In the coming week, while Lindsey Graham and Joe Lieberman push for a vote on a resolution recognizing the success of the surge, Vets for Freedom will be running this ad. Will Barack Obama sign-on? Based on his interview with George Stephanopolous that aired Sunday on This Week, it’s not clear. On This Week Obama seemed to back away from his 9/11/2007 statement that the main progress in Iraq didn’t have “anything to do with the surge.” He told Stephanopolous: “I do think that there has been enormous reductions in violence because of the extraordinary service of our troops, and there is no doubt that the improvements in terms of violence has to do with the surge and the Sunni awakening, the Shia militia standing down.” But pressed on whether he had made the right decision to oppose the surge, Obama said: “If the question is, has the surge done much better than we expected in combination with these other factors–in reducing violence and these other factors–the answer is yes, and I’ve said this repeatedly.” Recall that Obama expected the surge would lead to greater violence. By that standard, even a modest reduction in violence would be “much better than [he] expected.” Worse still, Obama seemed to cling to his belief that the surge didn’t lead to political progress. He said that the surge strategy “did not address the underlying problem, which is the willingness of the Iraqis to overcome their differences and reconcile.”
