Obama and Hillary Spin a 'Big Lie' About Iraq

By Joshua Holland, AlterNet. Posted April 5, 2008.

The cable news networks are happy to spend hours on the latest silly campaign squabble but can't bring themselves to point out the plain fact that the two Democratic nominees are lying, blatantly, to the American people about one of the most important issues facing the country today.

On the stump, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama are crystal clear in their rhetoric about Iraq. In a statement released on the occasion of the 4,000th U.S. combat death in Iraq, Clinton said, "I have made [a] promise. And I intend to honor it by bringing a responsible end to this war, and bringing our troops home safely." Not to be outdone, the Obama campaign piped in with an even more definitive statement: "It is past time to end this war that should never have been waged by bringing our troops home."

On the campaign trail, the two candidates often speak of bringing the troops home and ending the war, and Democratic primary voters, 80 percent of whom want U.S. troops out of Iraq within 12 months, reward them with boisterous applause.

It's a Big Lie, and everyone who follows the debates over U.S. policy towards Iraq knows it, but refuses to call the candidates on it. Both Clinton and Obama (PDF) have been very clear -- in the fine print -- about the fact that they will leave a significant number of "residual forces" in Iraq, albeit with a more limited mission than the Bush administration has pursued. They would protect U.S. infrastructure and personnel -- Obama says "the U.S. embassy" -- train Iraqi forces and retain a rapid-response force to conduct "limited counter-terrorism" missions.

Although the candidates refuse to specify the exact scope and length of that mission, independent analysts say that it would require at least 40,000 and as many as 75,000 soldiers and marines. When one looks at the big picture, the end game appears to be a significant draw-down of troops -- with as many as 100,000 sent home or redeployed to Afghanistan, where thin NATO troops are struggling to contain a re-emergent Taliban -- calling a halt to most combat operations and patrols, and dismantling most or all U.S. bases outside of Baghdad.

They would, however, maintain the infrastructure of the U.S. occupation and provide the forces necessary to do so. As the Nation's Jeremy Scahill told Amy Goodman,

Both [candidates] intend to keep the Green Zone intact. Both of them intend to keep the current U.S. embassy project, which is slated to be the largest embassy in the history of the world ... And they're also going to keep open the Baghdad airport indefinitely.

Calling the massive campus the United States is building in Baghdad an "embassy" is somewhat misleading. The Associated Press described it as a "fortresslike compound rising beside the Tigris River ... the largest of its kind in the world, the size of Vatican City, with the population of a small town, its own defense force, self-contained power and water, and a precarious perch at the heart of Iraq's turbulent future."

Obama and Clinton have co-sponsored legislation that would increase accountability for the 180,000 security contractors -- some authorized to carry weapons and use deadly force -- that have run around Iraq largely unaccountable under U.S. and Iraqi laws and the military justice system (Clinton only did so after coming under pressure from human rights and other activists). Creating accountability is a positive step, but neither Clinton nor Obama have said that they would discontinue the use of mercenaries and other private contractors in Iraq.

There is a mile-wide gap between the Democrats' analysis of the war and that of John McCain, and that's evident in the candidates' rhetoric. Those differences are significant, in that they would lead to very different political climates in which the issue would be debated after the election.

But all three candidates have embraced the Catch-22 that assures our enduring presence in Iraq. It can be summed up like this: U.S. forces must remain in Iraq as long as an active insurgency contributes to its instability, and an active insurgency will continue to create instability until the United States makes a commitment to a full withdrawal.

Having accepted that narrative, the sad reality is that the Democratic candidates' Iraq policies differ only incrementally from that of John McCain, or from the long-term "cooperation agreement" Bush is attempting to negotiate with the Iraqi government his administration installed in Baghdad.

McCain, like Bush, speaks only in the vaguest terms about drawing down troops "as the Iraqis stand up," but, short of implementing a draft, a president McCain would have little choice but to make significant cuts to our current troop levels. So, the difference between the Democratic and Republican candidates is one of numbers, rather than approaches. John McCain will likely draw down fewer troops than the Democrats would, and would have them continue to patrol the streets of Iraq. But all of the presidential candidates share similar assumptions about the United States playing a central role in Iraqi affairs moving forward -- all will retain the infrastructure of the occupation for the foreseeable future.

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Joshua Holland is an AlterNet staff writer.

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