Get Out of Iraq Campaign

originally posted 4/7/2007

Recently suggestions were solicited about how the Democratic Party should go about a Get Out of Iraq campaign. Here are my suggestions. Comments are welcome.

Iraq is not now nor ever was a physical threat to the United States. The true reasons for why we initially got there have never been adequately explained. There has been much discussion about the fact that the intelligence supporting the need for the Iraq invasion was manufactured or manipulated to make Iraq look like more of a threat than it was. There has been very little discussion about the real motivation for doing this. While some would say that this is water under the bridge. I say, yes, it is also hundreds of thousand deaths in the past including over 3000 American military personnel. The President needs to be held accountable!

Having said that, conspiracy theories will not sell in Peoria so the investigation needs to go on in Congress but not in the Press as part of a political campaign.

So here are the points that need to be made in a political media campaign.

• This is not an "insurgency"! - The use of the word "Insurgency" by the administration spin doctors is designed to link the conflict to similar wars against communist insurgencies which the conservative population have supported in the past. It implies a war against the government of Iraq that can be won by destroying one insurgent organization. This is not the case in Iraq unlike Algeria. There is no monolithic organization of insurgents to destroy.
• The majority of the violence is caused by a conflict between competing religious ideologies within Islam.(see civilian bodies) The United States, a Christian nation to the rest of the world, should not be brokering a peace between warring Islamic factions. Saudi Arabia or a coalition of Islamic states should be doing so. Our soldiers for the most part are caught in the middle of this conflict. 3000+ US casualties vs 100,000+ Iraqi civilians show that our troop casualties are the collateral damage not the other way around as it would be if we were the main target of this conflict.
• The Iraq war is bankrupting the country. We had a surplus at the beginning of the Bush Administration now we do not. Enough said here. Another blog perhaps later.
• The Iraq war has stretched our ground forces to the breaking point. They are short of equipment and manpower and we could not respond to a ground conflict anywhere else in the world if we had to. This includes Iran!
• The Iraqi war has not helped to reduce our dependency on foreign oil. In fact it has exacerbated it and allows other nations to dictate our foreign policy because of that dependency.
• The Iraq war has given fringe Islamic extremists a rallying point for young hot blooded Islamic youth. The location of so many important religious sites in Iraq plays to the cry of "Repel the Infidel!" Afghanistan did not do this.
• The Iraq war will not follow us back home. Yes, terrorism is real and getting more dangerous every day so we can not drop our guard. But staying in Iraq does not end this threat nor will bringing peace to Iraq end the terrorism threat to the US in the future.