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Troop surge still seems ill-advised
It’s somewhat puzzling to us that after President Bush recently admitted that mistakes have been made in Iraq and that a different strategy is needed, all he can come up with is “send more troops.”
After the message the American public sent the White House during the November elections, and after his own bipartisan Iraq Study Commission, headed by his father’s Secretary of State Jim Baker, we thought this President Bush was finally going to listen. Yet only days after he said he was devising a “new way forward” in Iraq, word leaked out that his new plan was really an old one: send more troops.
Some of us remember Vietnam, when that seemed to be the only plan politicians had. That’s not the only similarity to the war the United States fought 40 years ago in Southeast Asia, for Vietnam then and Iraq now both seem to be civil wars.
The situation in Iraq reminds us of the words of a truly great wartime leader, Winston Churchill.
“Democracy is the worst form of government except for all the others that have been tried,” Churchill once said.
From our view, withdrawing from Iraq now is the worst outcome – except for all the others.
In their zeal to wage war on Iraq, President Bush and members of his administration dismissed all intelligence that didn’t fit in with their plan and misled the American people. Our troops now are in an unwinnable situation, surrounded by hostile forces who have fought each other for centuries. We can get out now, or we can send more of our young men and women into harm’s way.
We hear that the goal is to bring democracy to Iraq, but the president should remember that true democracy is a risky business. Iran, which the current president seems to regard as his next target, has a democratically elected leader. Yet despite that fact, when it comes to Iraq, President Bush refuses to pursue real diplomacy to try and ease tensions and resolve differences. Perhaps if the United States and Iran (and Syria) could work together to stabilize Iraq (as the Baker commission suggested), the experience of cooperation might carry over into a discussion of Iran’s nuclear ambitions.
The U.S. Senate next week will begin debate on whether sending more troops is in the nation’s best interest. The administration and its new Iraq commander are rallying behind their usual defense: “don’t question us, because if you do, it will hurt the troops’ morale.”
We think members of our armed forces are smarter than that. They’ve all had civics in high school, and they know this country was founded by people who dared to disagree with those in charge.
The one lesson we all learned from Vietnam is to respect the soldiers – even as we question the judgment of their commander-in-chief.
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