Obama-Keyes: on War & Peace

Alan Keyes: Needed greater effort to bring in others to Iraq

A: There could have been a greater effort, over the beginning of our efforts there, to bring in others. I would have brought others in on the political side of the equation, to help deal with the business of putting together an Iraqi government. That could still be done. But, it’s absolutely imperative that we keep the security dimensions of the Iraqi war under the control of the US, so that we can make sure that Iraq does not become a base for terrorist activity, that we are able to make sure a government does not come to power that will aid and abet terrorism, that we are able to do what’s necessary to prevent weapons of mass destruction from falling into the hands of terrorists. Those national security goals are the proper goals of our effort, and we ought to be looking to the Iraqi people and to the international community to help deal with the political dimensions of establishing a stable government there.

Alan Keyes: War on Terror requires both intelligence and discretion

Barack Obama: Saddam did not own and was not providing WMD to terrorists

Barack Obama: Initial military was extraordinarily successful in Iraq

A: The initial military was extraordinarily successful in moving into Iraq, and it exceeded all expectations, even those of us who expected the military to be successful were stunned and impressed by how efficient our military and our brave fighting forces were in executing it. But missing 380 tons of explosives being used on roadside bombs is an enormous error, particularly when the Bush administration had been warned by the Atomic Energy Commission. Keyes has suggested that somehow I’m naive to question how we’ve gone about this war in Iraq. It strikes me that the Bush administration has been naive throughout. It was naive to think that we’d be greeted as liberators in Iraq. It’s been naive in thinking that somehow this would actually diminish recruitment for terrorism. In fact, it’s accelerated it. It’s been naive with respect to how difficult it’s gonna be to secure the peace, and our troops and our taxpayers are suffering from those errors.

Alan Keyes: Troops should stay in Iraq until they get the job done

A: They stay there until they get the job done. Kerry is preoccupied with an exit strategy, but if you get into a battle and the only thing you’re thinking about is how to get out, I think we have a word for you-and it’s not very complimentary. We are engaged in a war against terror that was started by the terrorists, that claimed the lives of thousands of Americans, that involves a global infrastructure of insidious individuals. We have seen the work they do against innocent lives in the most bestial fashion possible. To fight that war, it is not sufficient to have rhetoric, it is not sufficient to react after the fact. You have got to preemptively move against their bases, against their sources of supply, against their training camps, against the states the provide them with safe haven and infrastructure. If you do not, then they will simply prepare for further attacks.

Alan Keyes: Preemptive strike in Iraq is a right decision

Alan Keyes: There is no distinction between Afghanistan and Iraq

A: There is not. One of the problems with folks who haven’t really had much experience in dealing with terror is that they don’t understand that we are in fact faced with a global infrastructure. Saddam was providing, for instance, payments to the families of suicide bombers who were moving against the Israelis. Bin Laden made it very clear he was doing so on behalf of, he said, the Palestinians and their cause. All of this suggests is the reality that we are not dealing with discrete elements here. We are dealing with a single war that has a front in Afghanistan, a front in Iraq that has a covert series of fronts that we don’t hear much about, but in which our people are presumably going after the cadre of terror, that has a financial front & other fronts. To deal with this as if we’re dealing with discrete little episodes is to show that you have no real understanding of the danger that we face.

Alan Keyes: Bush didn’t have the wisdom of hindsight in the Iraqi War

KEYES: That’s the fallacy, because you did make an argument just then from the wisdom of hindsight, based on conclusions reached now which were not in Bush’s hands several months ago when he had to make this decision.

Barack Obama: Terrorists are in Saudi Arabia, Syria, and Iran

KEYES: That’s the fallacy, because you did make an argument just then from the wisdom of hindsight, based on conclusions reached now which were not in Bush’s hands several months ago when he had to make this decision.

Barack Obama: Invading Iraq was a bad strategic blunder

Barack Obama: We must make sure that Iraq is stable having gone in there

A: The War on Terror has to be vigorously fought. Where we part company is how to fight it, because Afghanistan in fact was not a preemptive war, it was a war launched directly against those who were responsible for 9/11. Iraq was a preemptive war based on faulty evidence-and I say that not in hindsight, or Monday-morning quarterbacking. Six months before the war was launched, I questioned the evidence that would lead to us being there. Now, us having gone in there, we have a deep national security interest in making certain that Iraq is stable. If not, not only are we going to have a humanitarian crisis, we are also going to have a huge national security problem on our hands-because, ironically, it has become a hotbed of terrorists as a consequence, in part, of our incursion there. In terms of timetable, I’m not somebody who can say with certainty that a year from now or six months from now we’re going to be able to pull down troops.

Barack Obama: Advance the training speed and get the reconstruction moving

We have to do three things in Iraq.
1. We have to advance the speed with which we are training Iraqi troops and security forces so that they can stabilize the country, and that’s going to require our help.
2. But it’s also going to require the help of the international community, which is why we have to internationalize this process. I’m under no illusions that the Germans and the French are going to be sending troops in any time soon, but we can get them to put more resources into the training and infrastructure required to secure the Iraqi borders and the Iraqi streets.
3. Finally, it’s important that we get our reconstruction moving. The reconstruction process that has taken place has been completely inept. And that’s not simply my estimation, that’s the estimation of the two ranking Republican Senators on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, who issued a blistering attack on the Bush administration. Highly unusual and it indicates how badly botched this job has been.

Barack Obama: Democratizing Iraq will be more difficult than Afghanistan

A: It is an absolutely hopeful sign for the people of Afghanistan. As I have stated unequivocally, I have always thought that we did the right thing in Afghanistan. My only concerns with respect to Afghanistan was that we diverted our attention from Afghanistan in terms of moving into Iraq, and I think would could have done a better job of stabilizing that country than we have in providing assistance to the Afghani people. All of us should be rooting for the Afghani people & making sure that we are providing them the support to make things happen. With respect to Iraq, it’s going to be a tougher play. I don’t think any of us should be rooting for failure in Iraq at this point. This is no longer Bush’s war, this is our war, and we all have a stake in it.