No, he didn't actually say those words. Durbin, for the most part, did a very fine job last night of explaining why it's dead wrong for the President to send more troops to Iraq. But during his speech, I felt myself wanting to scream at my television set.
Why?
Because his rebuttal completely undermined a key element of the Democratic vision for our foreign policy future. And he may as well have said exactly the phrase I stuck in the title of this diary.
More on the flip...
Here's what Durbin said that made me want to cheer:
Tonight, President Bush acknowledged what most Americans know: We are not winning in Iraq, despite the courage and immense sacrifice of our military; indeed, the situation is grave and deteriorating.
The president's response to the challenge of Iraq is to send more American soldiers into the crossfire of the civil war that has engulfed that nation. Escalation of this war is not the change the American people called for in the last election. Instead of a new direction, the president's plan moves the American commitment in Iraq in the wrong direction. In ordering more troops to Iraq, the president is ignoring the strong advice of most of his own top generals. General John Abizaid, until recently the commanding general in Iraq and Afghanistan, said, and I quote, "More American forces prevent the Iraqis from doing more, from taking more responsibility for their own future."
Twenty thousand American soldiers are too few to end this civil war in Iraq, and too many American lives to risk on top of those we've already lost.
It's time for President Bush to face the reality of Iraq, and the reality is this: America has paid a heavy price. We have paid with the lives of more than 3,000 of our soldiers. We have paid with the sacrifice of our men and women in uniform, and we've paid with the hard-earned tax dollars of the families of America.
Now, that's terrific stuff. Pitch-perfect, makes all the points it needs to. But then things go horribly, dramatically, ridiculously wrong (emphasis added):
And we have given the Iraqis so much. We have deposed their dictator. We dug him out of a hole in the ground and forced him to face the courts of his own people. We've given the Iraqi people a chance to draft their own constitution, hold their own free elections and establish their own government. We Americans and a few allies have protected Iraq when no one else would.
<font size=5>What?!</font>
What is Durbin (and, I assume, the leadership -- I take it this wasn't his decision alone) thinking?
Here's my theory.
He's thinking that a whole lot of Democrats supported this debacle when it first hit the floor for a vote. And he's covering their asses. And in the process, he's essentially arguing that this war was a noble idea which went downhill despite all the good we've done for the Iraqi people... and that it's primarily the fault of the Iraqis that their nation is in such dire straits.
Now, to be fair, while your average everyday Iraqi isn't to blame for any of this, it's certainly reasonable to say that the root cause of every one of the big nasty problems in Iraq is, in some way, the result of hundreds of years of religious zealotry and intolerance and strife between the more extreme elements of the three major ethnic/religious groups in the area. But boy, did we ever throw gasoline on the fire when we foolishly and tragically blew the place to kingdom come and removed what little structure and order there was to the artificially-created and brutally-maintained Iraqi nation.
At any rate, Durbin's speech is probably going to be the most-watched Democratic statement on the course of the war for many news cycles, and it sure seems to me that he made a terrible mistake, and gave the President, the Republicans, and all those foolish Democrats who voted for the war, a pass.
I've given his office a call and complained. I hope you do the same.