This suggestion may be unpopular here, what with all the support for an immediate or near-immediate withdrawl from Iraq, but I don't think that advocating for withdrawl going into '06 is the right election strategy for Iraq, for Democratic national security appearances, or for terrorism
For one thing, in the current terms of the debate, withdrawl for most Americans means accepting defeat. Advocating for accepting defeat will not make Democrats look strong, but it will make Americans feel bad about themselves, and that's not a good way to win votes. Moreover, withdrawl at the current time will have far-reaching and poorly understood consequences for international terrorism and for stability in the Middle East. Iraq is a mess, and we made it that way, but rather than retreat, I think most Americans want a way out with our heads held high, Iraq stable and terrorism on the decline.
Below, I'll explain my positive ideas for re-framing the Iraq debacle, allowing us to withdraw troops and reduce casualties, without making us look defeatist.
There are three legs that a Democrat platform for Iraq must stand on.
The first, and the one that must be shouted from the rooftops at every opportunity, is that this war has been waged incompetently and corruptly. Halliburton and other corporate friends of the Administration run off with hundreds of billions of unaccounted dollars while giving our service men and women, and their civilian support staff, contaminated water to drink, old or spoiled food to eat, inadequate housing, clothing and other troop supplies, and providing inadequate armor and protection to our troops.
So far over 23 hundred American patriots have died, countless tens of thousands of them have been permanently handicapped and injured, and perhaps over a hundred thousand innocent Iraqi civilians, fathers, mothers, grandparents, children, have been killed. These deaths are due in large part to attacks from insurgents or foreign terrorists and our response to those attacks. Under this administration, we see our troops being asked to do something they were never trained to do; something that the Army was never designed to do: be police officers in foreign cities.
It's often said that our armed forces are the finest in the world, and that's still true, no matter how stretched they are in Iraq right now. Put them up in a field battle and they wipe the floor with anybody. But they're not being asked to fight battles and win wars, they're being asked to patrol streets and arrest criminals.
They're being asked to do this because this Administration feels that they have to control the Iraqi political climate. They do not understand that the political climate of a democracy cannot be controlled, either from without or from within. It is not America's job and it's not our soldier's jobs to solve Iraq's political problems, Iraqis must do this on their own in the tradition of all democracies. This means that we must get our troops and our presence out of their way, but this does not mean that we abdicate Iraq to the terrorists.
The greatest threat to Iraqi freedom remains to this day threats and subversion from foreign terrorists. If an Iraqi man blows up 20 Iraqi people in an Iraqi mosque because he disagrees with their government, then that's a terrible tragedy, but it is a tragedy the Iraqis must deal with. With our troops in their cities, this is not what happens. What happens is that this man blows up 20 Iraqis because he was trying to blow up 5 American soldiers. When our troops are in their cities, they are targets, and the longer our troops are in their cities, the more hated those targets become.
We owe our troops more than to allow them to be targets in the Iraqi political situation. Because of this, and because we still have a responsibility to protect Iraq from foreign terrorists, while allowing them to solve their own political problems, and prevent Iraq from becoming a training ground for international terrorists, we must move our troops out of Iraqi cities. This is the second leg on which a Democratic platform for Iraq must stand.
We must redeploy our troops out of Iraqi cities because Iraq needs them elsewhere. While Iraq's security forces are not yet ready to meet the insurgents in the field or prevent foreign terrorists from entering the country, they are more than ready to take over the security of their own cities. Moreover, with US forces out of the cities, suicide bombings and attacks will go down, for the targets are no longer there. Continuing violence will erode the growing support for the insurgency when that violence targets only Iraqis.
We must move our troops to the borders and deserts. We must move them there so that we can prevent foreign terrorists from entering Iraq, either from Syria or Iran. We must move, not only so we will no longer be targets, but so that we can continue to do some good for the Iraqi people.
The third leg of the Democratic platform is the Iraqi people. Ultimately, Howard Dean was right: The US cannot win this war in Iraq. Only the Iraqi people can. The insurgency cannot be broken with bullets and bombs, only with honesty, progress and resolve. If the Iraqis chose to eschew democracy and freedom, we cannot, and will not stop them. But our continued support for, and presence in Iraq is contingent upon their maintaining a democratic government with expansive freedoms for women, minorities, different faiths, and of speech. We are not ogres or unrealistic. Our ideas of expansive freedom may not match theirs. But they must begin trying. To that end we must maintain an over-the-horizon (thanks Murtha) fast strike force of swat-style special forces units and investigators to help the Iraqi people stamp out the remaining elements of the insurgency. It is imperative that this special forces deployment be stationed beyond the reach of insurgents, and that when they move to engage the enemy they do so quickly and cleanly to minimize collateral damage and antagonism from the Iraqi people.
These ideas are presented in a sort of speech style. If I were to bullet point these ideas into soundbytes I'd say
*George Bush's prosecution of the war has been incompetent and dangerous to US and the world.
*In the cities, troops are targets. Move them to the borders to cut off Syria and Iran.
*The Iraqi people are responsible for their own government. They can be their own policemen. It's time they do it.