It's time to hold elected Iraqi leaders accountable for their actions (or lack thereof). As we learned in Vietnam, when a weak government can count on foreigners to do the heavy lifting it always will. The Baghdad government has no incentive to take responsibility for its people and produce results that generate public confidence if Americans are the ones doing all the hard work, the fighting and the dying.
Our troops are the best in the world, and we should be very proud of them. They have performed brilliantly and long ago won the military component of this war. It's time to admit their job is done and that our policy should be one of phased redeployment, not escalation.
Indeed, Democrats strongly support our troops, despite what the chickenhawks on the right say. Iraqi leaders must be held accountable. We cannot continue to hold their hand and sacrifice our loved ones while the Iraqi government fails to accept any accountability on the quagmire in Iraq.
Although, it's tough for us to call chide the Iraqi government for a lack of accountability when elected leaders like Michele Bachmann continue to pass the accountability buck as well.
Bob Hill also has a powerful statement on Iraq.
"We were misled into this war" Hill asserted. "Things are going so badly that our troops don't know what our mission over there is anymore. We need to get them out of there. We need a strategic withdrawal to the borders and monitor the situation from there. We need a multi-lateral peace initiative to find a solution. I believe that eventually Iraq will be divided into three states -- Kurdish, Shiite and Sunni -- hopefully as a confederation, but possibly separate. It's just incredibly arrogant for us to go in there and install our brand of democracy. We are not the world's policeman and we shouldn't play that role."
Having spoken on Veterans and other issues around the war, I concur. Simply put, we cannot deploy democracy.
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