"We could lose our whole Army in Iraq," said Gary Hart, a former Senator from Colorado and aspirant for the Democratic Presidential nomination, when he presented his opinions about U.S. foreign policy during a discussion of his latest book "The Shield and the Cloak -- The Security of the Commons" at the New America's Foundation last Thursday March 2 before an audience full of journalists including EJ Dionne and Eleanor Cliff.
His expertise is security, having served as co-chair of the bipartisan U.S. Commission on National Security/21 Century created by former Republican Newt Gingrich in 1998, and having forecast the 9/11 attack on New York City. He defines security broadly as being THREAT based - and includes not only military threats but threats such as an economy based on consumption rather than production.
His two most ringing statements, I felt were:
1. Terrorism is an international crime and needs to be confronted by cooperative international crime fighters -- not by a unilateral American military force.
2. We could lose our Army in Iraq. Think Vietnam when insurgents overran the populace and a final limited evacuation was carried out at the U.S. Embassy. This time, if insurgents overrun Baghdad, there is no plan to evacuate the troops from the Green Zone -- there are not enough helicopters to even rescue our own troops. We could very well lose our troops in Iraq because there is not even a security plan for our own army, he said.