[Mb-civic] Sen. Russ Feingold (D-Wisconsin): Why the U.S. must leave Iraq - Salon.com

[William Swiggard]

Why the U.S. must leave Iraq
Sen. Russ Feingold says it's time to admit the war was a disaster -- and 
accuses his fellow Democrats of going along with Bush out of fear.

By Michael Scherer - Salon.com

Oct. 10, 2005 | Wisconsin Sen. Russ Feingold has latched his political 
future to the third rail of American foreign policy. This summer, he 
proposed a date for the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq: Dec. 31, 
2006. The date raises a specter that no one in Washington -- and 
especially no Democrat -- has been willing to broach: that the American 
people should begin to prepare for a political failure in Iraq, at least 
a failure by President Bush's standard of establishing, before the 
troops leave, a fully functional, democratic Iraqi state.

It is not the first time Feingold has gone out on a political limb. In 
September, he was the only Democratic senator with presidential 
ambitions to support John Roberts. He was the only senator to vote 
against the USA Patriot Act. Before that, he spent nearly a decade 
fighting the culture of political payola, a fight he won in 2002 with 
passage of the McCain-Feingold legislation.

Salon sat down with Feingold last week in his Capitol Hill office, which 
he has decorated with the trophies of his career as a populist 
politician. There was a photo of his garage door, where he wrote out a 
contract to voters in 1992 during his first statewide race. There were 
the framed roll-call votes from the final passage of his 
campaign-finance legislation. And there was the senator himself, dressed 
in pinstripes and a blue-gray tie, speaking with the urgency of a 
politician with his eyes on the White House in 2008. In a wide-ranging 
interview, he spoke about the "timidity and weakness" of his own party, 
the mistakes of Sen. John Kerry, the qualifications of Harriet Miers and 
his plan for winning the War on Terror.

If President Bush came to you this afternoon and said, "I've got trouble 
in Iraq. What should I do now?" what would you say to him?

"Well, Mr. President," I would say, "we need to get the focus back on 
those who attacked us on 9/11." I would say to him that I was proud of 
the way he and his administration conducted themselves after 9/11. I 
thought his speech to the Congress after 9/11 was one of the best 
speeches I've ever heard by a president. I admired not only the focus 
but the bipartisanship of his approach in the lead-up to Afghanistan. We 
had a historic unity in this country, and I was pleased to be a part of it.

I would then say to the president that I believe the Iraq war was a 
divergence from the real issue. Unfortunately, in many ways, it has 
played into the hands of those who attacked us on 9/11. I witnessed the 
connection that has grown between Osama bin Laden, al-Zarqawi and now 
Iraqis who have been radicalized because of our invasion of Iraq. So I 
would urge him to think in terms of a strategy where we finish the 
military mission. I would ask him to put forward a plan to identify what 
that mission is, what the benchmarks are that need to be achieved and 
when they can be achieved, and that he publicly announce a target 
withdrawal date, so that the American people, the Iraqi people and the 
world can see that this is in no way intended to be a permanent American 
occupation.

Can you be any more specific about what that plan should entail?

Well, I think it's his job to come up with the specifics. But among the 
things that I would certainly be looking for would be first a 
recognition that the military mission and the mission of having a 
democratic and stable Iraq are actually different things. There is a 
tunnel vision in the White House which suggests we are just going to go 
out and find the bad guys, we are going to kill them, and we are just 
going to stay there until that is done. Well, that actually plays into 
the hands of those who are trying to radicalize the Iraqi people.

So the first thing is, I want the plan to recognize that drawing down 
our troops in a logical and safe way is a way to defuse the intensity of 
the insurgency, especially the continuing and growing presence of 
foreign insurgents. The second recognition of the plan should be that 
the current troops-on-the-ground military mission is not really the 
future for Iraq. Actually it calls into question the legitimacy of the 
current Iraqi government. The plan should recognize that it is our 
intention to continue joint military operations with the Iraqi 
government, with their permission, but targeted, laserlike attacks on 
terrorist elements, just as we are doing with other countries around the 
world, in the Philippines, Indonesia and other countries. In other 
words, we are not invading those countries. We are cooperating. We want 
to continue to have Iraq be part of the international fight against 
terrorism, but we need to have a course correction. That's the kind of 
effort where we would be on the offensive, instead of where we are now, 
which is on the defensive.

Would it be acceptable for us to leave Iraq before it is politically 
stable, and before the insurgency is calmed down?

If we don't leave, our not leaving is a big part of the political 
instability. So it's an absurdity to talk in terms of, "How can we leave 
before it is stable?" In fact, the presence of this huge American, and 
other [countries'], occupation of this country is what is destabilizing 
the country even more. It's a completely illogical conversation for 
people to talk in terms of what is already, many believe, almost a civil 
war, if not already a civil war. What we need to do is recognize that 
Iraqis are going to have to stand on their own. When I suggest that we 
withdraw the ground forces in a reasonable manner, this does not mean 
that we do not continue reconstruction, it does not mean that we do not 
continue to help the government, it does not mean that we do not have a 
very strong partnership with the Iraqi government and the Iraqi people 
on non-military issues as well as military issues.

This is not just leaving as we did in Vietnam or as we did in Somalia. 
That's a mistake.

If after President Bush left, Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi and Howard Dean 
came to your office and said, "We need a more unified Democratic message 
on Iraq," would you agree that there is a problem with the Democratic 
message?

Absolutely. There is a real timidity and weakness in terms of Democrats 
being willing to stand up to this error of American foreign policy. I 
think one of the greatest errors in American foreign policy in our 
modern lives is the divergence into Iraq that was done by the president. 
It is not sufficient for Democrats to point out the dishonest way we 
were taken into war. Nor is it sufficient for Democrats to simply point 
out that what is being done now is extremely mistaken. Democrats have to 
talk in terms of a strategy that, if they were in the White House, they 
would implement to successfully finish this particular mission, but more 
importantly, to get back to the real focus on the terrorist networks 
that attacked us on 9/11.

The Democratic message shouldn't begin with Iraq. The Democratic message 
should begin with, "We are committed to fighting and defeating the 
terrorist elements that attacked us on 9/11."

(Continued:)
http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2005/10/10/feingold/print.html
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://www.islandlists.com/pipermail/mb-civic/attachments/20051010/c8d24fc5/attachment-0001.htm