Perhaps the saddest irony of the Administration's cynical use of 9/11 is that the Iraq War has left us less safe than we were before 9/11:
- Osama bin Ladin and his top lieutenants have rebuilt a new base in Pakistan where they freely train recruits, plot new attacks, and disseminate propaganda.
- The Taliban is resurgent in Afghanistan. Iran has emerged as the greatest strategic challenge to America in the Middle East in a generation.
- Violent extremism has increased. Terrorism has increased.
Unreal Debate Taking Place in D.C.
After 9/11, instead of the politics of unity, we got a political strategy of division with the war in Iraq as its centerpiece. The only thing we were asked to do for our country was support a misguided war.
We lost that sense of common purpose as Americans. And we're not going to be a truly united and resolute America until we can stop holding our breath, until we can come together to reclaim our foreign policy and our politics and end this war that has cost us so much.
So there is something unreal about the debate that's taking place in Washington.
With all that our troops and their families have sacrificed, with all this war has cost us, and with no discernible end in sight, the same people who told us we would be greeted as liberators, about democracy spreading across the Middle East, about striking a decisive blow against terrorism, about an insurgency in its last throes - those same people are now trumpeting the uneven and precarious containment of brutal sectarian violence as if it validates all of their failed decisions.
The bar for success is so low that it is almost buried in the sand.
The American people have had enough of the shifting spin.
We've had enough of extended deadlines for benchmarks that go unmet.
We've had enough of mounting costs in Iraq and missed opportunities around the world.
We've had enough of a war that should never have been authorized and should never have been waged.
Obama Opposed the Iraq War in 2002
I opposed this war from the beginning. I opposed the war in 2002. I opposed it in 2003. I opposed it in 2004. I opposed it in 2005. I opposed it in 2006.
I introduced a plan in January to remove all of our combat brigades by next March. And I am here to say that we have to begin to end this war now.
My plan for ending the war would turn the page in Iraq:
- by removing our combat troops from Iraq's civil war;
- by taking a new approach to press for a new accord on reconciliation within Iraq;
- by talking to all of Iraq's neighbors to press for a compact in the region; and
- by confronting the human costs of this war.
First, we need to immediately begin the responsible removal of our troops from Iraq's civil war. Our troops have performed brilliantly. They brought Saddam Hussein to justice. They have fought for over four years to give Iraqis a chance for a better future.
But they cannot - and should not - bear the responsibility for resolving the grievances at the heart of Iraq's civil war.
Recent news only confirms this. The Administration points to selective statistics to make the case for staying the course. Killings and mortar attacks and car bombs in certain districts are down from the highest levels we've seen. But they're still at the same horrible levels they were at 18 months ago or two years ago.
Experts will tell you that the killings are down in some places because the ethnic cleansing has already taken place. That's hardly a cause for triumphalism.
The stated purpose of the surge was to enable Iraq's leaders to reconcile. But as the recent report from the Government Accountability Office confirms, the Iraqis are not reconciling.
Our troops fight and die in the 120 degree heat to give Iraq's leaders space to agree, but they aren't filling it. They are not moving beyond their centuries-old sectarian conflicts, they are falling further back into them.
We hear a lot about how violence is down in parts of Anbar province. But this has little to do with the surge - it's because Sunni tribal leaders made a political decision to turn against al Qaeda in Iraq.
This only underscores the point - the solution in Iraq is political, it is not military.
Violence is contained in some parts of Baghdad. That's no surprise. Our troops have cleared these neighborhoods at great costs. But our troops cannot police Baghdad indefinitely - only Iraqis can.
Iraq War Is Crippling the U.S. Military
Rather than use our presence to make progress, the Iraqi government has put off taking responsibility - that's the finding of a Commission headed by General Jim Jones.
And our troop presence cannot be sustained without crippling our military's ability to respond to other contingencies.
