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On foreign policy, Obama and McCain far apart
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Foreign Influences Both Barack Obama and John McCain spent a significant portion of their lives overseas. In their memoirs, both candidates say their experiences shaped their views of the United States and the world at large. Barack Obama Obama was born in Hawaii in 1961 and moved to Indonesia in 1967 with his mother and stepfather, a native of the Asian nation. He remained in Indonesia until 1971, when he returned to Hawaii to live with his grandmother until he left for college in California. He relates his years in Indonesia in his book, "Dreams from My Father." "It had taken me less than six months to learn Indonesia's language, its customs, and its legends...The children of farmers, servants and low-level bureaucrats had become my best friends, and together we ran the streets morning and night...That's how things were, one long adventure, the bounty of a young boy's life." He realized quickly that many people had harder lives than his. "There were the empty looks on the faces of farmers the year the rains never came, the stoop in their shoulders as they wandered barefoot through their cracked barren fields." He took this lesson away: "The world was violent, I was learning, unpredictable and often cruel." John McCain McCain was born overseas in 1936, in the Panama Canal Zone where his father was stationed at a naval base. A pilot in Vietnam, McCain was shot down in 1967 and was a prisoner of war until 1973. His North Vietnamese captors subjected him to brutal beatings and he was held in isolation for long periods. "In prison, I fell in love with my country," McCain wrote in his book, "Faith of My Fathers." "I loved what I missed most from my life at home: my family and friends; the sights and sounds of my country, the hustle and purposefulness of Americans, their fervid independence; sports; music; information - all the attractive qualities of American life." "But though I longed for the things at home I cherished the most, I still shared the ideals of America. And since those ideals were all that I possessed of my country, they became all the more important to me." On Other Hot Spots Iran Both Obama and McCain say the possibility of Iran developing nuclear weapons poses a great threat to U.S. interests in the Middle East and elsewhere. But the candidates are at odds over how best to address the problem. McCain wants tougher economic sanctions, while leaving open the possibility of an attack against Iran. Obama favors more direct diplomatic discussions with Iran. Afghanistan With violence and terrorist activity in Afghanistan on the rise, both McCain and Obama have called for more American troops in that country. Obama wants to shift troops from Iraq to Afghanistan to achieve that goal, while McCain does not. -Sean Mussenden |
Published: August 1, 2008
Few issues divide John McCain and Barack Obama like the war in Iraq.
Before the invasion, Obama was an outspoken opponent of the war, McCain one of its strongest supporters. Last year, they disagreed on the Bush administration's decision to increase troop levels, and to this day differ on whether the "surge" has been a success.
Going forward, they are at odds over when and how to bring the troops home.
JOHN MCCAIN
Eleven days after the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003, McCain went on NBC's "Meet the Press" and declared: "I believe that this conflict is still going to be relatively short."
"We're going to prevail and we will win and it'll be one of the best things that's happened to America and the world in a long time 'cause it'll reverberate throughout the Middle East," he predicted.
When the war continued, and the situation in Iraq deteriorated between 2003 and 2007, McCain shifted gears, becoming one of the most outspoken Republican critics of former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's post-invasion strategy.
"It aggrieves me so much that we have not told the American people how tough and difficult this task would be," he said on "Meet the Press" in 2006. "All along, we have not had enough troops on the ground to control the situation. Many, many people knew that and it's--we're paying a very heavy price for it."
In 2006, when many Democrats were calling for a quick exit, McCain urged the administration to send in more troops. In 2007, the administration began deploying an additional 30,000 troops that have been credited with helping to stabilize the country.
As security improved over the last year, McCain has frequently touted his early backing of the surge.
"I supported that. I argued for it. I'm the only one on this stage that did," months before Bush enacted the plan, McCain said at a crowded Republican debate in Myrtle Beach in January.
McCain gives the surge far more credit for the reduction in violence than does Obama. And unlike Obama, he has refused to set a timetable for withdrawal, calling it "a date for surrender."
He argues that doing so would simply allow al-Qaida fighters in Iraq and sectarian militias to wait to restart fighting after the bulk of U.S. troops leave.
He also argues that a rigid withdrawal plan would prevent military commanders from changing strategy should violence increase.
Though he has declined to set a withdrawal date, McCain has on several occasions estimated when he thinks the bulk of U.S. troops will leave Iraq. In May, he said he thought it would happen by 2013.
But last week, after Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki appeared to endorse Obama's plan to pull out troops by 2010, McCain said he thought it could happen by 2010, quickly adding, "of course, as we all know, it has to be based on conditions on the ground."
"When you win wars, troops come home. And we are winning," he said.
Michael O'Hanlon, a foreign policy fellow at the Brookings Institution, a non-partisan think tank, said that a guiding principle for McCain is once the United States enters a war, it must not leave without winning.
"He opposed the Kosovo war. But once it was underway, unlike most of his fellow Republicans, he was adamant that 'we're in it so we have to win it'," O'Hanlon said.
"Clearly, he has a very, very strong inclination to think that the United States invests a lot of prestige and lives and other assets when it goes to war, making success extremely important," he said.
BARACK OBAMA
Six months before President Bush ordered the military into Iraq, Obama, then an Illinois state senator, took the stage at an anti-war rally in Chicago in fall 2002 and said the president's case for invasion was flawed.
"I don't oppose all war," Obama said, according to contemporary media accounts. "I oppose dumb war."
As the situation in Iraq deteriorated between 2003 and 2007, Obama repeatedly criticized the administration's post-invasion occupation plan, saying it had created an breeding ground for anti-American terrorists.
He repeatedly called for the Bush administration to end the occupation of Iraq. Instead, in 2007, the administration responded to worsening violence by sending more than 30,000 additional troops.
Obama opposed the surge, which has been credited for helping to quell violence in the country over the last year.
After traveling to Iraq earlier this week, Obama acknowledged that the troop increase had helped stabilize the country. But he argued that the surge, which he still opposes, was only one of several factors that led to the reduction in violence over the last year.
"I am pleased that as a consequence of great effort by our troops, but also as a consequence of a shift in allegiances among the Sunni tribal leaders as well as the decision of the Sadr militias to stand down, that we've seen a quelling of the violence," he said Tuesday at a news conference in Jordan.
And though the surge has improved security in the country, he said it had thus far failed to promote "political reconciliation and economic development that's necessary for long term stability in Iraq."
"There is security progress - now we need a political solution," he said.
That will only happen, he argued, when the vast majority of U.S. troops are removed.
Obama says that as president he will begin a "phased withdrawal" of troops, pulling one to two brigades out per month for 16 months, until only a small counter-terrorism force remains. He has said his timetable of having most troops out by mid-2010 could change depending on events.
His general plan was endorsed last week by Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki. But U.S. military commanders, including Gen. David Petraeus, oppose the timetable.
Obama said he would listen to the advice of military commanders in deciding whether to stick to the timetable, even if he did not always heed it.
"One of General Petraeus' responsibilities is not to think about how could we be using some of that $10 billion a month (the country spends in Iraq) to shore up a U.S. economy that is really hurting right now. If I'm president of the United States, that is part of my responsibility," he said.
In addition to their strategic differences, the two candidates place different levels of importance on the relative importance of Iraq, said Robert McMahon, deputy editor of CFR.org, the Web site of the Council on Foreign Relations.
"McCain sees Iraq as a much more central front in the struggle against terrorism, whereas Obama sees Afghanistan as the more important front," said McMahon, who has conducted extensive analyses of the candidates' foreign policy positions.
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