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Anti-war Conservatives for Obama will be Disappointed

I think a lot of conservatives otherwise puzzling support for Barack Obama’s presidential campaign can be explained for the most part by those conservatives’ opposition to the Iraq war. See, e.g., Andrew Sullivan and Doug Kmiec. So I’ll offer them a long bet: If Obama wins and pulls all US combat troops out of Iraq by the end of June 2010, they win. If Obama wins and there’s 50,000 or more US combat troops in Iraq at the end of December 2010, I win. Anything in the middle and bet’s off. Deal?

Why do I think I’ll win? For one thing, there’s this news report:

A key adviser to Senator Obama’s campaign is recommending in a confidential paper that America keep between 60,000 and 80,000 troops in Iraq as of late 2010, a plan at odds with the public pledge of the Illinois senator to withdraw combat forces from Iraq within 16 months of taking office.

Plus, a while back there was this report:

Samantha Power ... expressed disbelief that Obama would be able to carry through with his stated plan, quoted above, and Power said, “He will, of course, not rely on some plan that he’s crafted as a presidential candidate or a U.S. Senator.

She went on to downplay his commitment to withdraw all combat troops from Iraq within 16 months, saying that plan was a “best case scenario” and further stated, “You can’t make a commitment in March 2008 about what circumstances will be like in January of 2009”, then she continues, “He will, of course, not rely on some plan that he’s crafted as a presidential candidate or a U.S. Senator. He will rely upon a plan – an operational plan – that he pulls together in consultation with people who are on the ground to whom he doesn’t have daily access now, as a result of not being the president. So to think – it would be the height of ideology to sort of say, ‘Well, I said it, therefore I’m going to impose it on whatever reality greets me.’”

Any conservative who plans to vote for Obama because of his war promises is almost certain to be disappointed.