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The recent Democratic candidates debate resulted in asking of some tough questions but the 1-minute time allocation for responses was simply to little given the candidates affinity to monotonously repeat their stump speeches. However, the one thing that irks me no end is the Republican stand of no-withdrawal lest it gives ‘them’ victory and results in ‘our’ defeat.
Rudi Guiliani, the current leading candidate from the Republicans was in Texas A&M recently and I got the opportunity to attend his talk. He is considered to be the more liberal amongst Republican candidates given his contrary views on gun control, gay marriage, and abortion but on the war on terror front, he is no different from Bush. Speaking to a largely Republican and conservative audience (whoops for any conservative talk and hisses for any liberal inneuendo), he dwelt largely on the ‘global war on terror’. Upon being questioned as to why we haven’t defeated or mitigated the Al-Qaeda threat or even killed Bin Laden, Guiliani pooh-poohed the contention that 9/11 was just restricted to Al-Qaeda. He emphasized that it was a larger conspiracy by Islamic radicals out to eliminate Americans.
While being partially correct on that, he failed to connect the Iraq mess to the war on terror and dismissed any suggestion of withdrawal as defeat. If I could, I would have asked him one simple question - define victory in Iraq. I fail to see any Republican even remotely suggesting the larger objectives for the war in Iraq. The weapons of mass destruction and threat of Iraqi nuclear capacity led to the war. Slowly it diverged to establishing a democratic government. Later it was modified to establishing peace in the region and now, I guess the acceptable solution would be keep the shit from hitting the fan on a daily basis.
The Bush Administration seems to be averse to external parties such as Congress setting either a timetable or benchmarks for the war but I say, let the administration instead set benchmarks on definition of a victory in Iraq. Let it be anything different from the status quo (or even the status quo on a good day) but no war (if at all this is one) was ever won without knowing what we are expected to achieve. Supporters of the war keep insisting any divergence from the current strategy (again, if there is one) would lead to defeat (as if we are headed away from it now).
Well, then let us at least examine the overarching goals of the war on terror. Define an enemy either rogue states or specific organizations and then delineate how elimininating them will lead to sense of security and peace. If past experience has taught us anything, the current strategy has only made more enemies and isolated the United States from even the erstwhile coalition of the willing. No one likes bullies especially if they transcend all levels of reason and sensibility. Thankfully, at least 70% of Americans are tired of the current administration and it is only the lack of gumption on part of Democrats that is keeping the president from being impeached. So I guess, we have to wait out the next year and a half. But what a long year and a half it is going to be.
PS. Why this rant? Tomorrow is the fourth anniversary of Bush’s “Mission Accomplished” speech. So much for accomplished, eh?
by Patrix | on Monday, April 30th, 2007 at 3:08 pm | 
Current Affairs, Opinion, Politicking, United States . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
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