The Moderate Voice occasionally runs Guest Voice posts by readers who don’t have a weblog or have one and have something special to say here. Guest Voice posts do not necessarily reflect the opinion of TMV or its co-bloggers — but they do add to our free-wheeling debate.
Nicholas Rivera, who has a new blog called The Coming Realignment (we have blogrolled it under Other Voices on because it’s a good one) did the post below which is on his blog and also on the Centrist Coalition site. He noted it’s a little lighter on commentary than his usual posts, but he felt it is important because it underscores “the centrist tradition in that it involves a politician making a proposal that is sure to ruffle the feathers of those in his own party.”
Republican Senator Calls for Phased Troop Withdrawal From Iraq
By Nicholas Rivera
In yet another rebuke to the ongoing war in Iraq, Chuck Hagel, Republican Senator from Nebraska, has written an op-ed for the Washington Post in which he calls for a phased troop withdrawal from Iraq and delivers his harshest critique to date of this war:
The time for more U.S. troops in Iraq has passed. We do not have more troops to send and, even if we did, they would not bring a resolution to Iraq. Militaries are built to fight and win wars, not bind together failing nations. We are once again learning a very hard lesson in foreign affairs: America cannot impose a democracy on any nation — regardless of our noble purpose.
We have misunderstood, misread, misplanned and mismanaged our honorable intentions in Iraq with an arrogant self-delusion reminiscent of Vietnam. Honorable intentions are not policies and plans. Iraq belongs to the 25 million Iraqis who live there. They will decide their fate and form of government . . .
And the clincher:
The United States must begin planning for a phased troop withdrawal from Iraq. The cost of combat in Iraq in terms of American lives, dollars and world standing has been devastating. We’ve already spent more than $300 billion there to prosecute an almost four-year-old war and are still spending $8 billion per month. The United States has spent more than $500 billion on our wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. And our effort in Afghanistan continues to deteriorate, partly because we took our focus off the real terrorist threat, which was there, and not in Iraq.
Chuck Hagel’s outspokeness in criticizing the Iraq War is nothing new. Last June, he delivered a speech on the Senate floor in which he criticized both Democrats and Republicans for politicizing the Iraq War and took specific aim at members of his own party for resorting to “focus group tested buzzwords and phrases like ‘cut-and-run.'” And last August, he appeared on Fox News to defend his criticism of the Bush administration and took Chris Wallace to task for questioning his loyalties to the Republican Party.
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.