Obama Takes on Flip-Flopper Charge

Barack Obama, at a town hall meeting in Georgia, got the question about his position about Iraq.

A supporter, a self-proclaimed “reformed Republican,” noted Republican accusations that Obama had shifted his position on a U.S. troop withdrawal. Then then supporter asked Obama to clarify his stance.

Obama took the opportunity to address criticism that he is “flip-flopping.”

Here’s his full answer:

Let me, first of all, talk about the broader issue, this whole notion that I am shifting to the center or that I’m flip-flopping or this or that or the other. You know, the people who say this apparently haven’t been listening to me. And I have to say, some of it are my friends on the left and in some of the media.

I am somebody who is no doubt progressive. I believe in a tax code that we need to make more fair. I believe in universal health care. I believe in making college affordable. I believe in paying our teachers more money. I believe in early childhood education. I believe in a whole lot of things that make me progressive and squarely in the Democratic camp.

But as you just heard me talk about with education, I don’t — I’m not somebody who’s just talking about government as the solution to everything. I also believe in personal responsibility. I also believe in faith.

So, for example, when I talk about the idea that we should recruit churches and places of worship, if they are willing to abide by the separation of church and state, to get involved in providing critical services to communities in faith-based initiatives, that’s not something new. I’ve been talking about that for years now. I’ve been organizing with churches for years in the community.

And so the notion that somehow that’s me trying to look like I’m, you know, more centered, more centrist, is just not true.

You know, there was a Supreme Court ruling saying that the Second Amendment gives people the individual right to bear arms. Now, I actually have said that I agree with that for years, even before the ruling came down. That doesn’t mean that I also recognize that we need to make sure that we’ve got decent controls over the use of illegal firearms in our community. Those two positions aren’t contradictory.

So a lot of this stuff — you know, one of the things that you find as you go through this campaign is everybody has become so cynical about politics that the assumption is, “You must be doing everything for political reasons.”

And the message I want to send to everybody is: You’re not going to agree with me on 100 percent of what I think, but don’t assume that, if I don’t agree with you on something, that it must be because I’m doing that politically. I may just disagree with you.

But we can agree on 90 percent of the things that are important. And on those 10 percent, we’ll agree to disagree.

Now, when it comes to Iraq, I opposed this war from the start.

(APPLAUSE)

I opposed this war from the start because I thought it was going to distract us from the war that had to be won in Afghanistan, because I thought it would cost us hundreds of billions of dollars and thousands of lives. I thought it would fan anti-American sentiment. It would help terrorists recruit.

And almost six years later, I have to say that most of my fears, unfortunately, came to pass.

Now, I have also consistently said that, once we were in, we had to be as careful getting out as we were careless getting in, because once you get in, now you’ve got to make sure that our troops are safe. You’ve got to make sure that the country doesn’t collapse.

And so what I’ve called for is a phased withdrawal, a phased redeployment that is not precipitous, that is responsible, getting our combat troops out at a pace of about one to two brigades per month. And at that point, we would have our troops out, our combat troops out in about 16 months.

Now, assuming that I take office in January…

(APPLAUSE)

… then that means that we would have — we would still have our troops there for about two more years from now. There’s nothing rushed about that, John Conyers. At that point, we will have been there for seven years.

So when I hear John McCain saying, “We can’t surrender. We can’t wave the white flag,” nobody’s talking about surrender. We’re talking about common sense. We cannot be there forever. We can’t be there for 50 years. We can’t afford it. Our military families can’t bear that burden. We’ve got to get more troops into Afghanistan.

I am going to bring this war to an end. So don’t be confused: I will bring the Iraq war to a close when I’m president of the United States of America.