He called it a formula for disaster if Iraqis get the idea Americans will remain indefinitely.That is well-framed statement of opposition to the war.
"That is going to hurt us. It's going to hurt Iraq and most importantly it's going to help the terrorist elements that use the idea of an unending American occupation as a recruiting tool."
October 1, 2005
"The Iraqis are going to have to stand on their own at some point."
Says Russ Feingold -- in, significantly, New Hampshire.
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It's almost enough to make one despise politics and those who practice that wicked art.
What most people forget is how long we stayed in Germany. I don't think the Germans grew to depend on us. I am sure the Iraqi's will make it on their own too. It will take a while. Social change doesn't happen overnight.
I don't agree that Sen. Feingold's statement are in opposition to the war or for that matter that far different from what the generals themselves are saying (who are advocating placing a greater effort on Iraqi training and a speedy as possible draw-down of forces, but most importantly NO time-table).
The big difference, and a dangerous difference in my opinion is that Sen. Feingold is calling for a time table and a date certain for full withdrawal.
As has been stated before by many experts on military matters there is nothing more dangerous when facing an insurgency than giving the leaders of that insurgency certain foreknowledge of your operating plans. In essence a time-table would act as a signal to the nihilistic murderers that they can save their resources and make the American withdrawal look like an abject defeat by massing all of their efforts just as the Americans leave.
Militarily it would be a flea biting an elephant, but from the propaganda point-of-view the insurgents could claim victory and that they were the liberators of Iraq rather than blood thirsty murderers.
Sen. Feingold can go to New Hampshire and say what he says secure in the knowledge that his suggestions won't be followed, and that his followers will ignore any successes in Iraq and blame any bumps in the road on the current administration's refusal to accept sage advice from concerned outsiders like Sen. Feingold.
If Sen. Feingold is too dense regarding security/military matters to realize the dangers of his sugestion, then he should be considered thoroughly unqualified to even think about being president (like what happened to Dean during the primaries).
If he knows the likely results of following his plan, but advocates it anyway, then he is dangerous, calculating and seditious.
He's 100% correct. We should have left after the elections in January.
Or perhaps after Saddam was ousted.
The aim of the war was to oust Saddam and get rid of his WMD's (which it turns out he never had).
Once that was done - our mission was over. Iraqi Democracy was never our goal.
Democracy always was, or always should've been the goal. Otherwise you leave Iraq ripe to be taken over by some faction worse than sadam and much readier to attack you.
There's a reason we didn't leave germany after world war 2, and there's a reason we didn't leave japan.
As noted above, technically, this is not a comment against the rightness / wrongness of the war, but a disagreement with he percieves to be the current strategy for prosecuting the war.
Also, on Saddam & WMD, it's not true that he never had them. He had them, and used them, on both the Iranians and the Kurds (his own population), which is why every intel agency, and most governments (including President Clinton's) believed that he still had them.
I also agree that sound-bite wise (without the benefit of having actually listened) this has great potential, particulary in the Democratic primaries.
Also, on Saddam & WMD, it's not true that he never had them. He had them, and used them, on both the Iranians and the Kurds (his own population), which is why every intel agency, and most governments (including President Clinton's) believed that he still had them.
Funny, but I've never heard anyone attempt to argue that Saddam never had WMD. Most people's objections to the WMD rationale for the war stem from the fact that the administration repeatedly claimed to have definitive evidence that the weapons did, in fact, exist, when there so clearly was not any such evidence. For a time I believed that Saddam had WMD, too, but didn't go around claiming to have proof or trumpeting obvious forgeries. The fact that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction a number of years ago, and that the US was in a good position to observe this fact given that we were on friendly terms with his regime both before and after he put them to use, does not suffice as evidence.
It's a good Kerry-esque argument against the war UNTIL Feingold has to face an opponent in debate or from the press.
Does he think the Iraqis are not standing on their own? They are signing up in droves and fighting. It could be better, but it takes more than a year to undo the damage from 35 years of hell.
Iraq has a legitimately elected govt and has met every deadline for state building. Does he think they have been dilatory?
Will he set a timetable? The US electorate already rejected that as surrender.
Do you tell the burglars what time you'll be leaving your home?
Cheers,
Victoria
We stayed in Germany because 1) it was the front line against Stalin, and 2) to shore up the German Gov. from domestic coup attempts so it remained a liberal democracy. We don't have problem No. 1 in Iraq, and we can accomplish No. 2 with a presence in the Gulf. I think we can start drawing down our troops in Iraq after the elections in December. We should probably stay there for a while to prevent a foreign invasion, but the Iraqis should take over the fight against the insurgency, which will probably take another 5 years to defeat.
Bush could never be 100% sure that Saddam had WMD. But immediate possession of them was not the issue. It was possession of them in the future (after sanctions came down). It was quite clear that sactions were falling apart. France, Russia, and China wanted to end the sanctions and were doing everything to end the sanctions.
If Saddam would have met every demand of the inspectors and got a clean bill. People would have been calling that a joke, knowing that once the inspectors left, Saddam would just restart his programs. Thus, it is true that the real WMD in Iraq was Saddam himself.
At the time, Saddam was the most dangerous individual in the world. He had totalitarian control over $40 billon in oil wealth cash flow per year. No individual in the world can even come close to this power. Saddam alone almost funded the entire French arms industry during the 1980s. He was ready to fund the industry again. He had a recent history of aggression (invading two of his neighbors with land armies) and attacking most of the others. (Neither Iran or N. Korea has a history of such aggression). He had a history of supporting terrorism...overtly with the terrorists in Palestine and covertly with his coddling of Zarqawi.
It goes on and on. Eventually we would have had to go to war to get rid of Saddam. It would have been a lot more bloody in 2010 than 2003.
People hark that we should not have gone into Iraq to get rid of Saddam. That is because we will never know for sure how bad Saddam could have gotten. We could be in 2010 with 100,000 Americans dead, blaming Bush for not attacking Saddam in 2003 when we had the chance and Saddam was weak just as we now blame Roosevelt/French/British (and rightly so) for not taking out Hitler in 1936.
Gerry: I think Feingold knows he has to build out confidence about this. I expect him to do a damned good job of figuring out how.
You are going to get rid of any serious weaponry you possess, so that when the U.S. invades they look like frauds thus enabling you to seize the high moral ground, and appear like a wronged and abused victim of American malice.
Great. So where are those weapons now? Syria? Iran? With al Qaida operatives? If you believe that such weapons exist, then you have to conclude that Americans are less safe not knowing where they are then pre-invasion, when we "knew" where they were and had a regime we could deter from using them.
As far as progress on Iraqis defending themselves . . .
One of the few measures the Pentagon has offered the public to judge the capabilities of Iraqi security forces has been the number of battalions that can go into combat with insurgents without the help of the U.S. military.
During congressional testimony on Thursday, Gen. George Casey, top U.S. commander in Iraq, and Gen. John Abizaid, top U.S. commander in the Middle East, said the number of such battalions had dropped since July to one from three, out of the roughly 100 Iraqi battalions.
Adam, do you think the U.S. military is incompetent? After all, they are charged with training the Iraqi army.
Tigerhawk.blogspot.com has a good recap on General Petraeus' speech about Iraq preparedness at Princeton yesterday. It's comprehensive and very heartening.
After going over to the Tigerhawk blog and seeing the full context of General Patraeus' comments, why couldn't have Gen. Abazaid made sure that before he said only one battalion was at level one preparedness that this fact wasn't the failure it seems like.
By answering that question at the hearing too directly he added ammunition to every late night comedian and every anti-war activist to attack the administration with a soundbite that fits perfectly the defeatist narrative that so many secretly or openly root for.
If General Abazaid doesn't understand that the battle over public opinion is one of the key fronts on the ongoing war against the nihilistic murderous Islamist then someone else needs to be briefing congress or they need to start game-planning their public hearings so that they can anticipate these kind of questions and answers and avoid helping the propagandist on the wrong side of this issue.
If you believe that such weapons exist, then you have to conclude that Americans are less safe not knowing where they are...
Which is exactly why wasting months at the corrupt UN prior to the invasion was criminally stupid. Whose idea was that again?
Adam, do you think the U.S. military is incompetent? After all, they are charged with training the Iraqi army.
No, but I do believe we invaded with too few personnel, which is what allowed the insurgency to rise and mount in the first place. "Broken windows" applies equally in NYC and Baghdad, and I find it noxious to believe that any criticism of military *results* entails a criticism of the men and women who are risking their lives out there.
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