Senator Barack Obama, in an op-ed piece in the New York Times, called for agreement with Iraqi Prime Minister al-Maliki’s position that there ought to be a timetable for American troop withdrawal from Iraq. His plan, from the Times Op-Ed piece:

As I’ve said many times, we must be as careful getting out of Iraq as we were careless getting in. We can safely redeploy our combat brigades at a pace that would remove them in 16 months. That would be the summer of 2010 — two years from now, and more than seven years after the war began.

Obama called for a re-deployment of some American troops to the Afghan theatre, where Taliban gains have created alarm amongst some military analysts. Obama, in the piece, acknowleges the gains in security over the past year and would like to utilize those gains to hand over more responsibility to the Iraqis. From the New York Times:

In the 18 months since President Bush announced the surge, our troops have performed heroically in bringing down the level of violence. New tactics have protected the Iraqi population, and the Sunni tribes have rejected Al Qaeda — greatly weakening its effectiveness.

But the same factors that led me to oppose the surge still hold true. The strain on our military has grown, the situation in Afghanistan has deteriorated and we’ve spent nearly $200 billion more in Iraq than we had budgeted. Iraq’s leaders have failed to invest tens of billions of dollars in oil revenues in rebuilding their own country, and they have not reached the political accommodation that was the stated purpose of the surge.

The good news is that Iraq’s leaders want to take responsibility for their country by negotiating a timetable for the removal of American troops. Meanwhile, Lt. Gen. James Dubik, the American officer in charge of training Iraq’s security forces, estimates that the Iraqi Army and police will be ready to assume responsibility for security in 2009.

Obama has rejected the analogy, often made by Republicans, with continued U.S. presence in Europe, Japan, and Korea.

Unlike Senator McCain, I would make it absolutely clear that we seek no presence in Iraq similar to our permanent bases in South Korea, and would redeploy our troops out of Iraq and focus on the broader security challenges that we face.

Obama does recognize that any plan may need to be adjusted by tactical considerations and military advice, and says exactly that in the piece. He will give a major speech on Iraq today, and from a political perspective would like to promote the idea that he could be an effective commander-in-chief. There is new Washington Post polling data on that question, with 48 percent of Americans feeling that Obama would be an effective commander-in-chief, while 48 percent feel he would not be. The number for McCain on that question finds that 72 percent of the respondents believe McCain would be a good commander-in-chief. So Obama begins the process of narrowing the “commander-in-chief gap”. Will he be succesful? Does he need to narrow that gap to win the election?

The Washington Post polling data story is here.

Read the Obama New York Times Op-Ed piece here.