So Mr gray, I don't recall any President going to war under questionable pretences but I do recall a President who got his rocks off in the Oval office.
I am also one of those few who believe there are weapons of mass destruction and one of these days they will surface.
Yes, well, if proving that Saddam is evil is the only criterion for war, then that's a valid argument. Unfortunately, it's not. Robert Mugabe is an evil man. The genocidal, paramilitary thugs trying to cleanse the Darfur region of Sudan are evil men. Kim Jong Il is an evil man. Mugabe has killed more than Saddam, the thugs in Sudan are currently committing genocide, and Kim Jong Il actually does have weapons of mass destruction. With the same soldiers we deployed in Iraq, we could have intervened to depose Mugabe and stop the Darfurian genocide and still had soldiers left over. Now, our army is overstretched. The opportunity cost of deployment into Iraq has enabled other evil men to continue to actively engage in atrocities against their people, on a scale Saddam could only dream of. That's a pretty good reason right there that the war was a bad thing.
I'm not some naive, pie-in-the-sky liberal who thinks that violence is always wrong or that the army is an instrument of evil. I believe that force is a tool like any other: appropriate in some situations, and inappropriate in others, depending on the consequences of its use. I further believe that the men and women who serve in our military are deeply patriotic and eminently moral, and that we owe them more than we can even hope to repay. Still, we have certain tangible obligations to them, the importance of which cannot be overstated:
1) We have the obligation to never put them in harm's way unnecessarily.
2) When we do put them in harm's way, we have the obligation to make sure we're putting them in the place where they will do the most good.
3) We have the obligation to provide them with a clear set of objectives, the means to accomplish those objectives, and a clear strategy for withdrawal once those objectives have been accomplished.
Given that we were not by any means forced into this war, and given that I've shown that there are at least three places where our soldiers could have done more good, I'd say we roundly screwed our own soldiers on the first two counts.
As to the third, what clear demonstration of governmental control by the new Iraqi administration will signal the completion of our mission? We haven't been told. How, exactly, are our soldiers supposed to go about facilitating the transition? Peacekeeping? The US Army doesn't train its soldiers in peacekeeping. We still don't have a sufficient number of army-employed interpreters. We still don't have enough troops to provide for regular shifts, meaning that many if not most of our soldiers are pulling double-duty. We've cut general pay and hazard pay for many of our soldiers, and we're keeping them away from their families for far longer than any of them were informed they should expect. And finally, the Bush Administration refuses to tell us, at least with any specifics, how the withdrawal will be accomplished whenever it is that their vague and nonspecific objectives are finally met.
We are treating our soldiers like dirt. This is simply unnacceptable.
Now, I disagree with the liberal sentiment that we should pick up and leave. I think that leaving will result, almost certainly, in massive ethnic violence. In particular, I think the Sunnis will be the victims of serious atrocities. But I also think that we should have a particular objective in mind that, once met, will allow us to begin the process of leaving. Here is my semi-informed opinion of what we should do now.
1) American forces will remain deployed as they are until the following conditions are met: the number of fully trained Iraqi security forces is equal to the number of American soldiers stationed in the region, the Iraqi government specifically and unequivocally denounces retributive violence against the Sunnis, the trials of Saddam Hussein and his underlings are completed, the Iraqi economy posts four consecutive quarters of 4% or better real GDP growth, and the Iraqi government agrees to in-country observation by an international panel of human rights monitors for five years.
2) We should immediately rescind all tax provisions excluding dividends, capital gains, investments, or bequests from being considered income, excepting bequests under $2 million of value. We should further reduce by 50% the effect of the portions of the 2001/2003 tax cuts not already altered by the other changes. This will, if my budget calculator does not lie to me, generate $264.18 billion in new revenues. This money will be used to raise soldier pay across the board by 10%, raise hazard pay by 20%, and double the amount we are currently spending on equipping our soldiers with body armor and retrofitting our HumVees with heavier plating. The remainder (more than half) will be partly eaten up by the increase in enlistment now that soldiers are paid something worth getting, and the rest can go to ameliorating the other problems our soldiers face, like a lack of interpreters or training as peacekeepers.
3) Upon the completion of the objectives mentioned in 1, US forces will reduce deployment in the region at a rate of 5%/month until it reaches 25% of current deployment. At that point, the US will formally ask the Iraqi government if it can maintain a presence in the country for the time being. The size of the continued presence, and the duties of the soldiers stationed there, will be negotiated at that time. The Iraqis can, of course, refuse to give us permission to remain, at which time we will resume our withdrawal. I expect, however, that they would prefer we continue to have some presence in the region for the purposes of stability and for aiding their security forces.
Now, that's a little rough, but I think that I am here doing a better job than our President at articulating what needs to be done, providing the resources to allow our soldiers to get it done, and explaining how we'll step back once we are done.
