Republican National Committee: Why Can't Obama Admit the Obvious? The Surge Worked From USA Today

[P]resident Bush's announcement that month that he planned to "surge" more than 20,000 extra U.S. troops intoIraq felt to many critics, including Sen. Barack Obama, like doubling down on failure.

A year and a half later, though, violence is down dramatically and there's a cautious hope that both the U.S. andIraq could achieve an outcome once seemed out of reach.

The surge didn't do all of that; a cease-fire by Shiite militias and the switch by Sunni insurgents from attacking Americans to fighting al-Qaeda helped enormously. But the extra U.S. troops, brilliantly deployed by Gen. David Petraeus, have made a huge difference in calming the chaos. In doing so, it also contributed to the other developments.

Why then can't Obama bring himself to acknowledge the surge worked better than he and other skeptics, including this page, thought it would? What does that stubbornness say about the kind of president he'd be? ...

Even knowing the outcome, he told CBS News Tuesday, he still wouldn't have supported the idea. ...

The great irony, of course, is that the success of the surge has made Obama's plan to withdraw combat troops in 16 months far more plausible than when he proposed it. Another irony is that while Obama downplays the effectiveness of the surge inIraq, he is urging a similar tactic now inAfghanistan. ...

Perhaps it's too much to ask that Obama risk being taunted by headlines such as "Obama says Bush was right." ...

Americans don't expect their president to be right all the time. They do expect him to change course when he's proved wrong.

To View The Entire Article, Please Visit: http://blogs.usatoday.com/oped/2008/07/our-view-on-ira.html#more

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