Sen. John Kerry has an op-ed piece to run in Sunday’s Washington Post where he says Bush’s plan for a troop surge in Iraq is frankly insane!
(note, op-ed is not online yet)
When Resolve Turns Reckless
By John F. Kerry
WASHINGTON -- There’s something much worse than being accused of''flip-flopping'': refusing to flip when it’s obvious that your course of action is a flop.
I say this to President Bush as someone who learned the hard way how embracing the world’s complexity can be twisted into a crude political shorthand. Barbed words can make for great politics. But with U.S. troops in Iraq in the middle of an escalating civil war, this is no time for politics. Refusing to change course for fear of the political fallout is not only dangerous, it is immoral.
More on the flip, or flop or , whatever... this gets GOOD!
Update: Link up here: http://www.washingtonpost.com/...
That's right, Kerry just called the Bush administration policy in Iraq immoral. But you ain't seen nothing yet. Wait till he gets to the insanity bit ...
More from Kerry op-ed:
I’d rather explain a change of position any day than look a parent in the eye and tell them that their son or daughter had to die so that a broken policy could live.
Umm, Senator Kerry, what are you trying to say?
Whew. Go JOHNNIE!
No one should be looking for vindication in what is happening in Iraq today. The lesson here is not that some of us were right about Iraq or that some of us were wrong. The lesson is simply that we need to change course rapidly rather than perversely use mistakes already made and lives already given as an excuse to make more mistakes and lose even more lives.
When young Americans are being killed and maimed, when the Middle East is on the brink of three civil wars, even the most vaunted "steadfastness’’ morphs pretty quickly into stubbornness, and resolve becomes recklessness. Changing tactics in the face of changing conditions on the ground, developing new strategies because the old ones don’t work, is a hell of a lot smarter than the insanity of doing the same thing over and over again with the same tragic results.
Oh, now I hear ya!
You are on a roll baby.
Insanity it is! Call it!
We cannot afford to waste time being told that admitting mistakes, not the mistakes themselves, will provide our enemies with an intolerable propaganda victory. We’ve already lost years being told that we have no choice but to stay the course of a failed policy.
snip
Conversation is not capitulation. Until recently, it was widely accepted that good foreign policy demands a willingness to seize opportunities and change policy as the facts change. That’s neither flip-flopping nor rudderless diplomacy : it’s strength.
I think this signals that the Democrats are not going to stand back and let themselves be overwhelmed by the urge to "surge."
This isn’t a time for stubbornness, nor is it a time for halfway solutions "or warmed-over new" solutions that our own experience tells us will only make the problem worse. The Iraq Study Group tells us that "the situation in Iraq is grave and deteriorating.’’ It joins the chorus of experts in and outside of Baghdad reminding us that there is no military solution to a political crisis. And yet, over the warnings of former secretary of state Colin Powell, Gen. John Abizaid and the entire Joint Chiefs of Staff, Washington is considering a "troop buildup’’ option, sending more troops into harm’s way to referee a civil war.
We have already tried a trimmed-down version of the McCain plan of indefinitely increasing troop levels. We sent 15,000 more troops to Baghdad last summer, and today the escalating civil war is even worse. You could put 100,000 more troops in tomorrow and you’re only going to add to the number of casualties until Iraqis sit down together at a bargaining table and compromise. The barrel of a gun can’t answer the question of how you force Iraqi nationalism to trump sectarian loyalty.
Quite well stated indeed!
Kerry goes on to call for a deadline to redeploy troops.
But you did read that right; he calls Bush’s approach in Iraq insanity.
I think Democrats need to make that message clear: Bush's policy in Iraq is IMMORAL AND IRRATIONAL.