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Grading the Candidates' War SpeechesObama's was flawed; McCain's is a bit of a fantasy.

By Fred KaplanPosted Wednesday, July 16, 2008, at 2:49 PM ET

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Christopher Beam explained why the McCain camp welcomes attacks on the candidate's war record. Jacob Weisberg charted the four things no politician can say about the Iraq war. Anne Applebaum considered how recent campaign trends might point to the growing importance of foreign policy in U.S. presidential elections.

However, McCain gets a demerit for resorting to a "tried and true" cop-out. He says he will name an "Afghanistan czar"—a "highly respected national security leader, based in the White House and reporting directly to the president." He'll also appoint "a special presidential envoy to address disputes between Afghanistan and its neighbors."

A czar and an envoy—two classic enablers of executive evasion for the same war!

Czars—an energy czar, a drug czar, even President George W. Bush's Iraq czar—have famously been devices that allow presidents to shunt responsibility to an "expert." Envoys, on the other hand, can be helpful, even vital, as in the Middle East (under the first President Bush and President Bill Clinton), where what's needed is someone to mediate tactical disputes and put out brushfires. We're not at that point yet in Afghanistan and its environs. What's needed there now is a policy. Again, that's for presidents.

On the Iraq war, the difference between the two candidates is clear. McCain's position: We've won, our enemies are on the run, we need to stay there to make them run faster. There is no talk of withdrawing any troops beyond the five surge brigades that left this month. There is no sense that the continued presence of the 150,000 remaining troops constitute a diversion from other missions, a monstrous drain on scarce resources, or an occupation force that—while very useful in some respects—enables the Iraqi government to avoid coming to grips with internal political clashes and keeps moderate neighbors from offering assistance out of a reluctance to associate themselves with us.

Nor does McCain so much as hint at a pledge not to seek "permanent bases"—a pledge that a) would go a long way toward ameliorating worries about American intentions (it is still commonly believed that we went to war strictly for the oil); and b) doesn't even demand that much compromise, since "permanent," taken literally, is a status that a president can safely forsake, even if he really means to stay there for many decades.

Obama's speech on Iraq does all the things that McCain's does not. But some passages suggest that he either underestimates the difficulties of some of his proposals or doesn't understand their full implications.

For instance, Obama states that setting a timetable for withdrawal "pushes Iraq's leaders toward a political solution." Maybe, but it might also push them into their corners to prepare for the coming civil war. What if it does the latter? Will Obama postpone the departure?

Second, when he talks about redeploying combat troops, he adds that he'll keep "residual forces" to "perform specific missions" in Iraq—going after remnants of al-Qaida, protecting the U.S. diplomats and troops that remain, and "training and supporting" Iraq's security forces, "so long as the Iraqis make political progress." That last phrase is a nice touch; it suggests that Obama takes the word benchmark seriously—if they make progress, we'll continue to help them; but if they don't, we won't. More broadly, though, going after jihadists in Iraq is a mission that requires combat troops. A case can be made that it also involves keeping the counterinsurgency mission going, at least to some extent, because the best way to track and hunt down the jihadists is to secure the population, some of whom might then give our troops intelligence. Obama's "residual forces" could, in other words, be a lot larger than he thinks.

On broader foreign-policy aims, McCain doesn't say much, except to emphasize his experience and judgment. On the former, he says, "I know how to win wars," though it's unclear where he obtained this knowledge—certainly not from his time in Vietnam. On the latter, he stresses that he had the good judgment to support the surge, which Obama opposed. For his part, Obama has long claimed the good judgment to oppose the invasion in the first place, which McCain supported. (You pick which stance reflects wisdom.)

Obama devotes the first part of his speech to the larger issues—many of which involve rebuilding alliances to battle common threats—and he invokes as his models George Marshall, Dean Acheson, and George Kennan. In recent interviews, he's also tipped his hat to Colin Powell, Brent Scowcroft, and Robert Gates. In other words, this is a traditional Realist—though, in the context of the past eight years, this brand of traditionalism marks a radical departure. Where McCain comes out along the Realist/Neocon spectrum isn't clear. He's taken positions, and consorted with advisers, that go both ways. Lately, he's avoided saying one thing or another that might clarify the mystery.

In either case, both speeches indicate that the next president, whoever he is, will spend a lot of time—and really a lot of money—on foreign policy, probably more time and money than most Americans would prefer. That will be the big question: whether either of them can convince the public that it's necessary.