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07 Apr 2008 01:39 pm

A Bet

Bainbridge offers a deal:

I think a lot of conservatives otherwise puzzling support for Barack Obama’s presidential campaign can be explained for the most part by those conservatives’ opposition to the Iraq war. See, e.g., Andrew Sullivan and Doug Kmiec. So I’ll offer them a long bet: If Obama wins and pulls all US combat troops out of Iraq by the end of June 2010, they win. If Obama wins and there’s 50,000 or more US combat troops in Iraq at the end of December 2010, I win. Anything in the middle and bet’s off. Deal?

No deal. I certainly hope that we have fewer than 50,000 troops in Iraq by the end of 2010, but no one can predict these things. The question is a more complicated one: who will be best able to extricate the US from Iraq as prudently and as carefully as possible: McCain or Obama? What does each see as the point of the mission at this point? And how do their plans reflect those goals? We know the big difference: one was a champion of the war at the start, the other opposed it. In some ways, McCain is better poised to get us out quickly with less domestic resistance, on the Nixon/China analogy, than Obama. But will he? Right now, he's talking like a "'white flag' or 'victory'" neocon.

The one thing I do know is that Clinton would be paralyzed. Unable to withdraw swiftly for fear of looking like a "weak" leader, and unable to unite the country behind staying, a president Clinton would mean the status quo in Iraq indefinitely. She is tough when resisting attacks; she has never been tough and effective in forging difficult new policy. On that score, she is merely ideological and brittle and unpersuasive. Like Bush.

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