My Plan for Iraq and The Future of the Middle East

Mr. President, I have a plan. You challenged your opponents, who didn’t like your plan for future activity in Iraq, to come up with an alternative solution, I have it.

I have stated in this blog, my assessment of the situation in the Middle East. (See A Vote of No Confidence) Let us remember that you sir, started this war in Iraq. Many cautioned you not to do it and most of our allies refused to support you.

You started the Iraq conflict by convincing the American People and, embarrassingly enough, our congress to authorize you the use of unlimited power and resources to fight the “terrorists”. Your request to use that power to wage war in Iraq was couched in what I will kindly refer to as misleading information. When you got the authorization you wanted, you enormously misused and squander the power and resources of my country. If we look into the waste and corruption fostered in the so-called reconstruction of Iraq, it will show your lack of leadership and oversight. The military has struggled from day one after the fall of Baghdad to run a country. But on the other hand, I don’t think nation building is in their line of work.

You have continued to mislead and lie to the American people about our involvement in Iraq. You have propped up a leader who obviously can’t control his own people without the might of the American military backing him up. You have angered our allies and caused us to lose any leverage in any solution in the Middle East.

The reason people have trouble coming up with an alternative to “staying the course” or Cut and run” is that you’ve precluded any other solution. While diplomacy is an option that might work, as the Baker Hamilton Report suggested, we have no one to negotiate our side, because you sir have no credibility. No one believes you’re going to do what you say you are going to do because you have either lied or ignored the promises you’ve made to the American people and our allies, such that no one can or should believe you.

Starting with the unfunded mandates for federal programs, such as “no child left behind” and continuing through the on going disaster in New Orleans, with stops at the cuts in veterans benefits, we have seen a pattern of telling people what they want to hear and than doing what you intended in the first place, which for all practical purposes is nothing.

Why would I in the face of military experts telling me I’m right to be skeptical, believe that sending more good troops in harms way will solve this problem. No sir, we do not need more troops. We need to get the men and women we have in Iraq out of there.

Once we leave, watching the factions in Iraq come to agreement on a government may be messy and we may not like the way it ends, but if we stayed in Iraq for twenty years it’s not going to change one major problem. They don’t want us there and they’ve made that abundantly clear.

My solution therefore is to give our government credibility. President Bush have the courage to resign, take Cheney with you when you leave and let Nancy Pelosi take over a new government