A central claim of Barack Obama's campaign is that unlike his major competitors, he took a forceful stand against the invasion of Iraq well before the shooting started.
"When I opposed this war before it began in 2002, I was about to run for the United States Senate, and I knew it wasn't the politically popular position," Obama told Iowa voters last month.
"But I believed then and still do that being a leader means that you'd better do what's right and leave the politics aside, because there are no do-overs on an issue as important as war."
Was Obama's opposition to the war as courageous and risky as he suggests? There is evidence supporting and disputing Obama's assertion.
The question of Obama's political courage flared up briefly on Hardball on July 26 when David Axelrod, Obama's media strategist, and Howard Wolfson, Clinton's chief spokesman, debated the campaign.
The argument that Obama does not deserve credit for being courageous goes as follows:
In 2002, Obama was a state senator representing one of the most liberal districts in Illinois encompassing Chicago's lake front, Hyde Park, the University of Chicago and African American neighborhoods in the southern half of the district.
With two years to go to the 2004 Senate election, according to this view, there was no risk to Obama in opposing the war in his state senate district; in fact, his anti-war stand probably had majority support among his constituents.
Statewide, polling conducted in 2002 suggested that Illinois voters were less pro-war than voters nationally:
The Illinois electorate "is not ready for military action against Iraq," the Chicago Sun-Times wrote in October, 2002 about its survey. "More than half of Illinois voters want additional proof that Saddam Hussein is developing weapons of mass destruction before the United States launches an attack. And they want the U.S. military to take action only as part of a broad international coalition of allies....[The poll] puts Illinois somewhat at odds with the nation as a whole."
Among all Illinois voters, 17 percent said the U.S. should attack Iraq with or without allied support, 51 percent said an attack should be initiated only with the backing of allies, and 18 percent said the U.S. should not attack at all. Among Democrats, only 8 percent backed a unilateral invasion of Iraq, 59 percent said the US should attack only with broad allied support and 23 percent opposed any military action.
That same year, the incumbent Democratic U.S. Senator, Dick Durbin, was one of 23 Democrats to vote against the war. Durbin easily won re-election (60-38) in November, 2002, paying no serious price for his opposition.
On the other hand Obama's October 2, 2002, speech at an anti-war rally in Chicago in which he laid out his case against the war provides a very strong refutation of the case that his opposition to the war did not necessitate leadership and courage. [Read the full speech here.]
The speech was exceptionally prescient, and it was a serious wager in direct opposition to the claims of the Bush administration, most of which went unchallenged by a majority of House and Senate Democrats at the time. Here is the speech:
'What I am opposed to is a dumb war. What I am opposed to is a rash war. What I am opposed to is the cynical attempt by Richard Perle and Paul Wolfowitz and other armchair, weekend warriors in this administration to shove their own ideological agendas down our throats, irrespective of the costs in lives lost and in hardships borne....
'I suffer no illusions about Saddam Hussein. He is a brutal man. A ruthless man. A man who butchers his own people to secure his own power. He has repeatedly defied UN resolutions, thwarted UN inspection teams, developed chemical and biological weapons, and coveted nuclear capacity. He's a bad guy. The world, and the Iraqi people, would be better off without him.
'But I also know that Saddam poses no imminent and direct threat to the United States, or to his neighbors, that the Iraqi economy is in shambles, that the Iraqi military a fraction of its former strength, and that in concert with the international community he can be contained until, in the way of all petty dictators, he falls away into the dustbin of history. I know that even a successful war against Iraq will require a US occupation of undetermined length, at undetermined cost, with undetermined consequences. I know that an invasion of Iraq without a clear rationale and without strong international support will only fan the flames of the Middle East, and encourage the worst, rather than best, impulses of the Arab world, and strengthen the recruitment arm of Al Qaeda. I am not opposed to all wars. I'm opposed to dumb wars."
There is now a growing consensus on the left, center and part of the right that the consequences of the invasion of Iraq have indeed borne out Obama's predictions. But courage was not the only issue.
As it turned out, Obama was the beneficiary of the implosion of his major opposition in both the 2004 U.S. Senate Democratic primary and in the general election that year.
In the primary, multi-millionaire candidate Blair Hull, who put $24 million into the contest, held the lead until the widely publicized disclosure of physical abuse charges by his ex-wife in divorce proceedings. Obama beat Hull and five other challengers, winning 52 percent.
In a bizarre replay of the Democratic primary, Jack Ryan, the Republican nominee, was forced to withdraw from the Senate race after a California judge opened to the public papers in Ryan's divorce case. In those papers, Ryan's ex-wife accused him of forcing her to frequent sex clubs. In the closing months, Alan Keyes, who by then had become a perennial fringe candidate, was given the Republican nomination by officials of a weakened GOP, only to be crushed in November by Obama, 70-27.
This extraordinary run of good luck for Obama rewarded him for taking an early and aggressive anti-war stand, a stand which has given him deserved recognition for acting on principle - which he did - while, to date, sparing him the costs.