Bush's Iraq Offensive
Robert Dreyfuss
June 14, 2006
If President George W. Bush, Dick Cheney and Karl Rove are worried that they have a losing political hand at home when it comes to Iraq, it isn’t evident from this week’s news. Less than five months before the November elections, a vote that will be a referendum on Bush’s imperial venture in Iraq, the president laid down his final marker on Iraq for 2006. The administration’s electoral strategy is to point proudly to Bush’s criminal mayhem in that war-battered country and challenge voters to endorse it. His message to antiwar Democrats and to the solid majority of voters opposed to the war? Bring ‘em on!
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Kerry, in an effort to turn the tables on Republicans, introduced a resolution in the Senate this week calling for the immediate withdrawal of nearly all U.S. forces in Iraq. The plan, according to the senator’s website , calls for “the redeployment of U.S. combat troops out of Iraq by the end of 2006. Only U.S. troops essential to completing the mission of standing up Iraqi security forces would remain.” Kerry also calls for the internationalization of the conflict:
The President (must) convene a summit that includes the leaders of the new Iraqi government, leaders of the governments of each country bordering Iraq, representatives of the Arab League, the Secretary General of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, representatives of the European Union, and leaders of the governments of each permanent member of the United Nations Security Council, to reach a comprehensive political agreement for Iraq that addresses fundamental issues including federalism, oil revenues, the militias, security guarantees, reconstruction, economic assistance and border security.
Kerry’s got the right idea. My guess is that if Kerry’s plan were put forward to voters as the core of the Democratic Party’s 2006 election platform, the Republicans would be routed. Not only is that the smart thing to do politically, but it’s the moral thing to do as well. The U.S. presence in Iraq has become an unspeakable moral blot, the scene of war crimes, devastation and a clumsy (and as yet unresolved) effort to consolidate the U.S. empire in southwest Asia. The issue is not whether the war is “winnable.” The issue is that America has no business winning it. Imperial wars can be won. But they don’t deserve to be won.
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