iraq

The nomination of Chuck Hagel by President Obama to become our next Secretary of Defense has really started a firestorm. One of the most interesting reasons Republicans oppose him has to be this:

They've also lambasted positions Hagel took as a GOP senator, including his opposition to unilateral sanctions against Iran, as well as votes opposing the labeling of Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps as a terrorist organization.

But what about Dick Cheney? Dick Cheney not only opposed sanctions against Iran, but Halliburton, under Cheney's control. actually circumvented previous sanctions. But yet nothing was ever said by the right when it came to this.

Chuck Hagel isn't a typical Republican we are used to today. Instead he follows along the lines of more old-school Republicans, the kind I actually like. He doesn't believe that all of our answers lie within the military. He quickly became an opponent of the Iraq War after seeing how disastrously it was being fought. That right there is enough to piss off Republicans, despite their trying everything to distance themselves from the highly unpopular war.

That image is the iconic mark of the end of World War 2, when Americans took to the streets to celebrate. Yesterday President Obama announced that the rest of the U.S. troops serving in Iraq will be home by year’s end. He didn’t top gun onto an aircraft carrier and stand in front of a “mission accomplished” banner and make the announcement, but rather just informed the American people from the White House. The country responded pretty much with crickets.

After almost 9 years of the Iraq war, Americans were never once asked to sacrifice. This wasn’t a war waged by a nation, but rather by a President and his authority over the military.

During World War 2 taxes were high to help offset the costs of the war. Every family had risk of a loved one serving in the war when 10 million Americans were drafted into service. Every American had to give in one way or another.

During Iraq we saw taxes go down and our soldiers being forced to fight longer than they agreed to through stop loss. We dare not ask the American people to sacrifice while our soldiers are making the ultimate sacrifice.

Yesterday, before this announcement, I was in a discussion with a Republican friend on Facebook. He gave me one of the typical lines from Republicans that President Obama doesn’t support the troops. When pushed for facts to back up his claim, I never heard one. I would now like to show some ways President Bush didn’t support the troops:

A big milestone was hit in Iraq yesterday, yet I doubt the media will talk about it too much:

Iraqi commandos showed off skills they learned from U.S. military forces, who Saturday formally handed over control of combat operations to Iraqi security forces.

The top U.S. commander in Iraq, Gen. Raymond Odierno, was on hand to watch the final American combat team, the 4th Brigade of the 2nd Infantry Division, tender responsibilities to the 6th Iraqi Army Division.

In a little over 3 weeks we will only have 50,000 forces in Iraq. Yeah that’s 50,000 more than I like, but it is a far cry better than the numbers we saw when Bush was President, or if McCain had become President.

And with this major accomplishment, I highly doubt the media will talk too much about it. When President Obama announced that everything was on target last week, the media stayed mostly quiet, yet when President Obama first announced the plan to get the troops down to 50,000 in the summer of 2010 last year, the media was full of the pessimistic Republicans saying it couldn’t happen. Where are those people now?

John Cole reminds us of a harsh reality when it comes to the little $15 billion jobs bill:

What is fifteen billion? A couple weeks of unemployment benefits? Not to go all Everett Dirksen and everything, but we ***LOST*** almost that much in Iraq, and no one flinched. But $15 billion is going to remedy job losses of tens of thousands every month on top of millions of lost job over the past two years? Isn’t that less than California’s budget deficit? And the only way it was going to get substantially bigger was to lard it up with pointless tax cuts?

Democrats should be ashamed of putting forth such a small bill to handle such a huge problem, but even worse is the Republicans who voted against it. Many of these were the same ones defending the lost billions in Iraq by going “oh well”. They absolutely have no concern for the American people.

What happened in Iraq last year, and last month particularly, was really good news. We can’t let that over shadow the bad news that has come out of Afghanistan. 2009 was the deadliest year for U.S. forces in the 8+ year war:

Can we have more of this please?

There are numerous other such public statements that explicitly state we are at war. The difference is this: President Obama doesn’t need to beat his chest to prove it, and – unlike the last Administration – we are not at war with a tactic (“terrorism”), we at war with something that is tangible: al Qaeda and its violent extremist allies. And we will prosecute that war as long as the American people are endangered.

That is exactly the right statement to make. Cheney and Bush used terrorism as a political game, instead of taking it seriously. For proof of that look no further than Afghanistan. We need to remind the American people that the President, the very one that Cheney is accusing of being “weak on terrorism”, has expanded the war on terrorism after Bush and Cheney ignored the real front line for years so they could launch a pet-project called Iraq.

People also need to be reminded that chances are the co-conspirators of the Christmas day attempt were released from Gitmo under the Bush administration, and there is a big chance that they became much more radicalized (or maybe even just became radicalized) while in Gitmo. We have seen a serious trend of this happening in the past and the Bush administration chose to ignore it. They turned Gitmo into a terrorist factory, which is why it needs shut down.

“The 30,000 additional troops that I am announcing tonight will deploy in the first part of 2010 – the fastest pace possible – so that they can target the insurgency and secure key population centers. They will increase our ability to train competent Afghan Security Forces, and to partner with them so that more Afghans can get into the fight. And they will help create the conditions for the United States to transfer responsibility to the Afghans.” 

“Because this is an international effort, I have asked that our commitment be joined by contributions from our allies. Some have already provided additional troops, and we are confident that there will be further contributions in the days and weeks ahead. Our friends have fought and bled and died alongside us in Afghanistan. Now, we must come together to end this war successfully. For what’s at stake is not simply a test of NATO’s credibility – what’s at stake is the security of our Allies, and the common security of the world.”

“Taken together, these additional American and international troops will allow us to accelerate handing over responsibility to Afghan forces, and allow us to begin the transfer of our forces out of Afghanistan in July of 2011. Just as we have done in Iraq, we will execute this transition responsibly, taking into account conditions on the ground. We will continue to advise and assist Afghanistan’s Security Forces to ensure that they can succeed over the long haul. But it will be clear to the Afghan government – and, more importantly, to the Afghan people – that they will ultimately be responsible for their own country.”

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This one really got me:

Romney accuses Obama of not protecting troops

This from a Republican who sat by and said nothing while our troops were getting killed left and right in Iraq and didn’t even have the proper equipment to protect them.