the guy shouting back at the TV in some bar...,
2005-08-25 12:35:05
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BIDEN: Just like I told Georg...,
2005-08-26 12:38:14
beating congress with a stick:
Act for Change's letter to congress endorsing Feingold's plan is insufficient. If I were me I'd replace the text of the message with something like this:
I'm writing you to ask that you publicly endorse Senator Feingold's call for a specific target date for the completion of our primary military goal in Iraq by December 31, 2006, and to ask him to shorten his timetable.
The arguments for "staying the course", or worse increasing the US footprint in Iraq, are incredibly mistaken. If we are concerned about more destructive violence in Iraq than is already occurring our air force can keep the lid on open civil conflict from the same bases from which it enforced the no-fly zones.
If we are concerned about foreign terrorists in Iraq the only reason they are tolerated by the Sunni insurgents is the US presence in Iraq: Iraqis would obviously find it much easier to erradicate foreign Al Qaeda supporters in Iraq than US forces.
Any elected government in Iraq will likely turn the country into an Islamic republic, but the US presence emboldens and revives backwards religious fundamentalisms like no other force in Iraq. The US presence is at odds with the wish to see the formation of a more moderate Iraqi government.
As for oil security we don't get our oil from Iraq, and the reason the pipelines are continually sabotaged by insurgents is, again, in defiance of the US presence in Iraq. If we want Iraq to finally surpass prewar oil export levels we should withdraw, and appropriate billions in reconstruction funding to whatever legitemate Iraqi government remains upon our exit.
Again, I urge you to endorse Senator Feingold's call for a withdrawal timetable, and to correct his demand with the only responsible option available: withdrawing from Iraq as quickly as possible.
Most Sincerely,
And send that to my Senators. So, being me, I did. Be like the guy shouting back at the TV in some bar who never spells "legitimate" right, not some wussy "timetable for withdrawal" with "more a target date" intellectual guy. The thing Iraq needs right now is less targets.
update:
Dick Durbin responds with a non-response response:
America has invested too much and lost too many soldiers to turn its back
on the people of Iraq. We cannot cut and run and leave chaos in our wake,
but we cannot achieve our goal of a safe and stable Iraq until the
President puts forward a comprehensive plan for success and a clear
strategy for how we will achieve it. That is the President's
responsibility to every American soldier. And it is Congress'
responsibility to insist that he do so.
To which we respond, given the absence of any feasible, realistic plan that achieves the above that does not involve withdrawal:
You write - in response to my email dated August 25th, 2005 - that "America has invested too much and lost too many soldiers to turn its back on the people of Iraq. We cannot cut and run and leave chaos in our wake".
The only course of action for the US, if we were to take seriously the idea that the US must not "turn its back on the people of Iraq", would be to take the people of Iraq seriously when they overwhelming demand US withdrawal.
Every poll of Iraqis since at least April of 2004 has shown that a strong majority of Iraqis support the immediate withdrawal of US forces, from the CPA's own polls, to Gallup, Zogby, the Iraq Centre for Research & Strategic Studies, and Oxford Research International. You cannot talk about facing the people of Iraq, or bringing democracy to Iraq, without addressing that demand.
In refusing to support withdrawal you are cutting and running on the people of Iraq, as well as our own country, leaving both Iraqis and US troops to the reckless whims of an administration that has created nothing but destruction and chaos in its wake. By demanding nothing more than a "plan" from the President you merely invite him to justify "staying the course" with the same chaos it created.
