Posted on 09/25/2003 7:54:01 PM PDT by Burkeman1
George, here's what to do in Iraq: Declare victory and bring the troops home.
A senator from Vermont once suggested such a policy during the Vietnam War. It would have meant a defeat. In this case, it might mean chaos, at least for a while, unless you can get more international help.
You asked for help from the U.N. That was good. Get back to them and say, "We're serious. We're on a fast track to leave."
To America's soldiers, you can say: "You're fighters, not social workers. The fighting's done, excellent work, and you can start going home."
Thousands of American families will thank you.
To the American people, you can say: "We've changed our minds about the occupation of Iraq. We'll need only part of that $87 billion I asked for. The rest you can keep."
Watch your poll numbers go up.
The warrior intellectuals — the neoconservatives — will bellow. Let them. They don't have any electoral votes. The American people never bought their "neo-Wilsonian" fantasies of empire. Asserting American dominance was never your argument for war. You said Americans had to depose Saddam Hussein in order to protect themselves.
That's done.
Our occupation of Iraq is not yet six months old and already Iraqis are making sure that we tire of it. This will not tend to get better. An antiwar feeling has arisen in the United States, and Howard Dean, a nobody from a small state, has ridden it to the head of the pack. Dean says he wouldn't have gone to war in the first place. Few notice that Dean also says we ought to stay in Iraq to do nation-building.
"Well, Howard," you can say, "I'm bringing the troops home. If you're elected, you can send them back."
Would America be giving up if we did that? We would be giving up the right to reconstruct Iraq our way. We would not be giving up anything the average American cares about.
Certainly, the American people would accept a change in policy. They have accepted the official story from the start — the weapons of mass destruction, the "link" between Saddam and bin Laden, the "Woman Warrior" story about Pvt. Jessica Lynch. They are not paying much attention to Iraq. They will accept a pullout.
Consider the alternative: Five years of occupation. Maybe 10. Bombs, demonstrations, dead Americans.
Think of the Democrats. In 2002 you beat them by offering to save America from a foreign threat. If you do that in 2004, you're going to be in trouble. Americans get tired of wars that drag on and on, and tend to toss out the political party that does the dragging. Look up the election of 1952. Also 1968. Ask your dad about the political shelf-life of military victory. It is less than one year.
Think of the economy. Business has been terrible since you became president. The people have been pretty forgiving about that. They know the dot-com bust was not your doing (nor Clinton's, really). You have given the people a tax cut, and Alan Greenspan has given them rock-bottom interest rates. In normal times, these would produce a snapping recovery. But war sits on business confidence like a fat man on a dog.
Your war, a Republican war, of which the politically profitable part is over. We are now in the losing part. The occupation of Iraq could drag on well past November 2004.
But you can forestall that. Lean on the U.N. for troops. Lean on the Egyptians; they owe us a favor or two for the billions we've doled out to them. Speed up the creation of an Iraqi government. You don't need to wait for elections. That's Iraq's business.
Then you can announce that most of the troops will be home by Christmas and you will not be needing all of that $87 billion.
Watch Wall Street jump. The dollar, too.
Nobody expects you to do this. It will shock your friends, but what's more, it will confound your enemies. It will also steer the Republican Party back toward that nationalistic but "humble" foreign policy you described three years ago, which best suits the interests, and the patience, of those who might vote for you in 2004.
Bruce Ramsey's column appears regularly on editorial pages of The Times. His e-mail address is bramsey@seattletimes.com
Copyright © 2003 The Seattle Times Company
Why?
Let's quit
Try telling that crap to a soldier.
They will snicker at such cowardly foolishness but still defend your right to your opinion.
Opps... this guy's confusing Bush with his predecessor. Happen's all the time. Must be that "West Wing" show..they keep forgetting that America has a REAL PRESIDENT who's motivated to protect American lives over protecting his a**.
Another example of leftist "projection".
SFS
It seems to me that if a bunch of cockroaches ate a pie you left out one evening, you can't very well call the exterminator and tell him to find only those cockroaches that ate the pie and leave the rest of them alone. After 9-11, it was very clear the Middle East needed to be fumigated, and Saddam was one of the queen cockroaches. He may or may not have been tied directly to the pie incident (9-11) but he was clearly an enabler and had to go.
Having taken on the reponsibility, we are duty bound to see it through. So while I think Bush's domestic policy has been a disaster, I pretty much keep my yapper shut on the war. And will continue to do so through thick and thin.
We could have withdrawn from Europe after WWII - some said we should have - and let the indigenous peoples fight it out for the scraps. I do not want to think of the world we'd be living in now if we had done so.
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