In response to today’s column, a reader writes:
Wow… I was just saying that I liked the fact that Obama is anti-war. Guess I was wrong. I believe of all the people who have been mentioned in the news as possible ’08 candidates… that he is the least pro war next to Kucinich of Ohio. Unfortunately… only Kucinich has called for an immediate removal of US troops.
The point is not that Obama fails to call for an immediate withdrawal: his position is that he wants to set no deadline, nor even an approximation of one, for Iraqi forces to entirely supplant the U.S. presence.
And we don’t know what other candidates — on the Republican side — might leap into the breach. There’s Chuck Hagel, who was calling for starting the withdrawal process in six months this past August — and don’t forget third party candidates. The idea, after all, is to push the idea of a noninterventionist foreign policy, and not any particular candidate or party.