The Iraq War
These startling revelations from the highest ranks of our military should shake us to our very core. The man who was personally responsible for conducting the war in Iraq is trying to convince us that we should have no faith in the administration now waging the war.
General Sanchez went on to say, "There has been a glaring unfortunate display of incompetent strategic leadership within our national leaders," and that "the American people must hold them accountable."
But, General Sanchez, how can the American people hold their elected officials accountable? As we all know, they can make a lot of noise by calling congressional offices, writing letters, and attending marches; but at the end of the day, the American people hold their elected officials accountable at the ballot box.
To my colleagues in the House of Representatives, our constituents have already made up their minds. An overwhelming majority of people think it was a mistake to invade Iraq and believe that setting a timetable for withdrawal is the correct course of action. Most Democrats and Republicans agree that an open-ended occupation of Iraq is an awful idea. But the Iraqi people don't want us there, and we have no timetable for withdrawal.
What do we have if not an open-ended occupation? What more do we need to learn before deciding that this war must be brought to a halt? Day after day, the grim realities unfolding in Iraq paint a picture of futility and mismanagement. More lives are lost, more money is squandered, and Iraq falls deeper and deeper into chaos and civil war.
President Bush has had our military in pursuit of a victory that is perpetually "just around the corner." Well, we have been around the corner and back again. There is no victory to be found. The time to end this debacle has long since passed. The United States military presence has reinforced in the minds of the Iraqis the most damaging lesson an emerging nation can learn: that problems are solved with bullets and bombs instead of compromise and cooperation. Instead of encouraging compromise and fostering cooperation among the various warring tribes, we have done the exact opposite. We continue to spend billions of dollars blindly arming Iraqis who volunteer to serve in the Iraqi security forces with no thought as to where their loyalties might lie when we hand them weapons.
On one hand, as Anthony Cordesman of the Center for Strategic and International Studies points out, we have not addressed the degree to which all elements of the Iraqi security forces, from the Prime Minister's office down, have links to Shiite efforts to retain and expand power and carry out sectarian cleansing in mixed areas.
On the other hand, the bottom-up reconciliation that Bush brags about is arming and empowering the Sunni militias in Anbar province and elsewhere. This is, as a recent article in the Economist suggests, a recipe for civil war and only serves to undermine the central government of Iraq.
These irresponsible and dangerous tactics not only harm future prospects for stability in Iraq, but seriously erode our standing in the Middle East and larger international community.
I would like to commend General Sanchez for speaking out against the Bush administration. But how many more General Sanchezes will it take before the last Congressperson turns against the occupation of Iraq? How many more investigations of Blackwater's abuse, of Halliburton's fraud, how many more reports of our overstretched military at its breaking point, or about the damage our occupation is doing to our international standing? How much more of this debate do we need before our national leaders accept that the Iraq war is actually making our country less safe?
For the good of this great Nation and for the good of Iraq, it is time to bring our troops home and end the occupation of Iraq.
Mr. Speaker and Members, I know that there is an attempt to put a good face on the surge and to try and make us believe that the surge is working, but just read your newspapers every day and see the number of lives that are being lost, not only of our own soldiers, but of the Iraqis.
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