I wrote this column about a month and a half ago for my high school newspaper. At the time, the State-of-the-Union hadn't happened but news of the Escalation had permeated pretty much everywhere, especially here on dkos. I really love you guys; having a political outlet in my life keeps me sane, and lets me know I have a place to go with people who do actually care enough to shout up a storm every time Dirty Dick doesn't just shoot someone in the face but actually destroys the foundations of our society. It is sad, though, that my attempts at enlightening our student body are usually futile. Stupid bubble. Enjoy.
So here we are. At the time of this column, it has been exactly three years, nine months, and twenty-eight days since the date of invasion. It has been three years, eight months, and sixteen days since President George W. Bush stood on the USS Abraham Lincoln and announced the end of major combat operations with a banner stating "Mission Accomplished" in the background. There have been 3026 deaths of United States soldiers alone. Depending on the method of counting, there have been several hundred thousand Iraqi civilian deaths either directly or indirectly. In February 2003, Former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld stated that the Iraq War "could last, you know, six days, six weeks. I doubt six months." On April 4, 2004, the coalition began the first major battle with the insurgents, the First Battle of Fallujah. In late May 2005, Vice President Dick Cheney said that the insurgency in Iraq is "in the last throes." From Wikipedia: "On November 23, 2006 the deadliest attack since the beginning of the Iraq war occurred. According to The Associated Press, suspected Sunni-Arab militants used five suicide car bombs and two mortar rounds on the capital's Shiite Sadr City slum to kill at least 215 people and wound 257 on Thursday." On December 6th, 2006, the Iraq Study Group – a Republican-appointed Commission of Washington powerbrokers – released a 160-page report recommending that the United States begin a phased withdrawal of troops from Iraq and direct talks with both Syria and Iran over Iraq as well as the Middle East. President Bush has flatly rejected both proposals. On January 10, 2007, he revealed his latest proposal of escalating involvement in Iraq through a sustained increase of 21,000 combat troops. He dubbed it, "The New Way Forward."
Exactly what are the details of this new strategy to ‘move us forward’ in Iraq? Is this yet another open-ended commitment? As I recall, that was exactly how this whole disaster began (and Rumsfeld’s quote shows that quite depressingly). There are various theories and reasons behind the War in Iraq, and nearly all have been debunked. The ‘slam dunk’ evidence of Weapons of Mass Destruction were proven to be anything but, and the subsequent rechristening of Iraq as the new and ‘central’ front in the Global War on Terror (a popular phrase among the White House Press Corps nowadays) has been criticized from all sections. The cold, hard reality is that there were and are no connections between Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda. Though the Bush administration evokes September 11th in every other Iraq speech, there was and is no connection between Iraq and Afghanistan. In fact, our war there is actually faltering too, and we’ve certainly showed our commitment to the real war on terror by stationing 20,000 troops total in Afghanistan, one-seventh our involvement in Iraq. Recently, Somalia has degenerated too, and their government is rapidly turning the nation into a failed state. Where’s our Somalia effort? Where’s our effort to contain Nuclear Weapons in North Korea or Iran? In the real world, politicians are beginning to realize this war has no basis. Our latest, and hopefully unpursued final goal for Iraq is to turn it into a stable democracy that can stand on its own. So far, we’ve managed to destabilize both the country and the entire Middle East.
There is no way to define success in Iraq, and the latest troop-increase proposal is about to add 21,000 more sitting ducks to the streets of Baghdad. We cannot have our troops stay in Iraq and attempt to manage a Civil War, and to regain what little credibility and standing in the world we have, we must withdraw. Let’s stop continuing more of the same just to save face and Bush’s legacy, and let’s begin a phased withdrawal. Republicans, most prominently Senator John McCain of Arizona, will predictably attack along these lines. Said McCain recently, "I cannot guarantee success, but I can guarantee failure if we don't adopt this new strategy." The truth is, Senator McCain, it is you who has failed your country. You have dragged us into this conflict and now you even have the audacity to try to escalate it in direct opposition to the American People’s will as well as the facts on-the-ground. I will conclude this piece with a quote from the recently elected Senator James Webb, a former-Republican-turned-Democrat from Virginia. He served as a Secretary of Navy under Ronald Reagan and is one of the most prominent and decorated veterans of the Vietnam War. He had this to say at last week’s Foreign Relations Committee hearings on the Iraq War:
"I also want to say something about my longtime friend, Senator McCain's comments when he was talking about the consequences of pulling out of Iraq and in your statement, Secretary Gates, you list some of these as an emboldened and strengthened Iran, a base of operations for jihadist networks in the heart of the Middle East, an undermining of the credibility of the United States. In many ways, quite frankly, those have been the results of the invasion and occupation. There's really nothing that's occurred since the invasion and occupation that was not predictable and in fact, most of it was predicted. It was predicted in many cases by people with long backgrounds in national security...and in many cases there were people who saw their military careers destroyed and who were personally demeaned by people who opposed them on the issues, including members of this administration. And they are people in my judgement, who will be remembered in history as having had a moral conscience."
Enjoy,
exieboy