more than willing to take him at his word in his clarifications and simultaneously to accept the explanation that his earlier statements were simply poorly-phrased or obscure.  As someone who has made a point of defending Obama’s actual record and policy positions against unfounded and often unfair portrayals of his views and who thinks that you can discern his views from what he says, I take very seriously that the candidate means what he says when he seems to tie withdrawal to the stability of Iraq.  If that is his position, as it seems to be, that does seem to contradict the message he has been sending for the last year and a half.  

Josh Marshall:

Now, I can already hear a lot of people rising to the bait and saying, ‘No, we need specifics, a timetable, a date certain, because we’ve been hearing this for years — that we’ll be out as soon as we can, as soon as this that or the other happens.’

And I’d agree.

But this makes the point. Most people who are so keyed into specifics and hard deadlines are that way because we’ve had five years of a policy of deliberate deception in which vague promises of bringing the troops home in the pretty near future are hung out in front of the public’s collective nose as a means of obscuring the real policy of keeping American troops in Iraq permanently as a way of securing oil reserves and projecting US power and in the region.

But antiwar people are “rising to the bait” because it is intolerable to make U.S. withdrawal contingent on things that Washington cannot control and which are also unlikely to happen in the next several years.  To withdraw as soon as possible is very different from withdrawing as soon as Iraq is stable.  The first implies getting out relatively quickly, while the other creates the possibility of deferring withdrawal indefinitely.  Furthermore, once you have committed to making sure that Iraq is stable before leaving, you have made yourself a hostage to events and to the internal politics of another country.  It gives America’s enemies every incentive to sponsor proxy forces to create chaos in Iraq, which Washington will then feel obliged to quell, and so we will remain bogged down for a decade or more.  Then the longer we stay, the more remote the possibility of leaving becomes, since the advocates of remaining will be able to say, “Not even Obama was willing to risk instability in the region, so why should we do it now in 2029?”  And so we have come full circle, with the very people who denounced defenders of regional stability as despot-lovers urging us to remain in Iraq in perpetuity for the sake of stability, and somehow they have been so successful in their efforts that even the putative antiwar candidate feels compelled to go along.