The war's reach on the Obama-McCain battlefield at home

President Bush's announcement this morning that he will be withdrawing 8,000 troops from Iraq highlights the dilemma he is causing Barack Obama and the Democratic presidential campaign.

It was almost predictable.

The more he does to take the Iraq war off the front page -- and remember, it was the war, more than anything else, that propelled Obama's rise through the Democratic presidential field -- the more the president does to clear the playing field for John McCain and the Republican campaign to dictate the elements of the political debate.

While neither the Iraq war nor the war in Afghanistan appears to be emerging "as a defining issue of contention between the candidates," the BBC notes, the announcement of troop withdrawals from Iraq helps McCain argue that he was correct in advocating a "surge" of troops when the president opted for that course in January 2007.

And, Adam Brookes of BBC News in Washington writes, Bush's announcement that some 4,000 soldiers and Marines will be headed for Afghanistan is unlikely to have more than a "limited direct impact on the race," because Obama has been arguing that "Iraq distracted the US from the more pressing business of Afghanistan."

So, even as he keeps a distance from the political battlefield, the president's battlefield maneuvers nonetheless touch the politics back home.

-- James Gerstenzang

Photo credit: Ali Yussef / AFP / Getty Images

Comments

[Allan H. Clark]

The important question is not how the President's action affects the election, but how it affects the situation in Iraq. When he leaves office there will be 138,000 troops there, just about the same number as before the surge (135,000).

Will this be enough to keep the peace which the surge has established? That is all that can be hoped. The Iraqi government has not reconciled the warring forces in the country or shown itself able to protect the people. Without drawing more troops from Iraq, there will not be enough to control the situation in Afghanistan.

It seems that we have reached the best conditions we can hope for in Iraq and have decided to let Afghanistan fall apart.

This is not the victory Bush promised or the victory McCain insists we must have, it is a stalemate that could drag on for decades without resolution.

[kathleen]

So George Bush and the execrable Republicans are manipulating war policy (and, let us just remember, the lives of our soldiers and the unfortunate Iraqis and Afghans) in order to help the candidacy of John McCain. What a surprise. And yet we giggle and scoff when Russia suggests exactly the same thing is going on in the Georgia theater.
These people have no honor and no shame--EVERYTHING is politics to them. They perceive no difference, as far as I can tell, between the fortunes of the Republican party and those of the country.

[Fred Ouma]

A victory in Iraq? Who was US' enemy? Was it Sadam or Weapons of Mass Destructions (WMD)? Did we get any? Yes, Bush can say the former? But what did Sadam do to the US? Perhaps, Bush and Cheney have the same answer--oil? So who is still hiding WMD in Iraq? Can the world be assured when they will be discovered so we can all celenrate McCain's 'win in Iraq'! Simply put, there is no victory where there was not enemy. US is its own enemy in Iraq. This means McCain's intended win is against his country. If doubt this then show me US' real enemy in Iraq?

[Drei]

Senseless. Take the troops back home. stop the killings. stop the pain. this is a stupid war after all. what else do you want? you took hundreds of thousands to millions of lives, spent almost six hundred trillion US dollars, brought fear to the children of these people, ruined lives, separated families, installed hatred in search of your so-called justice (its just your pride!)