In Case You Missed It: Democrats Still Have No Plan For Iraq
From The New York Times
Democrats Have No Real Iraq Policy:
The New York Times: "The Democrats will not be able to savor their victory for long... The Democrats will also need to look forward - and quickly. So far they have shared slogans, but no real policy. During the campaign, their most common call was for a "phased redeployment" - a euphemism for withdrawal - of American troops starting before the end of this year." (Editorial, "Democrats And Iraq," The New York Times)
The New York Times: "[W]e are sure that even a few weeks more of drift and confusion will guarantee more chaos and suffering once American troops leave. Voters gave the Democrats the floor - and are now waiting to hear what they have to say." (Editorial, "Democrats And Iraq," The New York Times)
Existing Democrat Policies Are Inadequate:
The New York Times: "We are skeptical of calls, by some Democrats, to divide the country into three ethnically based regions. Most Iraqis - except for the Kurds - show little enthusiasm for the idea. And while there has been horrific ethnic cleansing, it hasn't yet got to the point that boundaries could be drawn without driving many more people from their homes." (Editorial, "Democrats And Iraq," The New York Times)
4 comments:
Fierce Opposition to Iraq Escalation
Posted by Michael Link on January 5, 2007 at 05:04 PM
Email this Print this Blog this
Speaker Pelosi and Majority Leader Reid sent a letter to President Bush calling on him to reject plans to escalate the civil war with additional troops and stating "it is time to begin to move our forces out of Iraq..."
Surging forces is a strategy that you have already tried and that has already failed. Like many current and former military leaders, we believe that trying again would be a serious mistake. They, like us, believe there is no purely military solution in Iraq. There is only a political solution. Adding more combat troops will only endanger more Americans and stretch our military to the breaking point for no strategic gain. And it would undermine our efforts to get the Iraqis to take responsibility for their own future. We are well past the point of more troops for Iraq.
The letter comes in advance of plans by President Bush to address the nation. As the New York Times points out, the president is "encountering fierce opposition from the newly empowered Democratic leadership." He is also facing criticism from Democrats like Senator Russ Feingold, who said in a statement that "We should be bringing our troops out of Iraq, not the other way around."
Instead of escalation, Pelosi and Reid propose in the letter a phased redeployment of our forces over the next four to six months in addition to a renewed diplomatic strategy "to help the Iraqis agree to a sustainable political settlement."
The Bush/McCain war escalation plan comes as U.S. fatalities over the course of the war in Iraq pass 3,000, along with the deadliest month of the war in over two years.
The full letter after the jump.
President George W. Bush
The White House
Washington, DC 20500
Dear Mr. President:
The start of the new Congress brings us opportunities to work together on the critical issues confronting our country. No issue is more important than finding an end to the war in Iraq. December was the deadliest month of the war in over two years, pushing U.S. fatality figures over the 3,000 mark.
The American people demonstrated in the November elections that they do not believe your current Iraq policy will lead to success and that we need a change in direction for the sake of our troops and the Iraqi people. We understand that you are completing your post-election consultations on Iraq and are preparing to make a major address on your Iraq strategy to the American people next week.
Clearly this address presents you with another opportunity to make a long overdue course correction. Despite the fact that our troops have been pushed to the breaking point and, in many cases, have already served multiple tours in Iraq, news reports suggest that you believe the solution to the civil war in Iraq is to require additional sacrifices from our troops and are therefore prepared to proceed with a substantial U.S. troop increase.
Surging forces is a strategy that you have already tried and that has already failed. Like many current and former military leaders, we believe that trying again would be a serious mistake. They, like us, believe there is no purely military solution in Iraq. There is only a political solution. Adding more combat troops will only endanger more Americans and stretch our military to the breaking point for no strategic gain. And it would undermine our efforts to get the Iraqis to take responsibility for their own future. We are well past the point of more troops for Iraq.
In a recent appearance before the Senate Armed Services Committee, General John Abizaid, our top commander for Iraq and the region, said the following when asked about whether he thought more troops would contribute to our chances for success in Iraq:
"I met with every divisional commander, General Casey, the Corps commander, General Dempsey. We all talked together. And I said, in your professional opinion, if we were to bring in more American troops now, does it add considerably to our ability to achieve success in Iraq? And they all said no. And the reason is, because we want the Iraqis to do more. It's easy for the Iraqis to rely upon to us do this work. I believe that more American forces prevent the Iraqis from doing more, from taking more responsibility for their own future."
Rather than deploy additional forces to Iraq, we believe the way forward is to begin t he phased redeployment of our forces in the next four to six months, while shifting the principal mission of our forces there from combat to training, logistics, force protection and counter-terror. A renewed diplomatic strategy, both within the region and beyond, is also required to help the Iraqis agree to a sustainable political settlement. In short, it is time to begin to move our forces out of Iraq and make the Iraqi political leadership aware that our commitment is not open ended, that we cannot resolve their sectarian problems, and that only they can find the political resolution required to stabilize Iraq.
Our troops and the American people have already sacrificed a great deal for the future of Iraq. After nearly four years of combat, tens of thousands of U.S. casualties, and over $300 billion dollars, it is time to bring the war to a close. We, therefore, strongly encourage you to reject any plans that call for our getting our troops any deeper into Iraq. We want to do everything we can to help Iraq succeed in the future but, like many of our senior military leaders, we do not believe that adding more U.S. combat troops contributes to success.
We appreciate you taking these views into consideration.
Sincerely,
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid
Speaker Nancy Pelosi
Just Why Democrats Are 'Dangerous' When It Comes To America's Defense
Thomas Sowell, the distinguished Stanford scholar, wrote on this page a week ago that there's a difference between the major parties: "The Republicans are disappointing and the Democrats are dangerous." We'd like to take this opportunity to elaborate on his second point.
We and our allies are in a serious global war against fanatical, determined Islamic terrorists who have declared war on America and the free world. Their stated objective is to kill all the Americans they can, eliminate Israel, control and enslave women, and in time overpower and rule with an iron fist nations from Spain to the Far East. They intensely hate our freedom and successful way of life.
While Democrats in Congress always assert they "support our troops," their political policies and actions have continually undermined our nation's fight to win the war on terror and defend America. Here is their national security record:
1. On missile defense of America — Democrats voted against it.
2. On the Patriot Act — Democrats voted against it.
3. On tapping foreign terrorists' phone calls to the U.S. — Democrats voted against it.
4. On tracing terrorists' money flow between foreign banks — Democrats voted against it.
5. On building a border wall to control illegal immigration and stop dope — dealers, terrorists and criminals — Democrats voted against it.
6. On interrogating captured terrorists — 194 Democrats just voted against it.
7. On telling the world (and our enemy) about a timetable for withdrawing from and deserting Iraq — this is Democrats' retreat and defeat plan.
Think that's bad? Here's the Democrats' national defense record for the last 40 years:
A. Democrat President Johnson misjudges the Gulf of Tonkin incident, pursues the Vietnam War until a liberal CBS TV announcer thinks we're losing and says we should quit. So we quit and lose. The victorious communists then kill 2 million innocent civilians.
B. Democrat President Jimmy Carter during the Cold War withdraws U.S. support for our longtime military ally, the Shah of Iran. Carter doesn't like his human rights treatment of Soviet spies in prison. The shah is overthrown, and Ayatollah Khomeini returns, seizes power and creates an Islamic nation. Opponents are killed, the idea of suicide bombers is introduced to the PLO, and Iran's oil wealth is used to spawn and support Hezbollah, a terrorist militia that killed 241 Marines in a Beirut bombing and that lately attacked Israel. Iranian radicals storm our embassy, taking 52 American hostages for 444 days. Carter fails in an amateurish attempt to rescue them. Eight military personnel and eight aircraft are lost in a desert foul-up.
Democrat Carter, self-assured and well-meaning but dangerously naive, was responsible for bringing into power an Iranian Islamic regime that's now creating nuclear weapons to wipe out Israel and blackmail the U.S. and Europe. Iran has further provided weapons and support to Shiite militia and death squads in Iraq and could provide nukes to al-Qaida, with which it has a working relationship.
After the Soviets meet the inexperienced Carter, they invade Afghanistan. Then the communists capture Ethiopia, South Yemen, Angola, Cambodia, Mozambique, Grenada and Nicaragua. The Afghanistan invasion attracts young Osama bin Laden, who raises money and recruits other Muslims to fight the anti-Soviet jihad. After the Soviets leave, this band becomes al-Qaida.
So Carter's glaring weakness in dealing with the communists and Iran leads directly to both the current terrorist nuclear threat of Iran and the birth of al-Qaida, a group of mass murderers that would never have been possible if the Soviet Union's Leonid Brezhnev had not been emboldened to invade Afghanistan after seeing an inept, appeasing American president, Carter.
Carter's ongoing, worldwide damage to America's future national defense does not end there. In 1994, civilian Carter goes to North Korea and negotiates an agreement that President Clinton and Secretary of State Madeleine Albright buy into. The North Koreans use our money and help to secretly spend the next six years in researching and building nukes. Deceived again by a worthless piece of paper, Carter becomes America's Neville Chamberlain.
These Democrat policies and actions were not only incompetent and ineffective in defending the U.S. They also proved to be highly dangerous, creating the greatest threats to America's future security — a radical Islamic Iran and a North Korea with nukes, either one of which could hand weapons off to al-Qaida killers. And Carter is still out there giving us advice.
Ronald Reagan inherited from Democrat mismanagement a rapidly expanding communist enemy, 12% inflation (highest in 34 years), 21% interest rates (highest since Abe Lincoln was president), a depleted military and a serious energy crisis. Reagan's motto was "peace through strength," not peace through retreat, weakness and accommodation.
He kicked communists out of Grenada and defeated them in Nicaragua, Ethiopia and Afghanistan. He supported those fighting against communist regimes. He attacked Libya's Moammar Gadhafi, who much later surrendered his nuclear weapons program after America's military captured the tyrant Saddam Hussein hiding in a hole in the ground.
For eight years congressional Democrats ridiculed and fought all of Reagan's defense and economic policies. They said he was dumb, stupid, too old and a warmonger who was going to start WWIII with the Soviet Union. Democrats were proved wrong on nearly every vital Reagan policy. His tax cuts set off a huge seven-year economic and technological boom, just as George Bush's broad tax cuts have done, creating millions of new jobs.
In the end, the Reagan-Bush administration defeated the 70-year-old Soviet Union, and communism disintegrated on the ash heap of history under Republican Reagan's relentless pressure and determination to build a missile defense system to make the Soviet nuclear arsenal obsolete.
The present terrorist threat to our security did not begin on 9/11, but in the early 1990s, after Democrat Clinton was elected in November 1992. In February 1993, terrorists bombed New York's World Trade Center. In October 1993 two U.S. Black Hawk helicopters were shot down in Somalia. Eighteen Americans were killed and 73 wounded. In response, Clinton withdrew our forces.
In January 1995, Philippines police uncovered a plot to blow up 12 American airliners over the ocean. In June 1996, Khobar Towers, which housed U.S. Air Force personnel in Saudi Arabia, was blown up, killing 19 U.S. servicemen and one Saudi and wounding 372 others.
In February 1998, bin Laden declared "war on America," saying the murder of any American anywhere on the earth was the "individual duty" of every Muslim. In August 1998, al-Qaida blew up U.S. embassies in Nairobi, Kenya, and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, killing 200 and injuring 5,000. In October 2000, 17 U.S. sailors were killed when al-Qaida attacked the USS Cole in the Yemeni port of Aden.
According to Michael Scheuer, a 22-year CIA veteran and head of the agency's bin Laden unit, the 9/11 Commission report confirms that the Clinton administration had at least 10 chances to get the al-Qaida leader, but Sandy Berger, Richard Clarke or Clinton simply could not make the decision to act. The CIA knew where bin Laden was and the military had plans, but they were almost always called off at the last minute.
So when presented with 10 specific opportunities, Clinton's Democrat administration never took any action that was effective or produced any positive result. From Lyndon Johnson in the 1960s to the policies and actions they push today, Democrats haven't been just weak and ineffective in defending against America's enemies.
This year, two other forces are feverishly working to undermine this election and our war on terror. One force is made up of elite national media based mainly on the East Coast. On several occasions they have given our enemy vital defense secrets. They also disgracefully report and relentlessly repeat only bad news. Such dishonest journalism confuses and deliberately misleads the American public. The TV networks have lost 50% of their audience and still refuse to change their one-sided news coverage.
The other force is represented by terrorists who are desperately attacking as many people as possible in Iraq in the weeks leading up to our election. They believe they can intimidate us like they intimidated Spanish voters in the wake of the Madrid bombings and affect our congressional election in a way that will result in our quick withdrawal from Iraq. But quitters never win.
As difficult and complex as the war has been, America has a very strong economy — with over 95% of our population employed and 70% owning homes — plus freedom, opportunity and a standard of living that other countries can only envy.
We've also been protected against further terrorist attacks by a strong, competent and determined president.
Post a Comment