| Thursday, April 06, 2006 |
| Kerry's plan |
I think John F. Kerry is pretty smart to get to Hillary's left on Iraq. Her position is not popular with the base. He needs all the popularity he can get. On a pragmatic level, I think Kerry's idea for pushing Iraq to get its act together (or lose U.S. troop protection) is a good one, and something the Democrats could work with, if they were amenable to doing anything at all proactive regarding America's quite unpopular war...
WASHINGTON -- Senator John F. Kerry yesterday called for the United States to remove its troops from Iraq by the end of the year and to start a withdrawal by the middle of May if Iraqis fail to quickly establish a stable government that's acceptable to its major ethnic groups.
''Time to get tough," Kerry, a Massachusetts Democrat, said in an interview. ''If you can't get them to do it in the next six weeks, it's because they don't want to do it. And if they don't want to do it, we shouldn't stay in the middle of a civil war."
If a unity government can't be established by May 15, Kerry argues, the vast majority of American forces should leave; even if Iraq meets that deadline, he maintains, US troops should come home by the end of this year. Such a promise would give the new Iraqi leadership greater credibility as it seeks to take control of the country, Kerry said.
He is also calling for an international summit involving the United Nations and the Arab League to facilitate peacekeeping and reconstruction. ''There's been a pathetic absence of major diplomacy by our administration," Kerry said. The plan follows Kerry's op-ed yesterday in the NYT. And he's been all over the cable shows promoting it (when not defending himself -- very well, by the way -- against GOP guttersniping.) He's also beginning to draw support from the normally reticent Dems (Feingold excluded from the reticent part) and from his continued fans (though some are asking what took him so long.) BTW to my mind, Kerry, of whom I'm no fan after that 2004 election fiasco, also gets props for coming out clearly in favor of Feingold's censure res...
I'd say Republicans should address the merits of Kerry's proposal and explain why they should be dismissed as "loss of nerve." It isn't about nerve. Our forces have shown plenty of that. The trouble is, it doesn't seem arguable that U.S. forces belong in the middle of a civil war, and it's becoming more and more difficult to see precisely what our "mission" in Iraq is at this stage (keeping the Shia and Sunni from killing each other, and both from wiping out the Kurds?) The fact that the right (and the White House) aren't addressing the substance of Kerry's ideas, and is spending all of their time attacking him, means they're probably not prepared to debate Iraq on its merits (such as they are). For them, it's down to pure emotionalism and excuses.
Tags: American Soldiers, Iraq, Politics, John Kerry, Iraq War, civil War |
posted by JReid @ 11:08 PM   |
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