Nuclear Age Peace Foundation

Tag: surge

  • Afghanistan: War Is Not the Answer

    Statement of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation

    President Obama’s recent decision to send 30,000 additional US troops to Afghanistan is part of a larger trend of escalating violence in a country renowned for being a graveyard of empires. After adding 21,000 US troops to Afghanistan in March 2009, the months of July, August and October 2009 were the deadliest months for US troops in Afghanistan since the 2001 invasion. Continued attacks against civilians have stoked anger and resentment among the people of Afghanistan.

    The US invasion and occupation of Iraq have shown that true stability and democracy cannot be imposed through violence. Even with a US force of over 100,000 troops, Iraq remains an extremely dangerous place, with daily bombings, kidnappings and killings. Many people in Iraq still lack basic necessities such as electricity and clean drinking water. By some estimates, more than one million Iraqis have been killed in the war and more than four million have become refugees.

    The president’s decision to add nearly 50 percent more US troops to the occupation of Afghanistan will, together with troops from other NATO countries, bring total troop levels to around 150,000 – approximately the same number of troops deployed by the Soviet Union in their failed war in the 1980s.

    According to US intelligence agencies, there are fewer than 100 al Qaeda members in Afghanistan, and there are serious tensions between al Qaeda and the Taliban.  Even if the Taliban were to prevail in Afghanistan and offer al Qaeda a “safe haven,” it would be unlikely that al Qaeda would accept it, preferring instead to maintain the “invisibility” of a non-state network.

    Therefore, it is reasonable to ask the question, “Will the president’s decision to increase US troop levels in Afghanistan make the United States more secure?” For the following reasons, we believe this question must be answered in the negative.

    Sending more US troops to Afghanistan will lead to more US casualties. The war in Afghanistan has already claimed the lives of nearly 1,000 US troops and has severely impacted the lives of countless others through repeated deployments, serious injuries and Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.

    Sending more US troops to Afghanistan will create more casualties among the Afghan people. Civilian deaths in Afghanistan since the 2001 invasion are estimated at between 12,000 and 32,000. More than 200,000 Afghan people have been displaced. Increased US troop numbers in Afghanistan are likely to result in increased civilian deaths, injuries and displacements.

    Sending more US troops to Afghanistan will breed more extremists. A US intelligence report in early 2009 showed that only one-tenth of enemy fighters in Afghanistan are ideologically-motivated Taliban; the vast majority are fighting against foreign occupiers or for personal economic gain. The continued war in Afghanistan will perpetuate conditions conducive to recruiting by al Qaeda and other extremist groups. Civilian casualties, indefinite detentions and destruction of property only create more extremists.

    Sending more US troops to Afghanistan will lead to increased financial burden. It is estimated that it will cost an additional $1 million per year for each individual troop sent to Afghanistan. According to the National Priorities Project, total US costs for the war in Afghanistan in 2010 are estimated at $325 billion. Especially at a time of high unemployment, economic hardship and a massive federal budget deficit in the US, this spending is not responsible.

    Sending more US troops to Afghanistan will weaken US military readiness. By adding more troops in Afghanistan, President Obama will stretch the US military even thinner, leaving fewer troops in reserve, causing more repeated tours of duty, and reducing our capacity and readiness to respond should other conflicts arise.

    Conclusion and Recommendations

    The military is the wrong tool for solving our problems in Afghanistan. It is akin to using a chainsaw for surgery rather than a scalpel. The most effective ways to deal with extremist groups, such as al Qaeda, are through international cooperation in intelligence gathering and law enforcement. A recent study by the RAND Corporation shows that only seven percent of terrorist groups were defeated by military force in the past 40 years.

    For the reasons set forth above, we urge Congress not to fund additional troops in Afghanistan. Instead, Congress should help in funding the rebuilding of Afghanistan’s infrastructure and support the Afghan people in building institutions of social justice such as schools, courts and health care clinics. Respect for the US in Afghanistan and around the world would increase significantly by providing even a small fraction of the resources currently being spent on the war in Afghanistan for these constructive purposes.

  • “Rapid Withdrawal is the Only Solution”

    Testimony of William E. Odom, LT General, USA, Ret., before the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations

    April 2, 2008

    Good morning Mr. Chairman and members of the committee. It is an honor to appear before you again. The last occasion was in January 2007, when the topic was the troop surge. Today you are asking if it has worked. Last year I rejected the claim that it was a new strategy. Rather, I said, it is a new tactic used to achieve the same old strategic aim, political stability. And I foresaw no serious prospects for success.

    I see no reason to change my judgment now. The surge is prolonging instability, not creating the conditions for unity as the president claims.

    Last year, General Petraeus wisely declined to promise a military solution to this political problem, saying that he could lower the level of violence, allowing a limited time for the Iraqi leaders to strike a political deal. Violence has been temporarily reduced but today there is credible evidence that the political situation is far more fragmented. And currently we see violence surge in Baghdad and Basra. In fact, it has also remained sporadic and significant inseveral other parts of Iraq over the past year, notwithstanding the notable drop in Baghdad and Anbar Province.

    More disturbing, Prime Minister Maliki has initiated military action and then dragged in US forces to help his own troops destroy his Shiite competitors. This is a political setback, not a political solution. Such is the result of the surge tactic.

    No less disturbing has been the steady violence in the Mosul area, and the tensions in Kirkuk between Kurds, Arabs, and Turkomen. A showdown over control of the oil fields there surely awaits us. And the idea that some kind of a federal solution can cut this Gordian knot strikes me as a wild fantasy, wholly out of touch with Kurdish realities.

    Also disturbing is Turkey’s military incursion to destroy Kurdish PKK groups in the border region. That confronted the US government with a choice: either to support its NATO ally, or to make good on its commitment to Kurdish leaders to insure their security. It chose the former, and that makes it clear to the Kurds that the United States will sacrifice their security to its larger interests in Turkey.

    Turning to the apparent success in Anbar province and a few other Sunni areas, this is not the positive situation it is purported to be. Certainly violence has declined as local Sunni shieks have begun to cooperate with US forces. But the surge tactic cannot be given full credit. The decline started earlier on Sunni initiative. What are their motives? First, anger at al Qaeda operatives and second, their financial plight.

    Their break with al Qaeda should give us little comfort. The Sunnis welcomed anyone who would help them kill Americans, including al Qaeda. The concern we hear the president and his aides express about a residual base left for al Qaeda if we withdraw is utter nonsense. The Sunnis will soon destroy al Qaeda if we leave Iraq. The Kurds do not allow them in their region, and the Shiites, like the Iranians, detest al Qaeda. To understand why, one need only take note of the al Qaeda public diplomacy campaign over the past year or so on internet blogs. They implore the United States to bomb and invade Iran and destroy this apostate Shiite regime. As an aside, it gives me pause to learn that our vice president and some members of the Senate are aligned with al Qaeda on spreading the war to Iran.

    Let me emphasize that our new Sunni friends insist on being paid for their loyalty. I have heard, for example, a rough estimate that the cost in one area of about 100 square kilometers is $250,000 per day. And periodically they threaten to defect unless their fees are increased. You might want to find out the total costs for these deals forecasted for the next several years, because they are not small and they do not promise to end. Remember, we do not own these people. We merely rent them. And they can break the lease at any moment. At the same time, this deal protects them to some degree from the government’s troops and police, hardly a sign of political reconciliation.

    Now let us consider the implications of the proliferating deals with the Sunni strongmen. They are far from unified among themselves. Some remain with al Qaeda. Many who break and join our forces are beholden to no one. Thus the decline in violence reflects a dispersion of power to dozens of local strong men who distrust the government and occasionally fight among themselves. Thus the basic military situation is far worse because of the proliferation of armed groups under local military chiefs who follow a proliferating number of political bosses.

    This can hardly be called greater military stability, much less progress toward political consolidation, and to call it fragility that needs more time to become success is to ignore its implications. At the same time, Prime Minister Maliki’s military actions in Basra and Baghdad, indicate even wider political and military fragmentation. We are witnessing is more accurately described as the road to the Balkanization of Iraq, that is, political fragmentation. We are being asked by the president to believe that this shift of so much power and finance to so many local chieftains is the road to political centralization. He describes the process as building the state from the bottom up.

    I challenge you to press the administration’s witnesses this week to explain this absurdity. Ask them to name a single historical case where power has been aggregated successfully from local strong men to a central government except through bloody violence leading to a single winner, most often a dictator. That is the history of feudal Europe’s transformation to the age of absolute monarchy. It is the story of the American colonization of the west and our Civil War. It took England 800 years to subdue clan rule on what is now the English-Scottish border. And it is the source of violence in Bosnia and Kosovo.

    How can our leaders celebrate this diffusion of power as effective state building? More accurately described, it has placed the United States astride several civil wars. And it allows all sides to consolidate, rearm, and refill their financial coffers at the US expense.

    To sum up, we face a deteriorating political situation with an over extended army. When the administration’s witnesses appear before you, you should make them clarify how long the army and marines can sustain this band-aid strategy.

    The only sensible strategy is to withdraw rapidly but in good order. Only that step can break the paralysis now gripping US strategy in the region. The next step is to choose a new aim, regional stability, not a meaningless victory in Iraq. And progress toward that goal requires revising our policy toward Iran. If the president merely renounced his threat of regime change by force, that could prompt Iran to lessen its support to Taliban groups in Afghanistan. Iran detests the Taliban and supports them only because they will kill more Americans in Afghanistan as retaliation in event of a US attack on Iran. Iran’s policy toward Iraq would also have to change radically as we withdraw. It cannot want instability there. Iraqi Shiites are Arabs, and they know that Persians look down on them. Cooperation between them has its limits.

    No quick reconciliation between the US and Iran is likely, but US steps to make Iran feel more secure make it far more conceivable than a policy calculated to increase its insecurity. The president’s policy has reinforced Iran’s determination to acquire nuclear weapons, the very thing he purports to be trying to prevent.

    Withdrawal from Iraq does not mean withdrawal from the region. It must include a realignment and reassertion of US forces and diplomacy that give us a better chance to achieve our aim.

    A number of reasons are given for not withdrawing soon and completely. I have refuted them repeatedly before but they have more lives than a cat. Let try again me explain why they don’t make sense.

    First, it is insisted that we must leave behind military training element with no combat forces to secure them. This makes no sense at all. The idea that US military trainers left alone in Iraq can be safe and effective is flatly rejected by several NCOs and junior officers I have heard describe their personal experiences. Moreover, training foreign forces before they have a consolidated political authority to command their loyalty is a windmill tilt. Finally, Iraq is not short on military skills.

    Second, it is insisted that chaos will follow our withdrawal. We heard that argument as the “domino theory” in Vietnam. Even so, the path to political stability will be bloody regardless of whether we withdraw or not. The idea that the United States has a moral responsibility to prevent this ignores that reality. We are certainly to blame for it, but we do not have the physical means to prevent it. American leaders who insist that it is in our power to do so are misleading both the public and themselves if they believe it. The real moral question is whether to risk the lives of more Americans. Unlike preventing chaos, we have the physical means to stop sending more troops where many will be killed or wounded. That is the moral responsibility to our country which no American leaders seems willing to assume.

    Third, nay sayers insist that our withdrawal will create regional instability. This confuses cause with effect. Our forces in Iraq and our threat to change Iran’s regime are making the region unstable. Those who link instability with a US withdrawal have it exactly backwards. Our ostrich strategy of keeping our heads buried in the sands of Iraq has done nothing but advance our enemies’ interest.

    I implore you to reject these fallacious excuses for prolonging the commitment of US forces to war in Iraq.

    Thanks for this opportunity to testify today.

    William E. Odom is a retired US Army 3-star general, and former Director of the National Security Agency under President Ronald Reagan.

  • President Bush’s Iraq Policy Renewed

    The hope that President Bush might move toward an American withdrawal from Iraq was decisively rejected in his important speech of January 10. This was the first response by the American president to the November electoral mandate that was, above all, an unmistakable rejection of the Iraq policy by the voting public. It was also the first formal response to the report of the high-profile Iraq Study Group headed by former Secretary of State, James Baker, and Democratic Congressional leader, Lee Hamilton, that had recommended a gradual American withdrawal, a robust regional diplomatic strategy designed to encourage help in stabilizing Iraq, and a renewed sense of urgency about seeking a solution for the Palestine-Israel conflict.

    In all respects, rather than heeding these demands of his Iraq critics, or at least meeting them halfway, Bush proposed a set of initiatives that moved precisely in the opposite direction. Instead of withdrawal, Bush decreed a clear escalation of the American combat role, deploying an additional 21,500 American troops to be used in Baghdad and Anbar province, the two areas of most intense resistance to the American occupation of the country. Instead of initiating a regional diplomatic effort that invited the participation of Iran and Syria, the president clearly signaled his intention to confront these countries in a more hostile manner that is almost certain to further heighten regional tensions. This unfortunate prospect was given immediate tangible expression the day after the speech by a provocative American military raid on an Iranian diplomatic mission in the northern city of Arbil, situated in the Kurdish region. And to complete the discouraging picture, not a word was uttered about an increased effort to achieve peace between Israel and Palestine.

    How should we interpret this defiant posture? Already this reaffirmation of the old Iraq policy by Bush has antagonized the Democratic opposition now in control of Congress, and has even disappointed and puzzled most Republicans. This Bush ‘stay the course’ stubbornness almost requires Congress to confront the president on Iraq. If Congress acts it would likely be seen as a challenge to Bush’s authority as commander-in-chief of the armed forces under wartime conditions, and could produce a paralyzing constitutional crisis, which might damage the political prospects of the Republican Party for years.

    Part of the explanation of the approach adopted Bush involves a recognition of the extent to which the White House continues to be steered by neoconservative hard liners when it comes to foreign policy. Well ahead of the speech it was widely publicized that these new tactics of escalated deployment in Baghdad had been mainly crafted by Frederick Kagan of the American Enterprise Institute, a hawkish signatory of the pre-9/11 neoconservative blueprint for American foreign policy published under the auspices of the Project for a New American Century. By relying on Kagan and AEI the Bush presidency reaffirmed its ideological identity, while at the same time repudiating the more pragmatic and realistic option offered by the Baker-Hamilton recommendations. If Bush had gone along with Baker-Hamilton, his leadership would almost certainly have received a dramatic spike of popular support from an American public clamoring for relief from a costly and failing war policy. To have so adjusted would have been applauded throughout the world as a brave effort to acknowledge failure and move in a more hopeful direction. But to do so would have meant renouncing the neoconservative agenda of exporting democracy to the Middle East and of refusing to engage diplomatically with ‘the bad guys’ in control of Iran and Syria. At this point, the Bush presidency remains locked in what increasingly appears to be a death embrace with the neoconservative ideologues. It was they who had advocated regime change in Iraq by military intervention ever since Bush was elected in 2000, if not earlier. It probably should come as no surprise that Bush has so clearly cast his lot with this band of neoconservative extremists, but it is still a disappointment that will make Iraq something worse than the tragedy it has already become.

    Most of Bush’s argument on behalf of the approach he adopted was an elaboration of a single thought: “Failure in Iraq would be a disaster for the United States.” To avert failure Bush proposed new tactics involving a dramatic upgrading of the American combat presence in Baghdad, including a new willingness to clear and hold neighborhoods presently controlled by both Sunni and Shi’ia militias, including those of Muqtadar al-Sadr. Bush insisted that the success of such tactics depended on the willingness of the Iraqi government of Nuri al-Maliki to be fully committed to achieving such goals of pacification. Such dependence is almost a guaranty of the failure Bush is preoccupied with avoiding!

    The available evidence clearly establishes that the goal of the Maliki leadership is to consolidate Shi’ia dominance, not to share power with its Sunni adversaries as is implicit in the Bush political strategy. Actually, Maliki had been actively pushing for an adjustment of the American role in Iraq that is diametrically opposed to both the Bush decisions and the Baker-Hamilton recommendations. Maliki was seeking the removal of the American military presence from Baghdad, with its combat mission being redefined as exclusively devoted to engaging and defeating the Sunni elements of the overall insurgency, which would leave the Shi’ia in uncontested control of Iraq. Of course, this makes political sense. Maliki owes his position of leadership to the support of the thirty members of the Iraqi parliament that belong to Muqtador al-Sadr’s political party. For Maliki to act against his own strongest constituency, except verbally to appease the American occupiers, would almost certainly lead to the immediate collapse of his government. In effect, then, Bush’s announced plan of stepped up joint pacification efforts in the Iraqi capital seems doomed before being attempted. More than this, to override Baghdad’s policy on internal security in this way is to make a mockery of the purported transfer of sovereignty to an elected Iraqi government, and to add credibility to the opponents of the Maliki regime who regard it as a puppet government.

    The incoherence of what Bush proposes for a revised Iraq policy is pervasive. On the one side, as mentioned, Bush indicates that failure in Iraq spells disaster for the United States, but arguably in most respects ‘failure’ already exists. On the other side, Bush pins his vain hopes for success on cooperation with the Iraqi government on an approach that contradicts its own power base, and is almost certainly a non-starter. How can a radical Shi’ite leadership suddenly turn around and cooperate in the violent destruction of the most militant Shi’ia political formation with which it has been so closely allied. Think back only a few weeks to the execution of Saddam Hussein, whose hanging was presided over by Shi’ia extremists who were shrieking ‘Muqtador! Muqtador!’ even while the noose was tightened around the deposed dicatator’s neck. This grisley microcosm of the political realities in Iraq should by itself have shown how futile it is to enlist the Maliki government in an effort to crush the Shi’ia militia presence in Baghdad. Maliki is himself a Shi’ia militant, not a captive to forces that he wishes, but is presently unable, to control.

    In the end, what may be most scary, is the double likelihood of continued frustration of the American effort in Iraq combined with growing tensions in the region. In such a setting one cannot ignore the Israeli resolve to confront Iran by military means, possibly on its own, but preferably, more indirectly, by exerting pressure on the United States to do so. There have even been several media reports that Israel has prepared an attack scenario that features the use of bunker buster nuclear bombs against Iranian targets associated with their nuclear program. Such war plans, even if only hypothetical, involve the first time since Hiroshima and Nagasaki that a government seems to be seriously contemplating the use of nuclear weapons as an instrument of its foreign policy. If anything is likely to hasten the collapse of the nonproliferation regime, already tottering, it is such a reckless wielding of nuclear weapons for purposes other than self-defense and deterrence.

    Although American military resources are spread thin, such an expansion of the war zone has some attractive features from the perspective of the neoconservative planners who continue to hold sway in Washington. In one respect, Rumsfeld’s ghost may be a player in this new phase of Middle Eastern diplomacy. The most notorious of the so-called ‘Rumsfeld rules’ fits the present situation—‘if a problem seems insoluble, make it bigger.’ Extending the war zone to Iran and Syria would make the challenge bigger, and divert attention from a deteriorating situation in Iraq. What is more, with Israel strongly behind such an expansion, the Democrats in America might find themselves badly divided and politically confused. And from the perspective of neoconservative priorities, Iraq was always regarded as a prelude to the main goal, which was to achieve regime change in Tehran and Damascus. This kind of objective seems less outlandish as a result of the apocalyptic language used by Mahmoud Ahmedinejad with respect to Israel. As new setbacks in Iraq capture media headlines, the Bush leadership would have to choose between a final admission of humiliating defeat, which it has repeatedly defined as an unacceptable American disaster, or embarking on a regional war, which will end up being a much worse American disaster, but probably not immediately. It may gain the Bush time he desperately needs to end his term in office, and manage to slink back to civilian life on his Crawford ranch before the sky falls.

    We can only hope that prudence intrudes to stop this gathering momentum that is propelling the region toward a calamitous culmination of the neoconservative crusade. It is not a time for American friends in the region and Europe to be silent. It is a great opportunity for Ankara to show that it is an independent actor in the Middle East that has a strategic stake in the conflict, but that also has a constructive view of peace and security for the region.

     

     

    Richard Falk is professor emeritus of international law and practice at Princeton University, and visiting distinguished professor at the University of California, Santa Barbara.

  • Enough Time Has Been Wasted, Mr. President. Enough!

    Last night in his address to the nation, the President called for a “surge” of 20,000 additional U.S. troops to help secure Baghdad against the violence that has consumed it. Unfortunately, such a plan is not the outline of a brave new course, as we were told, but a tragic commitment to a failed policy; not a bold new strategy, but a rededication to a course that has proven to be a colossal blunder on every count. The President never spoke truer words than when he said, “the situation in Iraq is unacceptable to the American people.” But he once again failed to offer a realistic way forward, instead giving us more of his stale and tired “stay the course” prescriptions.

    He espoused a strategy of “clear, hold, and build” — a doctrine of counterinsurgency that one of our top commanders, General David Petraeus, helped to formulate. Clear, hold, and build involves bringing to bear a large number of troops in an area, clearing it of insurgents, and holding it secure for long enough for reconstruction to take place. But what the President did not say last night is that, according to General Petraeus and his own military experts, this strategy of “clear, hold, build” requires a huge number of troops — a minimum of 20 combat troops for every 1,000 civilians in the area. Applying this doctrine to Baghdad’s six million people means that at least 120,000 troops will be needed to secure Baghdad alone. Right now, we have about 70,000 combat troops stationed throughout Iraq; even if they all were concentrated in the city of Baghdad, along with the 20,000 new troops the President is calling for, we would still fall well short of what is needed.

    But let us assume that the brave men and women of the U.S. military are able to carry out this Herculean task, and secure Baghdad against the forces that are spiraling it into violence; what is to keep those forces from regrouping in another town, another province, even another country, strengthening, festering, and waiting until the American soldiers leave to launch their bloody attacks again?

    It brings to mind the ancient figure of Sisyphus, who was doomed to push a boulder up a mountainside for all eternity, only to have it roll back down as soon as he reached the top. As soon as he would accomplish his task it would begin again, endlessly. I fear that we are condemning our soldiers to a similar fate, hunting down insurgents in one city or province only to watch them pop up in another. For how long will U.S. troops be asked to shoulder this burden?

    Over 3,000 American soldiers have now been killed in Iraq, and over 22,000 have been wounded. Staggering. And President Bush now proposes to send 20,000 more Americans into the line of fire, beyond the 70,000 already there. The cost of this war of choice to American taxpayers is now estimated to be over $400 billion, and the number continues to rise. One wonders how much progress we could have made in improving education, or resolving our health care crisis, or strengthening our borders, or reducing our national debt, or any number of pressing issues, with that amount of money. And the President proposes sending more money down that drain.

    On every count, an escalation of 20,000 troops is a misguided, costly, unwise course of action. This is not a solution. This is not a march toward “victory.” The President’s own military advisors have indicated that we do not have enough troops for this strategy to be successful. It will put more Americans in harm’s way than there already are. It will cost more in U.S. taxpayer money. It will further stretch an army that many commanders have already said is at its breaking point. It is a dangerous idea.

    Why, then, is the President advocating it? This decision has the cynical smell of politics to me. Suggesting that an additional 20,000 troops will alter the balance of this war is a way for the President to look forceful, to appear to be taking bold action. But it is only the appearance of bold action, not the reality — much like the image of a cocky President in a flight suit declaring “mission accomplished” from the deck of a battleship. This is not a new course, but a continuation of the tragically costly course we have been on for almost five years now. It is simply a policy that buys the President more time: more time to equivocate, more time to continue to resist any suggestion that he was wrong to enter us into this war in this place, in this time, in this manner. And importantly, calling for more troops gives the President more time to hand the Iraq situation off to his successor in the White House. The President apparently believes that he can wait this out, that he can continue to make small adjustments to a misguided policy while he maintains the same trajectory — until he leaves office and it becomes someone else’s problem.

    But if you are driving in the wrong direction, anyone knows you will not get to your destination by going south when you should be going north. You turn around. You get better directions. This President is asking us to step on the gas in Iraq — full throttle, while he has not even clearly articulated where we are going. What is our goal? What is our end game? How much progress will we need to see from the Iraqi government before our men and women come home? How long will American troops be stationed in Iraq to be maimed and killed in sectarian bloodshed?

    The ultimate solution to the situation in Iraq is political, and will have to come from the Iraqis themselves. The Iraqi government will have to address the causes of the insurgency, by creating a sustainable power-sharing agreement between Sunnis, Shias, and Kurds — and it is far from clear that the government has the power or the willingness to do that at this point. But as long as American troops are there to bear the brunt of the blame and the fire, the Iraqi government will not shoulder the responsibility itself. And Iraq’s neighbors — especially Iran and Syria — won’t commit to helping to stabilize the country as long as they see America bogged down, and losing credibility and strength. Keeping the U.S. army tied up in a bloody, endless battle in Iraq plays perfectly into Iran’s hands, and it has little incentive to cease its assistance to the insurgency as long as America is there. America’s presence in Iraq is inhibiting a lasting solution, not contributing to one. The President has, once again, gotten it backwards.

    What I had hoped to hear from the President last night were specific benchmarks of progress that he expects from the Iraqi government, and a plan for the withdrawal of American troops conditioned on those benchmarks. Instead, we were given a vague admonition that “the responsibility for security will rest with the Iraqi government by November” — with no suggestion of what that responsibility will mean, or how to measure the government’s capacity to handle it. The President is asking us, once again, to trust him while he keeps our troops mired in Iraq. But that trust was long ago squandered.

    I weep for the waste that we have already seen. Lives, treasure, time, goodwill, credibility, opportunity. Wasted. Wasted. And this President is calling for us to waste more.

    I say, enough. If he will not provide leadership and statesmanship, if he does not have the strength of vision to recognize a failed policy and chart a new course, then leadership will have to come from somewhere else. Enough waste. Enough lives lost on this President’s misguided venture in Iraq. Enough time and energy spent on a civil war far from our shores, while the problems Americans face are ignored, while we wallow in debt and mortgage our children’s future to foreigners. Enough. It is time to truly change course, and start talking about how we rebalance our foreign policy and bring our sons and daughters home.

    There are a lot of people making political calculations about the war in Iraq, turning this debate into an exercise of political grandstanding and point-scoring. But this is not a political game. This is life and death. This is asking thousands more Americans to make the ultimate sacrifice for a war that we now know beyond a shadow of a doubt was a mistake. There were those of us who cautioned against the hasty rush to war in Iraq. And unfortunately, our cries, like Cassandra’s, went unheeded. And like Cassandra, our warnings and our fears proved prophetic.

    But we are not doomed to repeat our mistakes. We must learn from the past. We must understand that more money and more troops are not the answer. The clock is running on our misadventure in Iraq.

    Enough time has been wasted, Mr. President. Enough!