by Mike Dorning
Barack Obama barely got his moment with Gen. David Petraeus and U.S. Ambassador to Iraq in time to make the evening news today.
But his few minutes of questioning time offered a glimpse of what an Obama Administration might expect to achieve in Iraq: “a messy, sloppy status quo.”
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“When you have finite resources, you’ve got to define your goals tightly and modestly,” Obama counseled the general and the ambassador, who spent the day vigorously defending the Bush Administration’s surge policy in Iraq before Congress.
“The problem I have is if the definition of success is so high,” Obama said, ticking off Bush Administration goals such as establishment of a multi-ethnic multi-sectarian functioning democracy and elimination of Iranian influence, “then that portends the possibility of us staying for 20 or 30 years.
“If on the other hand, our criteria is a messy, sloppy status quo,” he continued, “there’s not, you know, huge outbreaks of violence; there’s still corruption, but the country’s struggling along but it’s not a threat to its neighbors and it’s not an al Qaeda base–that seems, to me, an achievable goal within a measurable time frame.”
And that may very well be how a President Obama would measure success in Iraq.