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Title: One Choice in Iraq
Source:
Washington Post
URL Source: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dy ... 007/04/25/AR2007042502410.html
Published: Apr 26, 2007
Author: Joe Lieberman
Post Date: 2007-04-26 12:29:23 by BeAChooser
Keywords: None
Views: 98
Comments: 7
One Choice in Iraq By Joe Lieberman Thursday, April 26, 2007; Page A29 Last week a series of coordinated suicide bombings killed more than 170 people. The victims were not soldiers or government officials but civilians -- innocent men, women and children indiscriminately murdered on their way home from work and school. If such an atrocity had been perpetrated in the United States, Europe or Israel, our response would surely have been anger at the fanatics responsible and resolve not to surrender to their barbarism. Unfortunately, because this slaughter took place in Baghdad, the carnage was seized upon as the latest talking point by advocates of withdrawal here in Washington. Rather than condemning the attacks and the terrorists who committed them, critics trumpeted them as proof that Gen. David Petraeus's security strategy has failed and that the war is "lost." And today, perversely, the Senate is likely to vote on a binding timeline of withdrawal from Iraq. This reaction is dangerously wrong. It reflects a fundamental misunderstanding of both the reality in Iraq and the nature of the enemy we are fighting there. What is needed in Iraq policy is not overheated rhetoric but a sober assessment of the progress we have made and the challenges we still face. In the two months since Petraeus took command, the United States and its Iraqi allies have made encouraging progress on two problems that once seemed intractable: tamping down the Shiite-led sectarian violence that paralyzed Baghdad until recently and consolidating support from Iraqi Sunnis -- particularly in Anbar, a province dismissed just a few months ago as hopelessly mired in insurgency. This progress is real, but it is still preliminary. The suicide bombings we see now in Iraq are an attempt to reverse these gains: a deliberate, calculated counteroffensive led foremost by al-Qaeda, the same network of Islamist extremists that perpetrated catastrophic attacks in Kenya, Indonesia, Turkey and, yes, New York and Washington. Indeed, to the extent that last week's bloodshed clarified anything, it is that the battle of Baghdad is increasingly a battle against al-Qaeda. Whether we like it or not, al-Qaeda views the Iraqi capital as a central front of its war against us. Al-Qaeda's strategy for victory in Iraq is clear. It is trying to kill as many innocent people as possible in the hope of reigniting Shiite sectarian violence and terrorizing the Sunnis into submission. In other words, just as Petraeus and his troops are working to empower and unite Iraqi moderates by establishing basic security, al-Qaeda is trying to divide and conquer with spectacular acts of butchery. That is why the suggestion that we can fight al-Qaeda but stay out of Iraq's "civil war" is specious, since the very crux of al-Qaeda's strategy in Iraq has been to try to provoke civil war. The current wave of suicide bombings in Iraq is also aimed at us here in the United States -- to obscure the recent gains we have made and to convince the American public that our efforts in Iraq are futile and that we should retreat. When politicians here declare that Iraq is "lost" in reaction to al-Qaeda's terrorist attacks and demand timetables for withdrawal, they are doing exactly what al-Qaeda hopes they will do, although I know that is not their intent. Even as the American political center falters, the Iraqi political center is holding. In the aftermath of last week's attacks, there were no large-scale reprisals by Shiite militias -- as undoubtedly would have occurred last year. Despite the violence, Iraq's leadership continues to make slow but visible progress toward compromise and reconciliation. But if tomorrow Sunnis, Shiites and Kurds were to achieve the "political solution" we all hope for, the threat of al-Qaeda in Iraq would not vanish. Al-Qaeda, after all, isn't carrying out mass murder against civilians in the streets of Baghdad because it wants a more equitable distribution of oil revenue. Its aim in Iraq isn't to get a seat at the political table; it wants to blow up the table -- along with everyone seated at it. Certainly al-Qaeda can be weakened by isolating it politically. But even after the overwhelming majority of Iraqis agree on a shared political vision, there will remain a hardened core of extremists who are dedicated to destroying that vision through horrific violence. These forces cannot be negotiated or reasoned out of existence. They must be defeated. The challenge before us, then, is whether we respond to al-Qaeda's barbarism by running away, as it hopes we do -- abandoning the future of Iraq, the Middle East and ultimately our own security to the very people responsible for last week's atrocities -- or whether we stand and fight. To me, there is only one choice that protects America's security -- and that is to stand, and fight, and win.
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#1. To: BeAChooser (#0)
(Edited)
You first, Joe. Until he stands at a checkpoint outside the Green Zone in Baghdad or goes on daily patrols down the streets of Sadr City (and continues to do so until so- called "victory"), his "stand, fight and win" appeal is nothing but hollow, empty words, signifying nothing.
Check out my blog, America, the Bushieful.
here's what our policy in Iraq, Afghanistan & Somalia is actually doing. It is causing death & destruction by purposeful choice. Here's Joe Lieberman's real future and his real choice. Revelation 19:20 And the beast was taken, and with him the false prophet that wrought miracles before him, with which he deceived them that had received the mark of the beast, and them that worshipped his image. These both were cast alive into a lake of fire burning with brimstone.
Galatians 3:29 And if ye [be] Christ's, then are ye Abraham's seed, and heirs according to the promise.
Joe Lieberman - who leads the AARP division of AIPAC He's a gas bag.
Where does Lantos fit then?
Antiparty - find out why, think about 'how'
Yet another fierce warrior from the Cheney Coalition - the Coalition of the Unwilling to Serve. Lieberman was elected as a "reform Democrat" to the Connecticut Senate in 1970, campaigning on an anti-Vietnam War platform. ... Lieberman never served in the military. A spokesperson told the Hartford Courant in 1994 that Lieberman received an educational deferment from the Vietnam War draft when he was an undergraduate and law student from 1960 to 1967. Upon graduating from law school at 25, Lieberman qualified for a family deferment as he was already married and had one child.
He's a gas bag. Lieberman can best be described as a closet Zionist: a Jew who masquerades behind a veneer of moral superiority to advance the cause of Jewish supremacy.
Life is a tragedy to those who feel, and a comedy to those who think.
Is that really relevant? Are only those who served allowed to say something? Are only those who served allowed to run for office? Is that what you want to see, NC? If that's the important criteria in a decision like this ... Maybe we should only allow members of Congress that have served to vote on the issue. Or maybe we should only allow members of Congress with children currently in the military to vote? Maybe we should only allow folks in the military to vote in elections. And since war has certainly changed over the years, maybe only active military should be allowed to vote. How about that, NC?
--------------------------------------------------------- Aren't you lucky. You get to receive one of the 15 posts I'm allowed each day.
To me, there is only one choice that protects America's security -- and that is to stand, and fight, and win.
#2. To: BeAChooser (#0)
#3. To: BeAChooser (#0)
#4. To: Paul Revere (#3)
#5. To: BeAChooser (#0)
To me, there is only one choice that protects America's security -- and that is to stand, and fight, and win.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joe_Lieberman
#6. To: Paul Revere (#3)
Joe Lieberman - who leads the AARP division of AIPAC
#7. To: nolu_chan, ALL (#5)
Lieberman never served in the military.
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