The current Iraq strategy has no discernible end in sight and requires the United States to spend additional hundreds of billions of dollars despite urgent national needs in education, health care, and infrastructure improvement, and when high oil prices have provided the Iraqi government with billions in additional revenue that could pay for their own redevelopment and security. This strategy is neither sustainable nor in our broader national security or economic interest.
In an open letter to the Bully Boy, the Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi and the Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid*, makes the above argument. Sadly, it takes them two paragraphs to get to that point. Not unlike Pelosi's press conference last Thursday that was supposed to set the Democratic's Congressional plan for Iraq in the minds of Americans. Instead of staying focused, Pelosi used the press conference to babble on about her trip to India and about her feelings on the issue of super delegates and about anything that popped into her mind.
US Amabassador Ryan Crocker and General David Petraeus return to Congress on Tuesday. As in September, it's another attempt to tell the American people that a turned corner is just around the corner, that a 'win' is in sight, that more time is needed. It's a snow job.
Democrats wisely realized that they needed to be prepared this go round. Unwisely, Nancy Pelosi goes off script repeatedly. The press conference in question was salvaged (but not saved, as C.I. noted) by US House Rep Rahm Emanuel who noted that the White House response to every event in Iraq is always the same: they insist they need more money, more time and more
troops. He declared this non-realistic approach of doing the same thing over and over (but with more money, time and troops) was "a policy cul-du-sac and we just keep going round and round". The one report we found from a news outlet on the press conference skipped right to the pull quote from Emanuel.
Again, he salvaged it, he did not save it -- one person can only do so much.
All the Democrats were supposed to be preparing the American people for what was coming. The hope was that, by doing so, they could outline clear markers and not have a sink hole passed off, yet again, as "progress" by the administration.
In terms of that goal, there were three Democratic All Stars last week. Emanual was one and Senators Barbara Boxer and Joe Biden were the two others.
Biden chairs the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and he used that committee to address Iraq on Wednesday and Thursday. [If you missed news of the above, you can refer to the Iraq snapshots for Wednesday and Thursday. That may be all you can refer to because we haven't seen other coverage in real time.] Someone had to be selected to deliver the Democratic Radio Response yesterday and the party went with Biden. A good move on their part because, from the start, Biden got right to the point:
Good morning. I'm Joe Biden, Democratic Senator from Delaware and Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. In January 2007, President Bush announced the surge of an additional 30,000 American forces into Iraq. Next week, the President is expected to tell the American people what comes next. It's an important moment for America's future.
The purpose of the surge was to bring violence in Iraq down so that its leaders could come together politically. Violence has come down, but the Iraqis have not come together. The country remains terribly divided among Sunni, Shi'a and Kurds. There is little evidence the Iraqis will settle their differences peacefully any time soon.
Biden did that in Wednesday's hearing as well. That hearing, one you apparently are never supposed to hear about, found the issue of US withdrawal from Iraq seriously addressed. You'd think Panhandle Media would be interested but you can't trip the light nostalgia back to 1968 for a full week and also offer the people the news they need, can you?
Retired General William Odom was one of the witnesses at Wednesday's hearing and he minced no words in terming the escalation (the 'surge') a failure and explaining why the US needed to get out of Iraq. As C.I. noted:
Odom addressed the elephant in the room: the violence that likely follows a withdrawal. "We don't have the physical choice to prevent chaos when we leave," he declared. "It's going to happen . . . no matter what we do. . . . We have the blame because we went in [to Iraq] . . . We do have the choice not to send more US troops. That's the moral choice we're facing." He also noted how trainers were "besides the point" when Iraq is plauged with conflict and divided loyalties.
Not all the witnesses favored withdrawal. The afternoon session (yes, Biden held an all day hearing on Wednesday that somehow the press managed to ignore) featured the Council on/for/by/from Foreign Relations Stephen Biddel. Senator John Kerry quickly noted that Biddle obviously belonged to the 100-year war school of thought. Biddle smirked. He smirked a lot. He smirked as he explained that Iraqi security forces were used, by the puppet of the occupation Nouri al-Maliki, as a personal militia to target those who disagree with his 'vision.' Senator Barbara Boxer used her brief time to explore taht.
Barbara Boxer: Did you just say that Maliki uses the Iraqi security forces as his militia? Did you say that?
Biddle: Yes.
Barbara Boxer: If that's true and Maliki uses his military as a force to bring about peace -- that's scandalous and that we would have paid $20 million to train [it] and someone that we consider an expert says it's a militia, that's shocking.
Boxer explained what the testimony was providing her with, "a picture of Iraq today as a bloody lawless place, run by militias, a place that has undergone ethnic cleansing and the Shias won that . . . and also that the US presence there is only putting off the day when the Iraqis will find the way."
She drew a clear line between that reality and what the American people and Congress are repeatedly told and she singeled out two who spread the fantasies: Petraeus and US Secretary of State Condi Rice. Boxer wasn't in the mood for Biddle's nonsense that the US could keep the peace when the reality was that they were engaging warlords ("You cannot count on them," she noted) and Biddle tried to justify the use of the warlords.
"There is no good solution to this nightmare," she stated clearly but Biddle, apparently believing this was a meeting of the CFR and not the US Senate, thought he could shuck and jive his way through and that he could insult Boxer leading Boxer to reply back that "for you to suggest that I don't care about the outcome is a total, total slap to those of us who were against the war." Biddel, still smirking, offered more nonsense and Boxer cut him off with, "I'll take that as an apology." She was done with him.
And she got the point across very well. The White House is in business with warlords in Iraq (just as in Afghanistan) and, as vile as that is, it didn't even produce a single accomplishment. Five years later and the only thing to show is deaths and more deaths. Biddle was a stand-in for the administration and Boxer made it clear that the Senate wasn't in the mood for a lot of spin and a lot of hype.
"So, where are we after the surge? Back to where we were before it started. With 140,000 troops in Iraq -- and no end in sight. The best that can be said is we've gone from drowning in Iraq to treading water. That's better, but we can't keep doing it without exhausting ourselves," Biden explained in his radio address.
Last week was about setting markers by which the Congress and the people could provide a context when Crocker and Petraeus attemped to re-sell the Iraq War. There were three All Stars last week but, for the most part, many members of Congress did a fine job of establishing that framework. (That includes Republican Senators Chuck Hagel and Richard Lugar.)
The press didn't cover it. They were interested in the horse race and other things. None of us believe that next week the Iraq War ends or that Congress will even conclude that they need to end it right now. But that wasn't the point of last week. The point was to establish a system to judge what Petraeus and Crocker plan to tell the people. On that, Congress succeeded. Hopefully, this week will find them continuing to work the points, continuing to demonstrate how the White House is offering nothing but more of the same and how neither the United States nor Iraq can afford the continuation of the illegal war.
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* Along with Pelosi and Reid, the letter is signed by Steny Hoyer, John Murhta, Richard Durbin, Robert Byrd, Nita Lowey, Ike Skelton, Joe Biden, Carl Levin, Silvestre Reyes, Howard Berman, David Obey, Daniel Inouye, Patrick Leahy and John Rockefeller. As leaders, we place the blame for wasting two paragraphs on the two leaders Pelosi and Reid.
