Howard Dean Gets Iraq Wrong
By Justin Gardner | Related entries in Bad Decisions, The War On Terrorism, WarWell, the internet underdog turned DNC chairman is speaking out about Iraq and offering a plan about how to not win the peace.
Saying the “idea that we’re going to win the war in Iraq is an idea which is just plain wrong,” Democratic National Chairman Howard Dean predicted today that the Democratic Party will come together on a proposal to withdraw National Guard and Reserve troops immediately, and all US forces within two years.
Oh boy..
“I’ve seen this before in my life. This is the same situation we had in Vietnam. Everybody then kept saying, ‘just another year, just stay the course, we’ll have a victory.’ Well, we didn’t have a victory, and this policy cost the lives of an additional 25,000 troops because we were too stubborn to recognize what was happening.”
Listen, people may be dying right now, but we won the war in Iraq. It’s not like the terrorists are going to overthrow the country. Well, that is not if stay and make sure it’s stable they won’t.
Seriously, the best they can hope for is to cause disruptions and kill more innocents and soldiers. That’s tragic, yes, but it’s no Vietnam.
More…
Dean says the Democrat position on the war is ‘coalescing,’ and is likely to include several proposals.“I think we need a strategic redeployment over a period of two years,” Dean said. “Bring the 80,000 National Guard and Reserve troops home immediately. They don’t belong in a conflict like this anyway. We ought to have a redeployment to Afghanistan of 20,000 troops, we don’t have enough troops to do the job there and its a place where we are welcome. And we need a force in the Middle East, not in Iraq but in a friendly neighboring country to fight (terrorist leader Musab) Zarqawi, who came to Iraq after this invasion. We’ve got to get the target off the backs of American troops.
Dean didn’t specify which country the US forces would deploy to, but he said he would like to see the entire process completed within two years. He said the Democrat proposal is not a ‘withdrawal,’ but rather a ’strategic redeployment’ of U.S. forces.
So does this make sense if you want to keep our soldiers from dying? Yes. But I always seem to have to remind my fellow liberals that it’s a soldier’s job to fight, and possibly die, for our country. I’m certainly sympathetic to the idea of getting the National Guard out of there, but what Dean is missing is the fact that we owe it to the Iraqi people to stay there until the job is done.
And how we know the job is done is by setting specific goals and meeting them, not leaving early. Eventually we will leave Iraq, but nation building takes time, patience and perserverance, three things that Dean doesn’t seem to care much about right now.
Of course, Dean disagrees…
“The White House wants us to have a permanent commitment to Iraq. This is an Iraqi problem. President Bush got rid of Saddam Hussein and that was a great thing, but that could have been done in a very different way. But now that we’re there we need to figure out how to leave. 80% of Iraqis want us to leave, and it’s their country.”
Now, it’s true that recent polls show a majority of Iraqis want us to leave, and I addressed that here. But that’s an unfortunate result of the Bush Administration’s bungled job pre and post war. And just because they made a lot of wrong decisions does not mean we should abandon this country when they need us most.
In other words, two wrongs don’t make a right and I wish we could see that.
This entry was posted on Tuesday, December 6th, 2005 and is filed under Bad Decisions, The War On Terrorism, War. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
December 6th, 2005 at 8:59 am
I am fed up with hearing that the Dems have NO PLAN but apparently the elephants do. W has one – or does he? I donot yet know what “staying the course” means and I do not think he does. John McCain (Rep) says we need more troops – if w estay, I agree; Chuck Hagel (Rep) says we are doing it all wrong; John Warner (Rep) says torture and buying news is all wrong; Bill Krtistol says we should be proud of torture and buying news – after all this is war (undeclared war by the way).
December 6th, 2005 at 10:41 am
It sounds like Dean needs do discuss this w/ both Murtha and Wes Clark. They have 3 separate plans w/ similar ideas. It would be nice if they could get something cohesive together and present it as a united front. Here’s our plan, here is how it works, here is why we are putting this plan out there. It would also be nice if Dean would listen to RESPECTED military guys on his side. Murtha and Clark have enormous clout and respect, Kerry unfortunately does not. The dems need to recognize that the independent voters are required to win big elections, Dean just alienates those folks more often than not.