Signs Of Life For Democrat Strategy On Iraq?
Hmm...
Wait a minute...a U.S. troop draw-down as Iraqi security forces come online? Exiting Iraq while leaving the country stable? A hesitancy to suggest a timeline for all of this?
How is this any different from the President's strategy for Iraq? How is this any different from "as Iraqis stand up we will stand down?" Bush said that in June of this year. He said the same thing in August of 2003, September of 2003 and May of 2004.
Yet somehow this represents Democrats pointing the Bush administration "toward a realistic and modestly hopeful course on Iraq?"
Give me a break. Why don't we call this what it is: Democrats are finally starting to get it. They haven't come up with anything new here, they're finally climbing on the bandwagon with the President. They are just now reaching the place on Iraq where President Bush and the majority of Republicans have been all along, even if they don't want to admit it.
Frankly, I congratulate Senators Biden and Obama for finally getting it right and hope that many others in their party follow suit, but they should stop acting like this is something new.
(via Q and O)
...the outlines of such a position emerged last week in speeches by two respected Democratic members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Joe Biden of Delaware and Barack Obama of Illinois. That they reached almost the same conclusion from opposite sides of the intraparty debate -- Biden an early and consistent supporter of the U.S. intervention against Saddam Hussein, and Obama an equally confirmed skeptic about the invasion -- adds to the significance of their statements.
Biden, the committee's senior Democrat, said in New York that it is time to scale back U.S. ambitions in Iraq and reduce troop commitment while shifting security responsibilities to the Iraqis. The next day, Obama, a freshman member of the committee, made many of the same points in Chicago.
Both said that an immediate or precipitous American withdrawal is out of the question, because, as Obama put it, "having waged a war that has unleashed daily carnage and uncertainty in Iraq, we have to manage our exit in a responsible way -- with the hope of leaving a stable foundation for the future, but at the very least taking care not to plunge the country into an even deeper and, perhaps, irreparable crisis."
They both envisage the gradual draw down of U.S. forces through 2006, with Biden more willing than Obama to suggest a time line for that process. . . .
Not only have Democrats found their voice, they may well have pointed the administration and the country toward a realistic and modestly hopeful course on Iraq.
Wait a minute...a U.S. troop draw-down as Iraqi security forces come online? Exiting Iraq while leaving the country stable? A hesitancy to suggest a timeline for all of this?
How is this any different from the President's strategy for Iraq? How is this any different from "as Iraqis stand up we will stand down?" Bush said that in June of this year. He said the same thing in August of 2003, September of 2003 and May of 2004.
Yet somehow this represents Democrats pointing the Bush administration "toward a realistic and modestly hopeful course on Iraq?"
Give me a break. Why don't we call this what it is: Democrats are finally starting to get it. They haven't come up with anything new here, they're finally climbing on the bandwagon with the President. They are just now reaching the place on Iraq where President Bush and the majority of Republicans have been all along, even if they don't want to admit it.
Frankly, I congratulate Senators Biden and Obama for finally getting it right and hope that many others in their party follow suit, but they should stop acting like this is something new.
(via Q and O)
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