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December 07, 2005
Howard Dean says the U.S. has lost - does he speak for the Democratic Party in 2005?
Howard Dean said "I've seen this before in my life. This is the same situation we had in Vietnam. Everybody then kept saying, 'just another year, just stay the course, we'll have a victory.' Well, we didn't have a victory, and this policy cost the lives of an additional 25,000 troops because we were too stubborn to recognize what was happening."
His proposal: pull out, redeploy more troops to Afghanistan "where they like us".
As Tom Bevan said on his RCP Blog
- Dean hit all the highlights: Comparison to Vietnam. Check. Call for immediate withdrawal. Check. Bush lied. Check. Comparison to Watergate. Check.
In all seriousness, Howard Dean is not some yahoo, he's the national voice of the Democratic party and his comments - saying Iraq is unwinnable and calling for the immediate withdrawal of 80,000 troops less than two weeks before Iraq goes to the polls - unquestionably furthers the perception that Democrats are the party of cut and run. This is a horrendous political mistake and it puts even more pressure on Democrats like Clinton, Biden, et al to respond to the question: Does Howard Dean speak for your party?
I'd like to know that too. Because if this is the position of the Democratic Party, then I'm gone. I've stuck with the party since 1992 but this is the straw that breaks the camels back for me.
We have not lost this war. In fact I think we are winning the war. The world is better off now in 2005 than it was in 2003 when Saddam was in power.
A reasonably solid understanding of U.S. History shows that we always get to a nasty phase towards the end of a war when the temptation to cut and run becomes strong. Leadership is about knowing these sorts of things and seeing what is best for America - victory.
We haven't lost 25,000 soldiers, we have lost less than 2,000 dead soldiers in Iraq over 2 years. Our population is 300,000 million. We are the richest country in the world, we can afford this war (I'm sorry to be so cold blooded about this but this is a war. Our casuality rate is both historically low and is sustainable.) If we continue losing 800 soliders a year in Iraq, we can stay there for the next 50 years and still come out ahead.
Posted by rakhier at December 7, 2005 09:49 AM