Red State Reports

By John

“The sense I get when talking to the other soldiers,” said a public affairs soldier, “is that the worst thing possible would be to give a date when we’re leaving, period. We all want to win, and to accomplish our mission, especially since we’ve put so much into doing it so far. To just up and leave would be terrible.” I asked what effect such statements as Harry Reid’s “the war is lost,” and Nancy Pelosi’s “the war on terror is not in Iraq” have on the troops’ morale and opinions of their mission, and also pointed out the relevance of John Kerry’s 1971 statement to Congress that nobody wants to be “the last man to die for a lost cause,” and asked how that – and the fact that Congress had just passed resolutions mandating troop pullouts in five months – and asked about that affect, as well. The response was, “It’s terrible. I mean, I understand political posturing and all that but it really is terrible. If the war is lost and we need to go home, then why do we need to stay here five more months, when I could die or my friends could die before we go home? The war is either over or it isn’t; this just doesn’t make sense.” The Specialist continued, “What we want is to keep helping the people here. The people at home who say these things, they don’t understand that these are people who have to live here after we leave, whatever the situation is. These people and the things that happen here aren’t real to them, and they can’t understand unless they’ve been here and seen it.”

This needs to be the method in which the Iraq war argument is crafted for the next two years. If I listened correctly to the Democratic Primary Debate last night, their entire field will be staking '08 on pulling out of Iraq. Republicans, the opposite. My vote goes to the latter, obviously...but that's tangential.

This will have be the focus of our messaging for the next 18 months. Pull out of Iraq and you'll get another Darfur, if not worse. And ultimately, the responsibility for that mess will lie at the feet of Congressmen who felt that political survival was more important to them than the fate of Joe Iraqi. True-to-life stories such as Jeff's reporting, and Richard's round up below, are the means in which to deliver that message.

You can read up on RS's excellent coverage here. It'll be ongoing.

April 27, 2007 05:59 AM The Long War