This is just what we want -- Chicago and Gary setting our foreign policy:
The efforts are being pushed by the D.C.-based Institute for Policy Studies, which sponsored the prewar "Cities for Peace" campaign that helped rally 165 cities to oppose the 2003 invasion. Director John Cavanagh, pointing to polls that show growing public frustration with the Iraq war, said that "we're at a fascinating tipping point."
A fascinating tipping point? How about "on the verge of another shameful episode in American history"? A lot of people have said a lot of things about Rep. John Murtha, the Vietnam vet "war hawk" whom the media have annointed the new figurehead of the antiwar movement (Cindy Sheehan having worn a little thin). Most, even President Bush, go to great pains to praise his decency and patriotism. But Murtha is just wrong, his "Vietnam vet" credentials notwithstanding. We cut and ran in that war, throwing away 55,000 lives for nothing and telling the Vietnamese people we didn't really mean the promises we made to them. You'd think Murtha, of all people, wouldn't want to see that again. I'm glad the Republicans finally found a backbone and called the Democrats' bluff on their "leave Iraq now" mongering.
Comments
I agree that cutting and running isn't the "right" thing to do, but I'd really like to see a more quantifiable objective than "we will stay the course" or "we will stay till the job is done and not one day more". I agree with those who wonder how defeating terrorism is a definable, quantifiable goal as opposed to something to strive for, for the rest of our (and our children
You're right that "staying the course" isn't an adequate alternative to "let's leave now." There have to be timetables, but I think they need to be goal- or task-oriented rather than time-specific. Instead of saying we're going to pull out in a year or start the pullout process in six months (which would just let the other side know when it can REALLY ramp up), we need to say we'll pull out this many troops when a certain number of Iraqi forces are trained, this many more when certain government institutions are in place, etc. As to "defeating terrorism," it's not a quantifiable goal any more than "fighting crime" is. We just have to make the terrorists believe we're serious by what we do, the same way we make criminals know we're serious by how we treat them with the law's punishment.