Obama's Iraq speech: a salute, not a victory lap

Adam Serwer of the American Prospect is guest blogging on The Plum Line this week.

The message the White House wants you to take away from President Obama's Iraq speech last night is that the president is respectful and grateful for the troops' sacrifice. In hindsight, it was probably a mistake to view this speech through an ideological prism -- while the president made sure to remind everyone that he kept his campaign promise to end the war, most of the speech was focused on honoring those who fought it.

That's appropriate. While much of the public discourse recently has focused on whether the president has done enough to inspire or placate his base, the end of combat operations in Iraq was not the right time to emphasize that Iraq was a "dumb war" that he opposed from the beginning. It was not a time to say I told you so.

Conversely, while conservatives are busy angrily denouncing the president for not giving more credit to Bush for implementing the surge -- by which they mean not acknowledging that conservatives were right -- that wouldn't have been appropriate either. This speech was about the commitment of those who actually served, not the better part of valor displayed by those who sat in front of their keyboards and hammered out empirical or ideological arguments for or against the war.

That's not to say that the speech was devoid of politics. Obama's style of politics is to pretend he's above politics, and this speech fits that mold. But the biggest reason not to rehash the argument over going to war in Iraq is that he won it already. It's part of why he's president. Obama doesn't need to convince the American people that the war in Iraq was a mistake, because a majority of Americans already believe that. Conservatives want to reargue the war from 2007 onward, but treating the Iraq war as though it began with the surge is a bit like running over someone on the street, backing up over the body a few times, and then demanding a special merit badge for finally deciding to call 911. And as I wrote yesterday, this still isn't really over.

The most disappointing part of the speech was that the president failed to acknowledge the suffering of the Iraqi people as a result of the war. Doing so would not have diminished his tribute towards American servicemembers, but it would have been a helpful reminder that treating the rest of the world like a game of RISK has real human consequences. Unlike the president's refusal to reargue the war, his failure to acknowledge the suffering of Iraqi civilians -- more than an estimated 100,000 of whom died as a result -- is an inexcusable omission.

For more Post opinions on Obama's speech, read Richard Cohen's A speech without a theme, Michael Gerson's Historic moment, forgettable speech and Eugene Robinson's Obama's gravitas was great.