skippy the bush kangaroo: look! everybody! a spine!

Saturday, September 08, 2007

look! everybody! a spine!

at least one dem isn't afraid of saying what americans want to hear. dem candidate bill richardson, who voted against the war in 2002, calls for immediate withdrawl from iraq in today's washpost:

hillary clinton, barack obama and john edwards have suggested that there is little difference among us on iraq. this is not true: i am the only leading democratic candidate committed to getting all our troops out and doing so quickly.

in the most recent debate, i asked the other candidates how many troops they would leave in iraq and for what purposes. i got no answers. the american people need answers. if we elect a president who thinks that troops should stay in iraq for years, they will stay for years -- a tragic mistake.

richardson lays out specifics as to why staying in iraq is bad, and leaving would be good (as if we need to be told. but apparently some of us do):

our troops have done everything they were asked to do with courage and professionalism, but they cannot win someone else's civil war. so long as american troops are in iraq, reconciliation among iraqi factions is postponed. leaving forces there enables the iraqis to delay taking the necessary steps to end the violence. and it prevents us from using diplomacy to bring in other nations to help stabilize and rebuild the country.

the presence of american forces in iraq weakens us in the war against al-qaeda. it endows the anti-american propaganda of those who portray us as occupiers plundering iraq's oil and repressing muslims. the day we leave, this myth collapses, and the iraqis will drive foreign jihadists out of their country. our departure would also enable us to focus on defeating the terrorists who attacked us on sept. 11, those headquartered along the pakistan-afghanistan border -- not in iraq.

logistically, it would be possible to withdraw in six to eight months. we moved as many as 240,000 troops into and out of iraq through kuwait in as little as a three-month period during major troop rotations. after the persian gulf war, we redeployed nearly a half-million troops in a few months. we could redeploy even faster if we negotiated with the turks to open a route out through turkey.

as our withdrawal begins, we will gain diplomatic leverage. iraqis will start seeing us as brokers, not occupiers. iraq's neighbors will face the reality that if they don't help with stabilization, they will face the consequences of iraq's collapse -- including even greater refugee flows over their borders and possible war.

the united states can facilitate iraqi reconciliation and regional cooperation by holding a conference similar to that which brought peace to bosnia. we will need regional security negotiations among all of iraq's neighbors and discussions of donations from wealthy nations -- including oil-rich muslim countries -- to help rebuild iraq. none of this can happen until we remove the biggest obstacle to diplomacy: the presence of u.s. forces in iraq.

we're not sure if the bosnia metaphor is going to win any friends and influence people...we wouldn't want to be spending a vacation on the danube. but still, at least richardson is one dem that is standing up and speaking out.

Labels: iraq war, prez campaign, richardson, supporting our troops