The View From Here . . .

By Bob Morgan, Jr.

This is written on the final Tuesday of the primary season. As noted last week, the exact nature of the Democratic endgame remains unclear, even though it is virtually certain that Barack Obama will be the party's nominee.

Going forward, a big issue for the Obama campaign is that it will have to deal with the current situation in Iraq in a much more realistic manner than it has so far.

Mr. Obama's dilemma is spelled out in an adroit editorial last Sunday in The Washington Post , a generally liberal newspaper, entitled "The Iraqi Upturn." The editorialists begin, "Don't look now but the U.S.-backed government and army may be winning the war." The paper notes that "military analysts have looked on with astonishment," as the government and army have for the first time taken control of Basra and the Baghdad neighborhood of Sadr City, routing militants and sending them scurrying to Iran. In addition, a joint offensive has been launched in Mosul, the last stronghold of al-Qaeda in Iraq. In the view of the Post, just as the US counterinsurgency effort achieved a turning point last fall by lowering violence and quelling an incipient sectarian war between Sunnis and Shiites, there may now be a second tipping point, with the Iraqi government and army restoring order in almost all of the country.

The paper points out that the improved conditions will probably lead General David Patraeus to recommend a somewhat increased pace of pullouts of American soldiers in the fall and says that Mr. Obama, who favors withdrawing most troops next year, "might be able to responsibly carry out further pullouts next year."

Still, and this is the key point of the editorial, "The likely Democratic nominee needs a plan for Iraq based on sustaining an improving situation, rather than abandoning a failed enterprise. That will mean tying withdrawals to the evolution of the Iraqi army and government, rather than an arbitrary timetable. When Mr. Obama floated his strategy for success in Iraq last year, the United States appeared doomed to defeat. Now he needs a plan for success."

The Washington Post is definitely on to something. While the Obama campaign now seems to recognize that the "surge" in Iraq had the potential to do some good, the campaign's overall thinking has not changed. The campaign website still states that "Obama will immediately begin to remove our troops from Iraq. He will remove one to two combat brigades each month, and have all of our combat brigades out of Iraq within 16 months." This approach seems much more grounded in the reality of 2006, when the United States may well have been losing the war, than following a month in which United States casualties dropped to the lowest level of the war.

An adjustment by Mr. Obama on Iraq may be good politics, as well as good policy. He is already under attack by the McCain campaign for not visiting Iraq for over two years and for his failure to meet with General Patraeus while favoring face to diplomacy with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. A note of moderation may well be useful, especially now that the need to appeal to hard left partisans in the primaries has passed.

Mr. Obama need not endorse American entry into the Iraq war or give much credit to the Bush Administration for its war effort (indeed, John McCain himself has been sharply critical of the pre-surge military campaign). But a bow to the current realities in Iraq would be very much in order.