US News
Democratic hopefuls compete on how to end Iraq war (Roundup)
By Tony Czuczka Jun 4, 2007, 2:47 GMT
Manchester, New Hampshire - Democratic frontrunner Hillary Clinton said Sunday that her first act as president would be to end the US military presence in Iraq, and she accused Iraqis of wasting their chance for democracy.
Iraq and national security were recurring themes in the televised debate between eight Democratic hopefuls in New Hampshire, the state where both US major parties are holding their first primary elections in early 2008.
Clinton's rivals for the centre-left presidential nomination tried to put the US senator from New York state on the defensive for having voted for the Congressional war authorization that preceded the 2003 US-led of invasion of Iraq, ordered by President George W Bush.
Clinton, seeking to become the first female president in US history, pushed back with calm determination. At the end of the two- hour debate, her opponents appeared to have scored no major points against her.
She refused to be drawn out on Iran, calling for intensified diplomacy but insisting that Iran must be prevented 'at all costs' from getting nuclear weapons. When an audience member asked the candidates for their most urgent priorities, Clinton was clear.
'Well, if President Bush has not ended the war in Iraq, to bring our troops home. That would be the very first thing that I would do,' she said, drawing applause from an audience of several hundred at St Anselm's College in Manchester, New Hampshire.
Barack Obama, a charismatic senator from Illinois who is considered Clinton's closest competitor, agreed - but added reforming US health care, which is shaping up as a major campaign issue.
Clinton sought to shift blame to Iraqis, paying tribute to US troops who she said had provided a chance for democracy that Iraqis were squandering.
'They gave the Iraqi people a chance for elections and to have a government,' she said. 'It is the Iraqis who have failed to take advantage of that opportunity.'
Clinton's personal and political history - and that of her husband, former president Bill Clinton - is likely to be a major target of the centre-right Republicans if she wins the Democratic nomination. With the Iraq war weighing heavily on the national mood, rivals within her own party are also homing in.
Obama, who only joined the Senate in 2005 and did not have to vote on the initial Iraq authorization, pointed out that he opposed the war from the start.
John Edwards, the 2004 Democratic vice presidential nominee and another top candidate, portrayed himself as more anti-war than both Clinton and Obama, though as a US senator he voted with Clinton for the Iraq authorization.
Out of office since 2005, Edwards said that he opposed recent compromise legislation on Iraq, which dropped a timetable for a US troop withdrawal from a war funding bill to avoid a veto by Bush.
He blasted Democrats in Congress for supporting the compromise and even criticized Clinton and Obama for 'quietly' voting against the funding measure. 'I think it's the difference between leading and following,' Edwards said.
Given a chance to reply, Obama shot back at Edwards: 'The fact is is that I opposed this war from the start. So you're about four and a half years late on leadership on this issue.'
New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson, a former ambassador to the United Nations, said he would swiftly ask Congress to 'de-authorize' the Iraq war - which he called a civil war - if he became president.
Edwards and Richardson stressed that they would make re- establishing US 'moral authority' in the world a top goal.
Other topics during the two-hour debate included energy policy, the environment and proposals by all of the major Democratic candidates to expand health care insurance.
With Bush constitutionally barred from seeking a third term, US voters will choose a new president in November 2008, and campaigning is already in full swing within both major parties.
The Republicans will hold their own presidential debate Tuesday in Manchester.
© 2007 dpa - Deutsche Presse-AgenturCOMMENT
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Older Talkback
page: 1
'Very simple comment, did any of these presidential hopeful's address how they would handle the obvious disaster's that would take place in Iraq & the middle east and the rest of the world after they withdraw our troops. '
In a word, no.
... and a fair question.
But isn't it a pity Bush didn't ask the same before getting us to this place?
It's a rock and a very very hard place. After 4 years it's clear we cannot win. Our goal for the elusive and undefined 'victory' only makes the problem worse. New generations of 'insurgents' will continue to appear, each less sure than the first what it's all about. That's what war does.
The Iraq Study Group provided a strategy that (at least) had the potential for the whole country to rally round. The problem was Bush would have had to back-track from his 'stay the course' mentality. He can't admit a mistake, so he goes on to make more and more and more. All the time the war gets more out of control, and America's security is weakened. He had a chance to unite, but he chose to once again divide.
Hundreds of thousands have died. Our presence is the fuel that keeps it going. If we withdraw there will be a blood-shed that will ultimately conclude with one or more factions dominating over an unstable country. If we don't withdraw there will continue to be a blood-shed, but it will never end, until finally we do.
So, yes. It's fair to ask prospective presidential candidates what sort of Iraq their policies will create. But please remember who this problem belongs to, and the fact that he has left us with no options. Please do not let him wriggle out of office, without also explaining how his consistently misguided policies of failure, will ever lead to stability in Iraq.
'But isn't it a pity Bush didn't ask the same before getting us to this place?'
Irrelevant at this point, we are there.
' After 4 years it's clear we cannot win.'
Bull. We are fighting a counterinsurgency and they take time to win. If we pull out before there is stability the results will be catastrophic.
'New generations of 'insurgents' will continue to appear, each less sure than the first what it's all about.'
So if new insurgents 'appear' and do not know 'what it's all about' won't it be easier to defeat them? Seeing as they do not know 'what it's all about' that is.... Could it be that you just want to see your words miraculously appear on the magic box in front of you and you are just going to type stuff that you have no idea what it signifies?
' That's what war does.'
How would you know, Mr. 'Was never late for a drill'.
'The Iraq Study Group provided a strategy...'
You cite that report like it was anything other then happy horsesh!t. We have: James Baker, Lee Hamilton, Lawrence Eagleburger, Vernon (hide the dress) Jordan, Edwin Meese, Sandra Day O’Connor, Leon Panetta, William Perry, Charles Robb and Alan Simpson... All tossing their flaky ideas in a blender and hitting frappe. Not one of them was in the military in the past 50 years.
Ill go with David Petraeus, author of the counterinsurgency manual the musings of Sandra Day O’Connor, Vernon Jordan and Leon Panetta any day.
' The problem was Bush would have had to back-track from his 'stay the course' mentality.'
So, the question was: did any of these presidential hopeful's address how they would handle the obvious disaster's that would take place in Iraq & the middle east and the rest of the world after they withdraw our troops?
Which you are going to non answer with blather about how you dislike Bush.
'Hundreds of thousands have died. '
According to whom? Who killed them? Saddam put 300,000 people in mass graves, not to mention the wars he started with Kuwait and Iran which killed over a million.
' Our presence is the fuel that keeps it going.'
So if we packed up and ran away it would just run out of fuel... Do you really believe that?
'. If we withdraw there will be a blood-shed that will ultimately conclude with one or more factions dominating over an unstable country.'
Yeah, Iran. After hundreds of thousands of people have been slaughtered.
'So, yes. It's fair to ask prospective presidential candidates what sort of Iraq their policies will create. But please remember who this problem belongs to,'
The people of the United States.
The Left's Iraq Muddle
Yes, it is central to the fight against Islamic radicalism.
Tuesday, May 22, 2007 12:01 a.m. EDT
At this year's graduation celebration at The New School in New York, Iranian lawyer, human-rights activist and Nobel laureate Shirin Ebadi delivered our commencement address. This brave woman, who has been imprisoned for her criticism of the Iranian government, had many good and wise things to say to our graduates, which earned their applause.
But one applause line troubled me. Ms. Ebadi said: 'Democracy cannot be imposed with military force.'
What troubled me about this statement--a commonly heard criticism of U.S. involvement in Iraq--is that those who say such things seem to forget the good U.S. arms have done in imposing democracy on countries like Japan and Germany, or Bosnia more recently.
Let me restate the case for this Iraq war from the U.S. point of view. The U.S. led an invasion to overthrow Saddam Hussein because Iraq was rightly seen as a threat following Sept. 11, 2001. For two decades we had suffered attacks by radical Islamic groups but were lulled into a false sense of complacency because all previous attacks were 'over there.' It was our nation and our people who had been identified by Osama bin Laden as the 'head of the snake.' But suddenly Middle Eastern radicals had demonstrated extraordinary capacity to reach our shores.
As for Saddam, he had refused to comply with numerous U.N. Security Council resolutions outlining specific requirements related to disclosure of his weapons programs. He could have complied with the Security Council resolutions with the greatest of ease. He chose not to because he was stealing and extorting billions of dollars from the U.N. Oil for Food program.
No matter how incompetent the Bush administration and no matter how poorly they chose their words to describe themselves and their political opponents, Iraq was a larger national security risk after Sept. 11 than it was before. And no matter how much we might want to turn the clock back and either avoid the invasion itself or the blunders that followed, we cannot. The war to overthrow Saddam Hussein is over. What remains is a war to overthrow the government of Iraq.
Some who have been critical of this effort from the beginning have consistently based their opposition on their preference for a dictator we can control or contain at a much lower cost. From the start they said the price tag for creating an environment where democracy could take root in Iraq would be high. Those critics can go to sleep at night knowing they were right.
The critics who bother me the most are those who ordinarily would not be on the side of supporting dictatorships, who are arguing today that only military intervention can prevent the genocide of Darfur, or who argued yesterday for military intervention in Bosnia, Somalia and Rwanda to ease the sectarian violence that was tearing those places apart.
Suppose we had not invaded Iraq and Hussein had been overthrown by Shiite and Kurdish insurgents. Suppose al Qaeda then undermined their new democracy and inflamed sectarian tensions to the same level of violence we are seeing today. Wouldn't you expect the same people who are urging a unilateral and immediate withdrawal to be urging military intervention to end this carnage? I would.
American liberals need to face these truths: The demand for self-government was and remains strong in Iraq despite all our mistakes and the violent efforts of al Qaeda, Sunni insurgents and Shiite militias to disrupt it. Al Qaeda in particular has targeted for abduction and murder those who are essential to a functioning democracy: school teachers, aid workers, private contractors working to rebuild Iraq's infrastructure, police officers and anyone who cooperates with the Iraqi government. Much of Iraq's middle class has fled the country in fear.
With these facts on the scales, what does your conscience tell you to do? If the answer is nothing, that it is not our responsibility or that this is all about oil, then no wonder today we Democrats are not trusted with the reins of power. American lawmakers who are watching public opinion tell them to move away from Iraq as quickly as possible should remember this: Concessions will not work with either al Qaeda or other foreign fighters who will not rest until they have killed or driven into exile the last remaining Iraqi who favors democracy.
The key question for Congress is whether or not Iraq has become the primary battleground against the same radical Islamists who declared war on the U.S. in the 1990s and who have carried out a series of terrorist operations including 9/11. The answer is emphatically 'yes.'
This does not mean that Saddam Hussein was responsible for 9/11; he was not. Nor does it mean that the war to overthrow him was justified--though I believe it was. It only means that a unilateral withdrawal from Iraq would hand Osama bin Laden a substantial psychological victory.
Those who argue that radical Islamic terrorism has arrived in Iraq because of the U.S.-led invasion are right. But they are right because radical Islam opposes democracy in Iraq. If our purpose had been to substitute a dictator who was more cooperative and supportive of the West, these groups wouldn't have lasted a week.
Finally, Jim Webb said something during his campaign for the Senate that should be emblazoned on the desks of all 535 members of Congress: You do not have to occupy a country in order to fight the terrorists who are inside it. Upon that truth I believe it is possible to build what doesn't exist today in Washington: a bipartisan strategy to deal with the long-term threat of terrorism.
The American people will need that consensus regardless of when, and under what circumstances, we withdraw U.S. forces from Iraq. We must not allow terrorist sanctuaries to develop any place on earth. Whether these fighters are finding refuge in Syria, Iran, Pakistan or elsewhere, we cannot afford diplomatic or political excuses to prevent us from using military force to eliminate them.
Mr. Kerrey, a former Democratic senator from Nebraska and member of the 9/11 Commission, is president of The New School.
www.opinionjournal.com/editorial/feature.html?id=110010107
It still makes me wince when people call this fiasco a war. Let's remember it's an unprovocked invasion of a country on very tenuous grounds that later proved to be ficticious. What would you do if someone did something similar to the USA? I guess most of us would become insurgents too. Never forget it was done against a vote taken by the UN too. I'd think more of Clinton if she called a spade a spade and outlined plans to complete (or abandon) the unprovocked invasion of Iraq.
It still makes me wince when people call this fiasco a war. Let's remember it's an unprovocked invasion of a country on very tenuous grounds that later proved to be ficticious. What would you do if someone did something similar to the USA? I guess most of us would become insurgents too. Never forget it was done against a vote taken by the UN too. I'd think more of Clinton if she called a spade a spade and outlined plans to complete (or abandon) the unprovocked invasion of Iraq.
'It still makes me wince when people call this fiasco a war. '
It is a counterinsurgency, what is going on now is a battle against those who want to subjugate Iraq and export terrorism with Iraqi oil wealth. We are fighting the same islamists in Iraq that attacked us on 9/11, so yes, it is a part of the 'war' that they declared on us.
'What would you do if someone did something similar to the USA? I guess most of us would become insurgents too.'
I wouldn't blow up children, or churches, or cut peoples heads off and put the video on the internet, or murder teachers in front of their students, or murder people by drilling out their eye sockets, or any of the other monstrous atrocities committed by the terrorists on an hourly basis. I guess most of us WOULDN'T do that. Most of the Iraqis are not doing that either. Most of them voted for a better future.
'Never forget it was done against a vote taken by the UN too.'
Never forget the genocide in Rwanda was done with the UN ignoring its responsibilities, or the slaughter in the Congo, never forget that there is a unchecked genocide going on now in Sudan, and never forget that Saddam put 300,000 people in mass graves while he was providing kickbacks to the UN.
'I'd think more of Clinton if she called a spade a spade...'
She voted for this 'war'.
They greenlighted this thing at every opportunity! They just finished greenlighting it again!
I'd agree with the SP. The dems have hedged their bet at every turn, but want to be the anti-war party. Only the Repubs have, consistantly, held their course.
The dems, supposedly, control Congress. If this is the result, why not just give it back to the Republicans? At least they back their play, and you know exactly where they stand.
Nice handle. I might just use it.
Willy is spot on. The dems greenlighted this war to get Bush in 04 and now they are trying to get him to leave, so they can pin that on him, for 08. That is the endgame. This is the goal, bacause, like it or not, the libnazi's will not, for one second, take an unequivocal stand, and be judged for it.
Bush calls their bluff in a veto threat and they flinch. The goal here is to get him to do the retreat so they can go into the election cycle with it. if they have to debate this war, the outcome might flabergast them.
The paradox here is the party of defeat will do it for votes, and no other real reason. They want the white house and they will prosecute this war to get it. In the process, they played into a war they SAY they oppose. At least they should DO one meaningful thing to prove it.
Just look at the response to one simple question. Yes there have been mistakes in this war, there are mistakes in all wars. I was a young officer in the 101st. Airborne Rangers 187th Airborne Regimental Combat Team in Korea. We were overrun by millions of Chinese because General McArthur thought he was King & would not listen to his top military advisors about China coming into the war.
This is not a war against a military army this is a war against radical Islamic Idologist's scattered all over the world including right here in the USA.
You may not want to believe it, we will probably fight this war the rest of our lives. They do not care if you are a democrat, republican, man, woman or child, they want to do away with you & your way of life.
So get off the partisan BS. An awful lot of people have died in the last 200 years + so that we can have the freedoms and the life that is envied by these people. Those of you that have never served either can't understand that or choose not to. Just remember that when your families face these dangers. Someone may not be there to do your job for you.
Just a simple question, not much to ask of those that would like to lead our country.What if all Hell breaks loose, what is your plan.
Just look at the response to one simple question. Yes there have been mistakes in this war, there are mistakes in all wars. I was a young officer in the 101st. Airborne Rangers 187th Airborne Regimental Combat Team in Korea. We were overrun by millions of Chinese because General McArthur thought he was King & would not listen to his top military advisors about China coming into the war.
This is not a war against a military army this is a war against radical Islamic Idologist's scattered all over the world including right here in the USA.
You may not want to believe it, we will probably fight this war the rest of our lives. They do not care if you are a democrat, republican, man, woman or child, they want to do away with you & your way of life.
So get off the partisan BS. An awful lot of people have died in the last 200 years + so that we can have the freedoms and the life that is envied by these people. Those of you that have never served either can't understand that or choose not to. Just remember that when your families face these dangers. Someone may not be there to do your job for you.
Just a simple question, not much to ask of those that would like to lead our country.What if all Hell breaks loose, what is your plan.
page: 1
Horace W. HillJun 4th, 2007 - 03:33:13
Very simple comment, did any of these presidential hopeful's address how they would handle the obvious disaster's that would take place in Iraq & the middle east and the rest of the world after they withdraw our troops. Lets start with Oil, Islamic terror just for kicks.
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