Time for U.S. to withdraw, By Neil Abercrombie and Dennis J. Kucinich

http://www.usatoday.com/news/opinion/editorials/2005-05-16-oppose_x.htm

Time for U.S. to withdraw

By Neil Abercrombie and Dennis J. Kucinich

Forty-one months after the United States entered World War II, we had achieved victory in Europe. We've been in Iraq for over half that period. What reasonable person would say we have reached the halfway point in Iraq?

Today's troops are just as brave, patriotic and capable as their WWII predecessors. They have already accomplished much. They deposed and imprisoned a tyrant. They have given ordinary Iraqis the chance to shape their country's destiny.

Nevertheless, the military occupation of Iraq will not turn Iraq into a democratic nation. Longstanding rivalries will do more to shape that country's future than anything American troops can do. Those forces will not be controlled by American boots on Iraqi ground, no matter how many we put there or how long they remain.

In Iraq there are no front lines, no easy way to tell friend from foe, and no clear way to measure success. Iraq is a quagmire. Meantime, it has become a recruiting poster for Osama bin Laden. Are we to keep fighting indefinitely, losing more troops every week, spending billions of dollars, and increasing the strain on our armed forces, especially the reserve and National Guard?

We feel this course, with its echoes of Vietnam, is unsustainable. It has already added $200 billion to our national debt and costs U.S. taxpayers more than $1 billion per month. It jeopardizes the strategic interests of the United States, particularly in Asia and the Pacific. It alienates allies in the Muslim world and elsewhere, hindering efforts to create a united global front against al-Qaeda and other terrorist organizations.

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http://www.usatoday.com/news/opinion/editorials/2005-05-16-oppose_x.htm

http://kucinich.us/archive/report/display.php?r=33&d=2005-05-17+15%3A48%3A33

It is time for a new initiative to get out of Iraq. One which does not engage in casting blame, or in fomenting recriminations. One which holds the return home of our troops as being both the logical conclusion of a mission, and the imperative which flows from new information concerning the mission.

It is time to reach out to Republicans and Democrats alike, no matter how they voted on the war, to have Congress legislate a date certain by which all US troops must be withdrawn from Iraq. We can and must create a new way to bring our brave men and women back home.
Congressman Neil Abercrombie (D) of Hawaii and I are drafting legislation to set a time by which the US must be out of Iraq. We are carefully building a new coalition. We are planning on introducing the legislation next week.

We published an op ed piece in USA Today. I spoke of it on the House floor. Time for a new approach and a new beginning to the end of the war against Iraq.

http://kucinich.us/archive/home/display.php?src=k_20050517_hfngbqnl.cuc
http://www.usatoday.com/news/opinion/editorials/2005-05-16-oppose_x.htm
http://www.usatoday.com/news/opinion/editorials/2005-05-16-our-view_x.htm

The consensus on Iraq happens to be wrong. It is the equivalent of saying that, having invaded and started a fire, we are irresponsible if we refuse to stop pouring gasoline on it. How does hiring one ethnic group, the Kurdish Peshmerga, to destroy the Sunni city of Fallujah forstall civil war? Paying various tribes to commit atrocities against each other escalates civil war. And how did you manage to leave out the most important of all of the groups opposed to US involvement, namely people enraged by losing family members to indiscriminate and collective US punishment?

Representatives Kucinich and Abercrombie gave a sane and realistic response, but even they were not honest enough to name the goal invasion of Iraq for what it was.

•Bush did not invade to get rid of WMD. There were none.

•Bush did not invade to fight Al Qaeda. Iraq had nothing to do with Al Qaeda, and the invasion in fact took resources away from that project. He maintains close personal business relationships with Saudi Arabia, which funded and continues to fund Al Qaeda.

•Bush did not invade to get rid of Saddam. He explicitly stated that the invasion was still on even if Iraq's neighbors succeeded in their plan to convince Saddam and sons to go into exile. And he is maintaining a very cozy relationship with Karimov of Uzbekistan, who is every bit as murderous as Saddam.

•Bush did not invade to bring democracy. He fought having elections for as long as he could, and is now unwilling to abide by the platform of the party with the most votes, which calls for phased US withdrawal.

He invaded Iraq for one and only one reason, to plant a permanent military presence there against the wishes of its population, in order to control the entire region by force. Solving the problem of what to do next in Iraq requires that we be honest enough to name the real goal and then to repudiate it. Reasonable people can disagree about how to leave Iraq and how long it will take, but that must be the goal, as Kucinich and Abercrombie pointed out.

the voice of reason. . .twice in one day (Galloway).

I'm stunned.