Obama Advisors Present Conflicting Plans on Iraq

The battle for Barack Obama's mind on the issue of getting out of Iraq unfolded in public (last week), as two members of his Iraq advisory task force presented conflicting versions of what to do about the Bush Administration's nation-wrecking program in that country.

The scene was the second annual meeting of the Center for a New American Security, a center-right Democratic think tank whose luminaries include Madeleine Albright and William Perry, secretaries of state and defense under Bill Clinton, and a host of other foreign policy wonks.

The two speakers were Colin Kahl, who chairs the task force and who works at CNAS, and Brian Katulis, a member of Obama's task force and a thinker-in-residence at the Center for American Progress. Neither Kahl nor Katulis was speaking for Obama, but the stark conflict in their views says something important about the differing opinions Obama may be getting from inside his team.

Kahl is one of the authors of CNAS' new report, "Shaping the Iraq Inheritance," which proposes a policy called "conditional engagement" for Iraq that would leave a large contingent of American forces in Iraq for several years, and which would make America's presence in Iraq contingent on political progress in Iraq toward reconciliation among the country's ethnic and sectarian groups and parties. Katulis is an author of CAP's Iraq plan, "Strategic Reset," and other studies that propose to withdraw all U.S. forces from Iraq, except for a small force to protect the American embassy. Katulis' CAP plan also suggests a halt in the U.S. training of Iraqi government forces, while Kahl and CNAS want to continue to train the Iraqi security forces long after U.S. combat forces are withdrawn.

Appearing together on a panel at CNAS yesterday, Kahl and Katulis presented a stark contrast.

Kahl criticized Katulis' plan, implicitly, by putting it in a category he calls "unconditional disengagement." In his paper, Kahl describes that as a "pledge to unconditionally disengage from Iraq by withdrawing all troops on a fixed, unilateral timetable." His plan, "conditional engagement," would "negotiate a time horizon for U.S. redeployment as a means of pushing Iraqi leaders toward accommodation and galvanizing regional efforts to stabilize Iraq." In its reports, CNAS has proposed leaving several tens of thousands of American forces in Iraq. In (last week)'s presentation, Kahl showed a slide that defines the U.S. military mission in Iraq, after combat forces are withdrawn, to include "counter-terrorism, force protection, train, advise and provide critical enablers for the [Iraqi security forces]." The withdrawal of these forces is "to be determined, based on conditions."

Katulis, responding to Kahl, said that what CNAS is proposing "sounds very close to what the Bush Administration is doing," adding that there was "not a real strong difference" between Kahl's plan and the White House's plan.

Also on the panel was General (ret.) Jack Keane, a crusty old military man who seemed oblivious to the unfolding catastrophe in Iraq. "We can talk about winning in Iraq," said Keane. "I am convinced we will win in Iraq."

Keane cavalierly dismissed the military importance of the two biggest armed movements in Iraq that might oppose both the United States and Maliki's regime: the Mahdi Army and the Sons of Iraq.

He said that Muqtada al-Sadr, the rebel cleric whose Mahdi Army is a powerful force in Baghdad and Iraq's south, is weakening. "Sadr has been marginalized politically by [Prime Minister] Maliki," he said, even though few Iraq experts would be winning to dismiss Sadr as a player -- especially since Sadr is leading the nationalist opposition to the Bush Administration's plan to establish a treaty formalizing the U.S. occupation of Iraq this summer.