Current Events — HabitableZone

Current Events » in reply to "Party of cut and run?" Maybe not.

Tried To Be Careful
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I wanted to point out that a boisterous section of the Democrats was causing problems without emplying it was a party position. The Democrats as a party were very careful NOT to stake out a party platform on this issue during the last election. I thought reason would prevail with Hillary in the lead for Dem nomination until Nancy nominated Murtha as her second. Now I'm worried.

I am no longer opposed to a long term timetable between 1 and 2 years however. I think it's time to put some fire under the Iraqi governments feet, but we have to be careful how we phrase it to make it clear we will be striving hard to defeat the terrorists in the mean time. It's a tricky balancing act, but making an open ended commitment is really only a 2 year commitment anyway given the likely outcome of the next election. We need to be clear we haven't lost the will to fight, but have lost patience with the Iraqi government's tolerance of corruption, sectarian violence, and traitorous elements in the police and army and will not continue to sacrifiece americans to protect Iraqi's from themselves. We can't win under those circumstances and while leaving with the status quo would count as a loss in my view there is no point in continuing to fight the war on terror on that front if it can't be won. It's one thing to fight foreign elements, it's another to fight a civil war or even just stand in the middle of a blood feud. There are other fronts to fight terrorism on. A 100 billion a year on internal security for instance would go a long way. So would more forces and money in Afghanistan.

I think we need a lot more forces near term to defeat the terrorists are winning mindset and start drawing down about 1 year after peak deployment. Our goal needs to be to deny the terrorists any haven in cities. Desert camps we can take out without civilian casualties. We can't be willing to tolerate the poor performance of the Iraqi's is for 2 more years. Al Sadr has got to be removed from the power equation IMO. Bringing him in has been a dismal failure.

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