Plagiarizing a Page Right Out of the Bush Playbook

Time:

After a week spent assuring the world that he is antithesis of his widely despised predecessor, President Barack Obama ended his first presidential overseas trip by doing a George Bush. In style, substance and photo-ops, Obama’s unannounced stopover in Baghdad was straight out of the Bush playbook.

Surprise stops on presidential journeys became the norm during Bush era, with the U.S. engaged in two foreign wars — in neither of which could it guarantee satisfactory security if the Commander-in-Chief’s intention to visit his troops was announced ahead of time. Still, Baghdad was the wrong choice for Obama. Iraq is Bush’s war — or Bush’s folly, depending on your point of view. Obama’s main contribution to Iraq has been to criticize the war while on the campaign trail, and then to begin drawing down the U.S. troop presence as soon as he became President. (See pictures of the Obamas abroad

Afghanistan would have entailed a few more hours of flying time, but it would have been the more logical stop for a President who has taken ownership of the fight against the Taliban and al-Qaeda.

Regardless of who’s playbook, I’m glad President Obama visited our troops in Iraq.

I expect some of my fellow rabid right-wingers will skeptically make a snide comment on the above photo; but this right-wingnut thinks the photo is heartening. He is our president and their commander-and-chief, after all.

In the confines of Camp Victory, there could be none of the adoring public, fawning politicians and over-caffeinated media attention that attended Obama’s stops in London, Strasbourg, Berlin, Prague and Istanbul. Unlike the Europeans, Iraqis saw nothing in Obama’s visit to distinguish him from Bush — although there was no opportunity to see whether an Iraqi reporter would hurl a shoe at him.

Instead, Obama had to be content with a rapturous welcome from the troops at Camp Victory — but even Bush got the rock-star treatment from that audience. Obama gave a boilerplate speech, thanking the troops and reminding everyone that important work remained to be done in Iraq. He broke no new ground in his discussions with U.S. commander Gen. Ray Odierno, and is unlikely to do any better with Maliki.

For George Bush, that would have been a good visit. For Obama, it was an anticlimax.