The rhetoric of “cutting and running” must be abandoned. The only rational course of action is for all U.S. troops to leave Iraq no later than the end of this year. Rather than being the sign of weakness that all of the war’s advocates and apologists suggest, it would in fact be a sign to our own people and to the people of the world of the strength of this nation’s democratic processes. Representative John Murtha’s plan to have U.S. forces “redeployed” should be adopted immediately. The newly elected Democratic congress has a very short time in which to turn this country around. It is what the people of the country asked for through the ballot box. Should the chaos that some predict will take place in Iraq occur, we can always offer humanitarian aid to a sovereign Iraqi government. All of the predictions of disaster we heard prior to our leaving Saigon are deeply ironic in light of the fact that the nation of Vietnam is now a favored tourist destination for Americans. We can leave Iraq now with dignity—or we can wait too long and make a humiliating retreat from the rooftops of Baghdad. A timely withdrawal is the best way of honoring those who have already fallen or been injured in the name of a policy even its former advocates now admit was misguided.
1 comment:
A great nation – our USA debates its military history in the light of its posturing on the world stage. For America the debate of ‘staying course,’ or as you suggest in your Friday November 10, 2006 Armistice Day – ‘On cutting and running,’ to accept the Democratic voters success as the mandate to effectuate the national military strategy is way to energetic in its rhetorical thrust to be interpreted in the US national political drama on Iraq as a single issue by the electorate.
Systemic in the national and international drama are commitments to the new Iraq leadership and how this plays out on a host of issues that include, oil, god, guns, and lunatic extremist with archaic zealot idolatry – namely Jihadist. To associate the political temper with the 1970s final South Vietnam military scenario is again taking a cookie cutter approach to the historic events on the world stage. How America left – or got the hell our of Saigon - Ho Chi Minh City should not be seen in one image of its final scene, but rather aggressive four party talks with Russia, China, Hanio and the US in the Paris negotiations. History is messy and very, very elaborate in the steps to engage as well as to disengage; for the witnesses of events are avalanches of international legalities balanced in each nation-state and with the political interpretive responses ones national psychic and their governing leaderships. In this light, and in the current Middle East posturing all the nation-states – its leadership actors are maneuvering to give meaning to the response in each electorate and concurrent national journalistic / international laws exegesis.
This suggestion of yours in withdrawal from Iraq is a quick fix to a problem that is misleading and misguided. Let’s not dream an ala ‘image making photo op,’ in the Green zone of the great city of Baghdad by year’s end. But I urge you to see the elaborate senior diplomatic expressive nuances and with related dire military and economic trans-regional character scripts to be written in world national legal records of global proportions to be read in faith by the readers i.e. average man and woman in the streets politics.
Joe
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