Don’t you just hate it when things don’t go according to plan? Consider Sen. Obama as a case in point. Before he left on his overseas trip assorted pundits and bloviators were predicting that he was about to step into a perilous minefield. 

Supposedly when visiting Iraq Obama was going to be faced with the unpalatable choice of either acknowledging that things are better in Iraq, in part due to the success of the surge which he opposed, or he would refuse to acknowledge that success, which would make him look woefully out of touch with reality. 

Yet, days before Obama visited, Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, in an interview with German newspaper Der Spiegel had this to say: 

SPIEGEL: Would you hazard a prediction as to when most of the US troops will finally leave Iraq?

Maliki: As soon as possible, as far as we’re concerned. U.S. presidential candidate Barack Obama talks about 16 months. That, we think, would be the right timeframe for a withdrawal, with the possibility of slight changes.

SPIEGEL: Is this an endorsement for the US presidential election in November? Does Obama, who has no military background, ultimately have a better understanding of Iraq than war hero John McCain?

Maliki: Those who operate on the premise of short time periods in Iraq today are being more realistic. Artificially prolonging the tenure of US troops in Iraq would cause problems. Of course, this is by no means an election endorsement. Who they choose as their president is the Americans’ business. But it’s the business of Iraqis to say what they want. And that’s where the people and the government are in general agreement: The tenure of the coalition troops in Iraq should be limited.

As Talking Points Memo noted, this was not a mistranslation by Der Speiegel or misunderstanding by Maliki.

Of course, as Anthony Cordesman of the Center for Strategic and International Studies wrote:

No one can predict where Iraq will be in 16 months — whether it begins now or in January 2009. At the same time, Maliki, like every Iraqi politician, has good reason to take a stand that seems to pledge to end the US “occupation” of Iraq. ABC and other polls have long shown that most Iraqis have long wanted the USA to leave as soon as possible. With the exception of most Kurds, the US invasion has been increasingly unpopular, and polls show that many Iraqis feel that US troop movements, checkpoints, and other signs of military presence are as much a source of day-to-day violence as the actions of militias and other threats.

Still, when the leader of Iraq, the country that Sen. McCain calls “the central battleground in the war in the struggle against al-Qaeda” says “The tenure of the coalition troops in Iraq should be limited”, which stands in sharp contrast to McCain’s January statement that it was fine with him if U.S. troops spent “maybe 100″ years in Iraq, he seems to be confirming Obama’s contention that he’d be the strongest commander-in-chief in a time of war.

Meanwhile, a White House which has consistently criticized Sen. Obama for calling for the withdrawal of U.S. troops that President Bush seems likely to order three to four thousand more soldiers home by year’s end. This is a sharp contrast to its position just three months ago when Bush announced there would be a temporary halt to troop reductions once the last of five “surge” brigades left Iraq this month.

One factor in the consideration for removing more troops from Iraq is the pressing need for additional American troops in Afghanistan, where the Taliban and other fighters have intensified their insurgency. More American and allied troops died in Afghanistan than in Iraq in May and June, a trend that has continued this month.

And just who is it who has consistently been calling for redeploying troops? Hint, it is not Sen. McCain.

Not to mention that the White House, which has always denounced proposals for troop withdrawals as dangerous, recently produced a tortured statement of agreeing with Maliki to a “time horizon” to meet “aspirational goals.”  I leave it to others to ponder the relationship between this use of “aspirational” and its medical meaning, “the act of removing a fluid, as pus or serum, from a cavity of the body.”

How’s that for being ahead of the national security power curve? If Sen. Obama could shoot hoops with as much success as he is having on his overseas tour he could have played in the NBA. 

Meanwhile, McCain supporters seem reduced to complaining  that it is a bad thing that Obama is being received warmly in Europe.  Call me crazy, but now that it is more than five years since the U.S. invaded Iraq, and people have long since forgotten Don Rumsfeld’s 2003 sniffy remarks about old and new Europe don’t most people agree that it is a bad thing that the Bush administration seems to have lowered America’s standing in the world? Thus, shouldn’t we be pleased that a prospective American president is receiving a warm reception?

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