how to lead on Iraq

Robert Kaplan has good advice for Barack Obama:

[SecDef] Gates, who initially opposed the war, is fighting it with more gusto than his predecessor, Donald Rumsfeld, who supported the invasion.

This is not uncommon. Army Gen. David Petraeus and Amb. Ryan Crocker were likely not avid supporters of the invasion either, but both are now working not just to get America out of Iraq with our honor intact, but to win there. Sen. John McCain, who was cool to both the insertion of forces in Bosnia and the war in Kosovo in the 1990s, was vigorously in favor of winning those conflicts once troops were committed on the ground.

There is a lesson here for Barack Obama.

Yes. It’s called How to Behave Like the Loyal Opposition . Hint: don’t talk like a retarded Kossack [e.a.].

The Democrats may well be right that the invasion was a strategic mistake that cost us greatly both in the Middle East and in the rest of the world. But their dire predictions from two years ago don’t look very good in hindsight. And so they need to start thinking constructively about Iraq, not destructively. To wit, as former Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage — another opponent of the war — has said, the United States will be known and remembered as much by how it got out of Iraq as by how it got in. Armitage is thinking constructively in a way that Obama and company need to.

It’s good advice. I seriously doubt that most Democratic politicians are thinking constructively about Iraq, but that doesn’t mean that Obama won’t … eventually. For now, though, as Jennifer Rubin points out, he just sounds confused.