Kerry calls for Troop withdrawl, Feingold backs him

[mburbank]

Two Deadlines and an Exit
By John F. Kerry
The New York Times

Wednesday April 05 2006

We are now in the third war in Iraq in as many years. The first was against Saddam Hussein and his supposed weapons of mass destruction. The second was against terrorists whom, the administration said, it was better to fight over there than here. Now we find our troops in the middle of an escalating civil war.

Half of the service members listed on the Vietnam Memorial Wall died after America's leaders knew our strategy would not work. It was immoral then and it would be immoral now to engage in the same delusion. We want democracy in Iraq, but Iraqis must want it as much as we do. Our valiant soldiers can't bring democracy to Iraq if Iraq's leaders are unwilling themselves to make the compromises that democracy requires.

As our generals have said, the war cannot be won militarily. It must be won politically. No American soldier should be sacrificed because Iraqi politicians refuse to resolve their ethnic and political differences.

So far, Iraqi leaders have responded only to deadlines - a deadline to transfer authority to a provisional government, and a deadline to hold three elections.

Now we must set another deadline to extricate our troops and get Iraq up on its own two feet.

Iraqi politicians should be told that they have until May 15 to put together an effective unity government or we will immediately withdraw our military. If Iraqis aren't willing to build a unity government in the five months since the election, they're probably not willing to build one at all. The civil war will only get worse, and we will have no choice anyway but to leave.

If Iraq's leaders succeed in putting together a government, then we must agree on another deadline: a schedule for withdrawing American combat forces by year's end. Doing so will empower the new Iraqi leadership, put Iraqis in the position of running their own country and undermine support for the insurgency, which is fueled in large measure by the majority of Iraqis who want us to leave their country. Only troops essential to finishing the job of training Iraqi forces should remain.

For this transition to work, we must finally begin to engage in genuine diplomacy. We must immediately bring the leaders of the Iraqi factions together at a Dayton Accords-like summit meeting. In a neutral setting, Iraqis, working with our allies, the Arab League and the United Nations, would be compelled to reach a political agreement that includes security guarantees, the dismantling of the militias and shared goals for reconstruction.

To increase the pressure on Iraq's leaders, we must redeploy American forces to garrisoned status. Troops should be used for security backup, training and emergency response; we should leave routine patrols to Iraqi forces. Special operations against Al Qaeda and other foreign terrorists in Iraq should be initiated only on hard intelligence leads.

We will defeat Al Qaeda faster when we stop serving as its best recruitment tool. Iraqis ultimately will not tolerate foreign jihadists on their soil, and the United States will be able to maintain an over-the-horizon troop presence with rapid response capacity. An exit from Iraq will also strengthen our hand in dealing with the Iranian nuclear threat and allow us to repair the damage of repeated deployments, which flag officers believe has strained military readiness and morale.

For three years now, the administration has told us that terrible things will happen if we get tough with the Iraqis. In fact, terrible things are happening now because we haven't gotten tough enough. With two deadlines, we can change all that. We can put the American leadership on the side of our soldiers and push the Iraqi leadership to do what only it can do: build a democracy.





Russ Feingold Statement on Kerry's Call for Withdrawal From Iraq


Wednesday 05 April 2006

Statement of US Senator Russ Feingold on Senator John Kerry's Call for an End to Our Military Mission in Iraq.

"Since August 18, 2005, I have been calling on the Administration to aim to redeploy U.S. military personnel from Iraq by the end of this year so that we can focus on the threat posed by global terrorist networks. I applaud Senator Kerry's call today for our combat forces to be withdrawn from Iraq by the end of this year. Senator Kerry has been a strong leader in calling for a clear, coherent strategy to complete our military mission in Iraq while engaging Iraq's leaders with genuine diplomacy. Having just visited Iraq last month, I witnessed the desperate need for Iraqi politicians to form a unity government to prevent the country from falling deeper into violence. Senator Kerry is absolutely right to say that the end of this year is a reasonable target date for redeploying our troops in Iraq."

[ziggytrix]

Interetingly enough, Carter's National Security Advisor was on the radio today saying we could stabilize the region with 500,000 troops on the ground, but that isn't feasible, and so we should get out, as anything less is causing further destabilization, with more and more Iraqis "resenting American occupation".

Apparently, it's something he's been saying for about a month, and I think these Senators are pretty much just echoing him.

http://www.ww4report.com/node/1743

Brzezinski said that however long the U.S. military occupation of Iraq lasted, it was doomed to failure.

"In a war of attrition," he said, "a foreign occupier is always at a disadvantage. This is a failed occupation."

Brzezinski said Iraq had not yet collapsed into a full-scale civil war. Far from preventing such a war from breaking out, he said, the continued U.S. military occupation made one far more likely.

"This is not yet a civil war, in the sense that it is not yet a comprehensive, nation-wide collision between Shiites and Sunnis but we are unintentionally feeding it," he said.

Brzezinski suggested that the United States "ask Iraqi leaders to ask us to leave" and suggested that those Iraqi politicians who have expressed a desire for American forces to continue the occupation are exercising poor leadership.

"We are acting as though the Iraqis are our colonial wards," he said. "We are teaching them about democracy by arresting them, bombing them, by humiliating them and also helping them. It is an ambivalent course in democracy."

Brzezinski also said the president had failed to provide any serious national leadership to back up his commitment to the Iraq war and had failed to call the American people to the spirit of duty and sacrifice needed to win any real war.

"What bothers me is the packaging," Brzezinski said. He said that if the United States were truly engaged in war, then there would need to for a national mobilization involving a tax on the rich, an overall war tax and a draft. "These actions," he said, "are the basic consequences of serious engagement."

Brzezinski also hit out at President George W. Bush's newly released National Security Strategy. He called it "an erroneous version of reality."

Brzezinski urged Bush to widen his circle of advisors. "Words have consequences," he said. "The deliberate misuse of words can be dangerous and a fundamentally altered version of reality can lead to a fear-driven nation."

[mburbank]

Hey, Abccdxx, does Brzezinski think "This is not yet a civil war, in the sense that it is not yet a comprehensive, nation-wide collision between Shiites and Sunnis but we are unintentionally feeding it," because he doesn't know anything about the middle east and in fact doesn't care about Iraqis, he just gets off on anything that makes the administration look bad, or i that just me?