An important strategic decision and the decisive foreign policy issue before our leaders today: Do we listen to John Kerry and John Murtha, who follow the political winds, set an artificial timetable for the withdrawal of U.S. armed forces from Iraq? Or do we listen to the new, freely-elected Iraqi government, which in conjunction with coalition forces on the ground, has set a series of achievable benchmarks to determine the timing for foreign troop withdrawal and greater internal control?
Read the essay in today’s Washington Post by Iraq’s national security adviser Mowaffak al-Rubaie (HT: Austin Bay).
Question for the Party of Retreat and Defeat … why now?
I’m sick of people rewriting history for their own political purposes. When you make a claim that the President or the Administration pretended that “it would be a cakewalk,” you’d better be prepared to cite chapter & verse – preferably with a link.
This isn’t about what happened in 2002 or 2003. This is about charting the best path forward from here & now. Artificial timetables set us up for premature withdrawal and demoralizing defeat, rather than a victory achieved.
Let’s talk about the future, not the past. Or else I can bring up many Democrats who voted for the war and supported it in the early days, before going off the reservation. I’m willing to give them another chance to come on board with a plan for victory, but I know I don’t want their party running anything in Washington.