Opinion: Obama calls the commander-in-chief role an art, not a science

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Last year’s surge of U.S. troops in Iraq is widely credited with reducing violence in the country.

But Barack Obama says he still isn’t persuaded that the troop-increase plan -- which he opposed, and John McCain supported -- deserves the credit. So why did violence subside?

In an interview Monday with Terry Moran of ABC’s ‘Nightline,’ Obama attributed the improvement to ‘a combination of political factors inside of Iraq that then came right at the same time as terrific work by our troops.’ Those political factors included Sunni tribal leaders rising up against Al Queda, he said, and the ‘standing down’ of Shiite militias ‘to some degree.’

Obama also dashed the hopes of any optimistic peace activists that, as president, he would disengage the United States from overseas conflicts. One of the reasons he has set a goal of withdrawing American combat troops from Iraq in 16 months is that he wants to put more forces in Afghanistan where, he said, ‘we need at least a couple more brigades and right now we don’t know where to get them from.’

Yet disagreements with military commanders over managing warfare are inevitable for presidents, he said. ‘This is not a science,’ Obama said, ‘it’s an art.’

(UPDATE: Obama, at his news conference today in Jordan, said there has been “security progress” in Iraq over the past year, and now it’s time to work toward “a political solution.”)
-- Stuart Silverstein