That the war in Iraq has been successful and starts to pull troops out and turning over security to Iraqi nation forces.
How would this affect the election?
Obama makes a speech, noting that the number of Iraqi dead in five years of war is of the same order of magnitude as those Saddam is believed to have killed in 30 years of brutal dictatorship, and that the number of Iraqis wounded and exiled from their homes since 2003 is far greater than in the preceding decades; Saddam would have likely died of old age before committing as much violence on the people of Iraq post-2003 as our military adventure has exposed them to. To call this a ‘success,’ therefore, is an abomination and a travesty, one which places little value on the sufferings of the very people whose ‘rescue’ from Saddam is the remaining justification for this war.
He will say that the American people are capable of deciding whether the thousands of American lives lost, the tens of thousands of serious injuries, and the hundreds of thousands of cases of PTSD suffered by American troops, were a cost worth paying to bring about this ‘success.’ Not to mention the hundreds of billions already spent, and the trillions in long-term costs - money the architects and proponents of this war said we couldn’t afford to spend on better health care for Americans, or shoring up Social Security, or even on better care and benefits for the soldiers that fought the war.
And the American people will nod, because they’ve been tired of this war for years. Chances are it won’t make much difference with them either way. ‘Success, failure, fuck it - let’s get out.’
I don’t know about that, RT. You know how far the bombing halt went to boosting Humphrey’s numbers in 1968. He almost won after being behind 7 points only a short time prior to the election.
It’s always a tough thing trying to guess how the electorate will respond. All things remaining as they are, I think Obama still wins, but there’s a lot of time from now until the election. Something like this might take wind out of the anti-war sails.
Obama: “I’m delighted the president has begun doing what I’ve asked him to do. When I take office, I’ll finish the task.”
That would mean the inevitable Sunni/Shia bloodbath might begin before he leaves office, which is something the Pubs clearly want to be able to blame on the Dems. He would never take that risk.
The difference is, that boost surely came from Dems and Dem-leaners coming home, after feeling for quite some time that there was no reason to choose between a Dem who backed the war and a Pubbie who backed the war.
What portion of the electorate votes differently in November, and why, if Bush says “we’ve won and we’re leaving”?
To the extent that there’s a ‘middle’ position on the war amongst the electorate, it consists of people who think the surge might be working, but we should leave anyway. Does this move them one way or the other, or would this (as I suspect) leave them right where they are - tired of the war, relieved that Bush finally got a clue, but leery of whichever candidate would be most likely to get us into another one of these?
Anyway, it won’t happen. Bush wants us to occupy Iraq indefinitely. How many times in the past have we heard that Bush would undercut domestic opposition by withdrawing troops as election time approached? And right now, it’s questionable as to whether troop levels will drop to pre-Surge levels before the election.
Right, because once Saddam died, his sons would have stepped in and turned everything into Disney World. Odds are, things would have gotten even worse after Saddam died. This is not to say that I think the war in Iraq was a splendid idea, just that this arguement isn’t sound.
Obama: “John McCain has been saying all along that America has to stay in Iraq. Even George Bush now admits that that’s a bad idea.”
More likely announce shifting the troops to Afghanistan, which is where they would have been if the Dems hadn’t started this stupid war in Iraq.
We would all be too stunned to remember that there is an election.
Right, but even the Uday and Qusay “Disneyland” would have been less destructive to the Iraqi people than this war.
I said Disney World. Surely you understand the difference in destructiveness.
It depends on when he announces the bombing of Iran.
“The troops are headed out of Iraq… going east!”
The Dems? 
j*** Whoosh!!* ** j
A classic. I bow, sir.
If Bush does this, McCain will be whatever is beyond toast. Republicans need a war or threat of imminent attack from without to scare the electorate since, for reasons I still don’t comprehend, the public believes the Republican party is more capable than the Democrats in ensuring national security. McCain is running on a national security platform. Less concern about national security, less need for McCain.
I like your attitude. 
That said, I wasn’t making an argument about net deaths one way versus the other, but simply using Saddam’s historical level of violence against his own people as a yardstick to demonstrate how much of an anti-rescue our invasion really was.
Because we just can’t do more than guess about the distant future. Who knows how long Saddam, Uday, and Qusay would have lived, and who would have killed off whom when.
If history is any indication, a few months after Saddam’s death Uday, Qusay and the rest of The Munsters would be running fast to Paris or Madrid with a plane-load of cash.