A Response to Bush

George Bush has taken up the Petreus plan -- which is to continue slogging on into the future -- but bringing home a few troops -- something that John Warner called for and was then rebuffed for saying. Barack Obama has laid out a plan to bring the troops home. Now John Edwards has done the same in a video response to the President's speech.



I didn't catch the Bush speech, but it appears from the report in the LA Times that he's dropped the word victory for the word success. Success of course is a much more ambiguous term, a term that can be manipulated. It is time, however, for the Iraqi's to take on this job and decide their future. Ultimately we can't decide it for them. We stirred up the nest, but we can't build a new one. The key is diplomacy -- we must get the Saudis, the Syrians, and the Iranians to agree to support a negotiated solution. The other choice is decades of occumpation. I don't think anyone is ready for that -- here or there.
Thanks to Levellers for the link.

Comments

Anonymous said…
But Obama's plan rests on either getting a veto-proof majority in the senate or waiting until we get him or another peacemaking Democrat as president.

Edwards is calling on Congress to refuse to raise the funds to continue the war. That doesn't take a veto-proof majority or even a filibuster-proof majority because if the move is vetoed or filibustered the funds are still not raised. Then Bush is forced to bring the church home. So, IF Congress has the spine (or if we citizens force them to have the spine) Bush is given a choice: a rapid timeline for orderly withdrawal and then the funds to make that happen or no funds at all and he has to bring them home in less than an orderly fashion.

That's how Congress finally forced the end of the Vietnam War. This is the difference between talk and action. Edwards has, as everyone on MSNBC remarked, raised the bar for the candidates and laid down the guantlet for us and Congress.

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