The News Virginian / News Virginian
Published: February 17, 2008

By this time next week, members of the Virginia National Guard should have returned home to their base in Staunton from a tour in Iraq. The sight of returning soldiers embracing families and children clinging to fathers and mothers still clad in military fatigues is among the sweetest of wartime. Their joy is a community's joy.

We wonder what those who remain in Iraq and those who expect to go think of the presidential race, and most especially of the growing prospect that Barack Obama will become President Obama. We suspect for many, that possibility is not a particularly pleasant one.

Count us among the legions who doubt the wisdom of Bush's war. While we are ardent backers of our military and of a strong national defense, the effort in Iraq, even in spite of the relative success of the surge, was a flawed concept from the start.

The weapons of mass destruction were not there, the idea of democratizing the Middle East sounds an awful lot like the nation building in which Bush promised never to engage and pre-emptive military intervention goes against American foreign policy stretching back to the Civil War. Further, by failing to comprehend the complexity of prolonged conflict in Iraq, Bush has weakened rather than strengthened our national defense in a way no president has since Vietnam.

Obama tells us he recognized the folly of Iraq from the beginning, and, further, that such is to the discredit of his Democratic opponent, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, and Republican frontrunner Sen. John McCain, both of whom voted in favor of the 2003 invasion. Of course, Obama opposed the war from Illinois rather than the Capitol. He was not yet a U.S. senator and so was not exposed to the political pressures that compelled many Democrats to back the war rather than risk being seen as weak or unpatriotic. Tough stands are easy to make when there's little risk of being knocked to the ground.

Democratic war backers such as Clinton have struggled for ways to credibly wag their finger at Bush over the Iraq's failures, which in some small measure are their own. Democrats also have learned that no matter what their stance on the war, simply ending it is not so simple. Withdrawing troops would be at an unprecedented risk of being overrun - or more to the point, slaughtered - by insurgents, particularly since America would be loath to negotiate a formal retreat. Not only would that be tantamount to defeat, no one is quite sure with whom to negotiate.

In other words, however inclined one might be to rail against Bush over Iraq and against our lingering presence there, we have little choice but to remain until the insurgency is finally crushed. Our next president must recognize as much and then follow that recognition with firm, steady resolve and a real commitment to victory. Otherwise, America could face days darker even than those in 1973 when choppers were ferrying diplomats from the rooftop of the U.S. Embassy in Hanoi.

All of this leads us to wonder whether a senator with slightly more than three years of Beltway experience under his belt, whose greatest foreign policy boast is that he opposed military action when he didn't't have a vote, is the right leader for America in a time of war. Obama is the most gifted orator in the race. No candidate is more skilled at working a town hall meeting or connecting with people on the campaign trail. But like Sonny Corleone of "The Godfather," who needed a wartime consiliere, we need a wartime president.

Eloquent speeches, an engaging smile and a winning personality will neither produce victory in Iraq nor return all our troops to the embrace of their loved ones.