As US support for the Iraq War continues to plummet, President Bush used a news conference to repeat what has become his party line, unchanged from 2003:
THE PRESIDENT: You’re welcome. What all of us in this administration have been saying is that leaving Iraq before the mission is complete will send the wrong message to the enemy and will create a more dangerous world. That’s what we’re saying. It’s an honest debate and it’s an important debate for Americans to listen to and to be engaged in. In our judgment, the consequences for defeat in Iraq are unacceptable.
I fully understand that some didn’t think we ought to go in there in the first place. But defeat — if you think it’s bad now, imagine what Iraq would look like if the United States leaves before this government can defend itself and sustain itself. Chaos in Iraq would be very unsettling in the region. Leaving before the job would be done would send a message that America really is no longer engaged, nor cares about the form of governments in the Middle East. Leaving before the job was done would send a signal to our troops that the sacrifices they made were not worth it. Leaving before the job is done would be a disaster, and that’s what we’re saying.
While a failed Iraq will have bad consequences (tho not a new al-Qaeda hideout w/oil revenues), there is something missing from the President remarks here and elsewhere. While the President keeps saying that a failed Iraq would be bad, he has never shown how continued US military throughout the country will stop that failure. Look at the security statistics available in the Iraq index. It is a steady slide into chaos. The President has gotten every resource he has ever asked for from a compliant Congress, yet not only are things not getting better, they’re not even stable. The tools we are using are not working. If the President cannot articulate a different way to achieve his laudable goals, then he needs to stop spilling the blood of our soldiers, Iraqis, and others in the coalition. If things can’t be made better by spending $150,000 every single minute of every day. Then it is time to try something different.
We don’t even have to leave Iraq to start salvaging something positive. We can move our forces to Kurdistan in northern Iraq and defend the only peaceful democratic area in Iraq from Turkey, Iran, Syria and the rest of Iraq. The Kurds have always welcomed us and their terrority would give us a base to attack identified terror camps from. Once the Shias and Sunnis settle their differences through a bloody civil war, we can seek common interest with who’s left. It’s not an ideal solution, but it breaks us out of our current insane behavior of doing the same thing over and over and expecting stabilization.
It’s time to do something different, not repeating the same tired lines over and over.
Filed under: iraq
