Obama's Obligatory Speech on Iraq

There's been so much talk lately about substance. Barack Obama's rousing and inspiring oratories about change, change, change, make people ask, change to what? Take Iraq. When pressed recently on 60 Minutes about withdrawing troops by 2009, Obama didn't flinch. "Absolutely," he said, "I think now is precisely the time."

The decision is weighted with more dire facts than any single man or woman can comprehend, yet it is the single most important question facing the country.

Should he keep his word, what follows would be his 7 p.m. television address, the first Monday evening after he takes office.

"My fellow Americans, I talk to you this January evening with both serious concern as well as great hope. Early in my campaign for the presidency, I often said that I would tell you not what you want to hear, but what you need to hear. Now that moment has come.

"I promised you that I would begin withdrawing our troops from Iraq, and I will keep that promise. This decision weighs heavily on me, as it does on you, because once we leave, there will be more violence. There is a chance that the entire region, as it is said, could fall into war. Yet, staying any longer, remaining party to the anguished and centuries-old conflicts that ignite such hatreds is no longer our place.

"The state of our finances at home, in Washington, in your state capital, likely even in your local government, is in disarray. As uncertainty in Iraq and the Middle East escalates with our withdrawal, the price of oil will likely rise, only complicating matters further. What I propose might at first sound counterintuitive. I want to keep budgeting for about 70% of the $160 billion we're spending in Iraq each year. Undoubtedly, this will hurt financially. But where that money goes will put this country on track for another century.

"When John F. Kennedy made his bold declaration in 1961, he said, ‘We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things not because they are easy, but because they are hard.’ And tonight, I declare that in the next decade we will reduce our consumption of oil—across the board—by one half, with a goal of being free from dependence on any kind of oil by the year 2050.

"This is the only way to extricate ourselves from the fiasco of our own creation, and we will do so with apologies and hope for the Iraqi people. Change is a challenging calling. And one from which we no longer have the option of looking away."

Heavy enough?

If this is what it means, and watching John McCain tour Iraq this week, Obama has decisions to make sooner rather than later, for should his position evolve, the progressives, democrats, the left, whatever this discombobulated party calls itself these days, could again cower and end up facing a convention of Republicans waving footwear in the air.

['Obama and the Citizen Press' from flickr.]

Comments

[ohblackman]

Obamma is not going to get to make the iraq speech. He failed the Race speach - and in this bracket it is lose and out.