Drawing down troops may not be a good idea

[MattSWin]

If we decided to withdraw say 100,000 troops from Iraq this would put the remaining soldiers at more of a risk than they are now. I think as far as withdrawal goes it's going to have to be all or none.

Perhaps the Democratic position on Iraq should be to say that if Bush really wanted to maintain troop safety in Iraq he'd either commit more troops to Iraq or withdraw.

We really need a position like this which convinces the public that Bush has no intention or method for success in Iraq. We need to convince them that success in Iraq is just an empty phrase.

We also can't just call for more troops in Iraq in order to mimic our desire for success in Iraq. Basically now Democrats like Joe Biden are saying "if we want to be successful in Iraq we must do x."

Instead we should be saying "The President should either lay out a specific plan for Iraq and commit enough troops to maintain troop safety or he should simply withdraw from Iraq."

The only problem would be if Bush called our bluff and send in more troops(which I doubt he'd do).

If we take this position we'll be putting Bush in a lose lose situation. If we simply call for troop withdrawal Bush can just toss us off as not wanting success in Iraq or troops out now.

Instead we'd be saying to the President to either play to win or don't play at all.

[jsamuel]

1. I'm not advocating drawing down troops, BUT TAKING THEM ALL HOME

"Support Our Troops, Impeach Bush, Bring Them Home"

[MattSWin]

12. Advocating means nothing...

We need to convince the people who won't oppose the war just out of principle but because they don't see it as being a success.

I support withdrawing troops as well but I don't see it being achieved just by saying "let's leave Iraq now."

Did you listen to Bush's speech? He's carictured as as just wanting troops out now.

[steve2470]

2. I say it again: Are you or your kids or loved ones ready to die in Iraq ?

<sound of chirping crickets>

Didn't think so. Argument over. Get them out now.

[Raster]

10. thanks steve for putting it so succinctly: Are you or...

...your kids or loved ones ready to die in Iraq?

The voices that offer all kinds of arguments for "staying the course" or some other drivel ALL seem to fail the "death test." Go figure. As long as someone else has to do the sacrificing...

[Midlodemocrat]

11. Get them ALL out now. Bring them home now,

not tomorrow, not next week, not in 90 days. NOW.

Enough is enough.

[MattSWin]

14. by saying that you're playing into Bush's hands

Basically you're just saying that Democrats are required to come up with a solution for Iraq rather than making Bush take responsibility for it.

Secondly it's silly for us to call for troop withdrawal when we have no capability or power to do it.

[ProfessorGAC]

18. Excuse Me, Matt. You Said;

"...when we have no capability or power to do it." Exactly what does that mean?

How can we NOT have the capability or power to bring people home? That's wholly devoid of logic. If we can get them there, we can get them back.

And, your first statement in the post to which i'm responding is ridiculous. By saying "Bring Them Home" WE are required to come up with a solution? Again, by what logic would you reach that conclusion?

Besides that, the solution very well may BE to just bring them home. The invasion was a success. The occupation and efforts at nation-building have been colossal failures. The solution to a failed experiment is to END THE EXPERIMENT! One does not wait for complete melt-down before one shuts down the reactor.
The Professor

[Midlodemocrat]

19. Exactly. Well said, Professor

[MattSWin]

21. Professor let me clarify...

By we I meant people opposed to the war have no power to withdraw troops.

[tk2kewl]

3. Welcome to DU... I will just sit back and watch now...

this will get interesting. :popcorn:

[0007]

4. junior sez there will be no troop withdrawal.

Besides, we have build fourteen permanent military installations in Iraq, who do you think are gonna operate these bases? The Iraqis?

[ClassWarrior]

5. They need to be replaced with UN peacekeeping troops.

NGU.

[woo me with science]

7. good luck getting volunteers nt

[grumpy old fart]

6. He can't call the bluff. There are no more troops and it wouldn't change

a damn thing. This is ending in civil war, period. The Kurds want no part of a new Iraq, never have. The Sunni's want no part of the coming Shia theocracy. And all the foreign terrorists love the new playground, where we serve up our "infidel" sons and daughters for target practice. Raising troop levels just makes it a bigger buffet.

[Brotherjohn]

8. Related: I really get tired of the "What's YOUR alternative?" argument.

It's Bush's mess, Bush's war! There's virtually NO easy way out, and it's due to BUSH'S incompetence and malfeasance. So we're supposed to let him continue his incompetence because no one has an easy fix for HIS problems?

It's not the Democrats' or progressives' or any other nation's or the U.N.'s responsibility to propose a "fix' to Iraq. We need to get out of that mindest, and throw it back at Bush every time conservatives ask us to propose a better solution. Asking progressives or anyone else to propose a better solution makes it seem that they are no better than Bush on the issue.

The point is not that we or anyone else can or can't do better in Iraq than Bush. It's that Bush shouldn't have put us there in the first place!

[tocqueville]

9. they'll have to come home one way or the other

The only solution is to call to an International Conference

Decide the withdrawal (complete, including Halliburton)

Establish a MASSIVE presence of troops from Muslim countries (including Syria and Iran), Pakistan, eventually Indonesia.

France and Russia and other countries not involved in the war could provide logistics to the central command.

Then the US would leave "honorably".

This would cut the grass under the feet of the insurgency since there wouldn't be any REASON to blow up stuff.

Al Quaeda might hit for a while but they wouldn't survive long without support.

It would put Syria and Iran into a "responsible" situation and make them accountable.

This plan will never be accepted by the Bush administration. They prefer to leave a civil war after them and blame the "liberals" for "stabbing the army in the back" with peace vigils.

But it's the only solution. the alternative is another Vietnam-like end of the conflict, with a probable civil war at key.

Bush is going to choose the later "solution".

The Democrats have no plan yet, except some voices talking about a timetable.

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

13. All out now. The "war" is lost, the occupation is a failure.

Time to "cut and run" and let the Iraqis settle their own country's problems.

Hell, they can call it "Peace with Honor" if they want to, but get out now and spare the world even more neo-colonial bloodshed.

It's get out or get thrown out.

[MattSWin]

15. who is going to do it?

Who's going to pull us out of Iraq?

[ladjf]

16. ALL of them should get on the damn plane and LEAVE!

[Selatius]

17. There is no easy way out, period.

You can stay there now, but you'll still be bleeding years from now. You can escalate the war and send in 500,000 men, but that's still no guarantee you could reverse the amount of damage that has already been inflicted, and at worse, all you've done is make the bleeding faster. You can leave like we did in Vietnam, but you'd be leaving a country to an uncertain fate, and that probably means civil war.

In these situations, you are screwed no matter what happens. The answer really is not to get into these situations in the first place, but that's irrelevant now. We stuck our hands in the meat grinder, and we're losing fingers. Either you push harder and hope it jams the grinder, or you pull your bloody stump out.

[Warren DeMontague]

20. How do you "play to win" when you CAN'T Win?

That's like the old Vietnam saw; if we'd only been able to fight "for real", we would have "won".

Well, we killed 3 million Vietnamese. We carpet bombed North Vietnam, dropping more ordinanace than was used during all of WWII. We didn't "fight with one hand tied behind our backs", the problem was, we couldn't win, and even more importantly, the war wasn't ours to win in the first place.

Then, as now, we were fighting a war based on lies to occupy someone else's home, and we were fighting against what people wanted for their OWN country.

It's not a question of "winning". It's a question of getting out now.

[MattSWin]

23. wow you totally misunderstood what I'm saying...

You're really stretching to see right-wing phantoms.

I never said we should try to win in Iraq, in fact I specifically said there's no success in Iraq.

What I said was that we call for Bush to either lay out a plan for success or we leave Iraq.

I don't believe he can even define success much less lay a plan for it. Bush will either have to admit he has no view of success in Iraq or withdraw.

[Warren DeMontague]

26. Gotcha. Of course, he doesn't listen to people like us, anyway.

And I guarantee that any "plan to win" would essentially be "more of the same".

I tend to err on the side of simplicity. If the solution is to get out, get out. Follow the first law of holes: When you're in one, stop digging.

And I don't need to stretch to see right wing phantoms, when I want to see them, all I have to do is turn on Cable News!

[Cocoa]

22. you can vote for the dems that call for more troops

I'm going to vote for Feingold.

[MattSWin]

24. Feingold sure didn't say troops out now...

Even he gave a timetable

[Cocoa]

25. Feingold's position contradicts what the OP is suggesting

I'm on Feingold's side of that debate.