Page Turner, Real Economic Pivot?

01 September 2010 |permalink | email article

President Obama, in his prime-time address to the nation from the Oval Office, declared an end to the seven-year war in Iraq, saying that the United States had met its responsibilities and that “now, it’s time to turn the page” and address the urgent task of fixing the economy and other pressing domestic concerns at home. But he emphasized that with the combat mission over “our commitment to Iraq’s future in not.” But suppose a civil war erupts?

It was a remarkable sight to see Obama addressing the nation from the same desk where President Bush, in a “shock and awe” moment, announced the beginning of the conflict, and the miles traveled since the Iraq war began. When the Army’s Third Infantry Division on March 3, 2003 first rolled over the border from Kuwait, Obama was a state senator from Illinois convinced that the conflict was a mistake in the first place.

Obama noted that unfortunately over the past decade the U.S. has not done enough to shore up its own prosperity: spending over a trillion dollars at war, much financed by borrowing from overseas; shortchanging investments in our own people, and contributing to record deficits. The result: putting off tough decisions on everything from a manufacturing base to an energy policy to education reform.

Obama insisted that the transition to Afghan responsibility will begin next July, with troop reductions to be determined by conditions on the ground. But an unnamed adviser to the president told the New York Times that Obama sees the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan as “problems that need managing” even as he pursues his mission of transforming U.S. domestic concerns. Over there it’s a no-win situation, and a daunting challenge here.

Iraq insight from the front lines

“We could not know then, though if we had been wiser we might have guessed, the scale of the toll the invasion would unleash: the tens of thousands of Iraqi civilians who would die; the nearly 4,500 American soldiers who would be killed; the nearly 35,000 soldiers who would return home wounded; the hundreds of thousands of Iraqis who would flee abroad as refugees; the $750 billion in direct war costs that would burden the United States; the bitterness that would seep into American politics; the anti-Americanism that would become commonplace around the world.” – John F. Burns, the New York Times’s senior foreign correspondent, covered the months leading up to the war in Iraq in 2002 and 2003 from Saddam’s Iraq, and was Baghdad bureau chief from 2004 to 2007. 

California politics

Carly Fiorina’s U.S. Senate bid gets a boost from possible Republican colleagues. Sen. John McCain hosted a fundraiser Monday, and freshman Sen. Scott Brown headlines an event Thursday in Newport Beach. Fiorina critics, the Sacramento Bee noted, cited the McCain event, pointing out that the fired Hewlett-Packard CEO was sidelined as a McCain surrogate in the 2008 presidential campaign after her comments about the ticket not being fit to run a company created a firestorm. 

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