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May 16, 2007

Republican Candidates on the War

Last night's debate between the Republican presidential candidates (Sam Brownback, James S. Gilmore, Rudy Giuliani, Duncan Hunter, Mike Huckabee, John McCain, Ron Paul, Mitt Romney, Tom Tancredo, Tommy Thompson) began with questions about the war. None of the candidates' answers made me feel very good about any of the candidates. Rarely did they show any sort of depth of knowledge or thought; rather, it was one campaign slogan after another, much of it trite and erroneous.

John McCain fell back on the old "fight them over there so we don't have to fight them here" line:

SEN. MCCAIN: ... If we fail in Iraq, we will see Iraq become a center for al Qaeda, chaos, genocide in the region, and they'll follow us home. After we lost the war in Vietnam, we came home, they didn't follow us home. You read Zarqawi, you read bin Laden, you read al Qaeda, they'll tell you they want to follow us home.

Tommy Thompson completely avoided answering the first question he was asked:

MR. WALLACE: Governor Thompson, in the last debate, you said that you would, quote, "Require the Maliki government to vote on whether or not they want us to continue to stay in Iraq." You said that you would, quote, "Require the 18 provinces to elect governments and that you would split oil revenues." This is a freely elected government, sir. How can you require them to do anything?

MR. THOMPSON: There is no question that the al-Maliki government needs to step up and do what is right. The United States government has been there for four years. We've lost many individuals -- 3,400 individuals as of today, and it's time for the al-Maliki to vote whether or not they want us in the fifth year to stay in their country or whether or not they want us to go home. Secondly, if in fact they do allow the 18 territories, which, geographically defined, allow them to elect their leaders like we elect the 50 governors and 50 legislatures in the United States, they will elect individuals that they would feel -- are comfortable with them, that they are -- feel that they have a stake in their government. And if you split the oil revenues -- one-third to the federal government, one-third to the territories, and one-third to every man, woman and child -- every man, woman and child will feel they have a stake in their government, stake in their country, and they'll start using that money for peace and for building businesses and making sure they build their country. That's why my plan will work, and it will win the peace in Iraq.

Then it was Mitt Romney's turn:

MR. WALLACE: Governor Romney, can you foresee any circumstances under which you would pull out of Iraq without leaving behind a stable political and security situation?

MR. ROMNEY: Well, I'm certainly not going to project failure, and those kind of circumstances that you would suggest would be projecting failure.

He then went on to describe the importance of winning in Iraq as part of winning in the global jihadist conflict, using all the right terms so as to sound very well-informed. Sam Brownback also believed that the war could be "won" – if everyone could just hold hands, sing Kum ba Yah, and work together.

SEN. BROWNBACK: And we will win if we can pull together, and we can win the war. And I think as well, if you look at it, it's difficult for democracy and particularly for the United States, for us to win with one party for the war and one party against the war. And I condemn the statements of Harry Reid, the majority leader of the Senate, saying we've already lost. We haven't lost. That's his declaration, but we've got to pull people together here. And when we can do that, and when we do that, we will win.

Rudy Giuliani demonstrated the fine art of spin:

MR. WALLACE: Mayor Giuliani, in our interview the other day you said that congressional Republicans who say they must see progress by September are, quote, "fundamentally irresponsible," and that in effect they are giving a timetable for retreat to our enemies. Is your commitment to winning in Iraq open-ended?

MR. GIULIANI: First of all, that isn't exactly what I said. I was talking about the timetable for retreat that the Democrats passed in Congress, in which they did something extraordinary and that I've never heard of in the history of war, which is to give your enemy a schedule of how a retreating army is going to retreat. That was irresponsible, highly irresponsible.

He then went on to use the case of the "Fort Dix Six" as proof that al Qaeda will "follow us here," even though that attack was clearly identified as an independent effort having nothing to do with al Qaeda or international terrorism.

I think Senator McCain is correct, these people do want to follow us here and they have followed us here. Fort Dix happened a week ago. That was a situation in which six Islamic terrorists, who were not directed by al Qaeda but claimed to have been inspired by them, were going to kill our military in cold blood at Fort Dix. It was a 16-month investigation done by the FBI and the United States Attorney's Office, and thank God they caught them. But we have to remind ourselves that we are facing an enemy that is planning all over this world, and it turns out planning inside our country, to come here and kill us. And the worst thing to do in the face of that is to show them weakness.

Tom Tancredo has a rational opinion, but shirked responsibility for acting on his beliefs about the war because of the convenient "support the troops" excuse.

REP. TANCREDO: … I will support our troops while they are in the field in every single way I can. That is my responsibility as a member of Congress, by the way. It is not to general the war, it is not to micromanage it, it is to support the troops that are in harm's way.

Ron Paul was the rational sounding one:

MR. WALLACE: Congressman Paul, you're one of six House Republicans who back in 2002 voted against authorizing President Bush to use force in Iraq.

REP. PAUL: Right.

MR. WALLACE: Now you say we should pull our troops out. A recent poll found that 77 percent of Republicans disapprove of the idea of setting a timetable for withdrawal. Are you running for the nomination of the wrong party? (Scattered laughter.)

REP. PAUL: But you have to realize that the base of the Republican Party shrunk last year because of the war issue. So that percentage represents less people. If you look at 65 to 70 percent of the American people, they want us out of there. They want the war over.
In 19- -- 2002, I offered an amendment to International Relations to declare war, up or down, and it was -- nobody voted for the war. And my argument there was, if we want to go to war, and if we should go to war, the Congress should declare it. We don't go to war like we did in Vietnam and Korea, because the wars never end. And I argued the case and made the point that it would be a quagmire if we go in. Ronald Reagan in 1983 sent Marines into Lebanon, and he said he would never turn tail and run. A few months later, the Marines were killed, 241 were killed, and the Marines were taken out. And Reagan addressed this subject in his memoirs. And he says, "I said I would never turn tail and run." He says, "But I never realized the irrationality of Middle Eastern politics," and he changed his policy there. We need the courage of a Ronald Reagan.

Duncan Hunter seemed at least like an honest person – not out for unearned glory:

REP. HUNTER: …One of us is going to be a commander in chief in a few months with a tough military operation and situation to deal with. I've been the chairman of the Armed Services Committee for the last four years. I served in uniform in Vietnam -- didn't do anything special, but I served. My son has done two tours in Iraq. I can look at the American people and say, we are in this together, and I think the other guys ought to lay out their credentials to be commander in chief.

As for Mike Huckabee, I can't figure out where he's coming from. I mean, read the following, keeping in mind that many of "the generals" have been telling the President things he didn't want to hear, so he has been ignoring them; meanwhile, we've spent - and lost - an ungodly amount of money over there on who knows what and the President vetoed money to give our troops the equipment they needed.

MR. WALLACE: Governor Huckabee, you said in the last debate that President Bush made a mistake listening too much to civilians in suits and silk ties and not enough to the generals with mud and blood on their boots, especially when it came to how many troops were needed to stabilize the situation in Iraq. If the generals were to come to you as president and say, we don't have enough troops there; we need, let's say, 300,000, would you be open to significantly increasing our presence in Iraq?

MR. HUCKABEE: A president had better be open to listening to the generals who are going to lead people into battle and put their lives on the line. That's one of the problems we face now, Chris. We listen to the diplomats; we listen to the civilians; we listen to the people running the Defense Department -- more worried about the budget than worried about the blood that might be spilled by our own kids. That's why I think it's critical that if you're going to be commander-in-chief, you make tough decisions. But you'd better get the best advice that you possibly can get. And that advice comes from the people who have earned the right to say to the president, Mr. President, this is what it's going to take to do the job right. There's an old saying in the South that I'm sure people in South Carolina are familiar with. "It takes more money to do it over than it does to do it right." We're now seeing that in the United States. We're doing a lot of things over. Maybe we should have just done it right.

James Gilmore pulled a Tommy Thompson and danced around his question on the war so as to avoid making any concrete public statement that could get him into trouble later:

MR. WALLACE: Governor Gilmore, we have an internet question for you from Harry from Boston, who says, we should look ahead to the threat from Iran. He asked, quote, "What would you do to resolve this nuclear issue? And will you launch a pre-emptive strike if they were close to achieving a weapon?"

MR. GILMORE: Well, I appreciate the question about Iran, because I think it is one of the real emerging problems. And you have to look at this Middle East issue beyond just the Iraq issue. You have to look at all the complexities of Israel and Palestine and Iran and Iraq and the entire issue of the Middle East. With respect to Iran, I think that there is no choice at this point other than to join up with people across the world in order to put on serious mandatory sanctions against Iran and to do everything that is going to be necessary to try to bring them to the notion that it is better for them to give up this sort of plan rather than to proceed the way we are. However, I think that we have to have an honest discussion with the American people about this. We have to ask ourselves this question: Are we prepared to have Iran have a nuclear weapon? What will be the consequences of that when Saudi Arabia says, "The people on the other side have got a nuclear weapon, we have to have a nuclear weapon." What if they go to Pakistan and ask for assistance in that? What about Egypt? And I think the American people have to at some point come to a real serious conclusion about the tough decision that has to be made when we may have to in fact strike.

After going through all that, I am not at all certain I know anything more about these gentlemen than I did before. It's no wonder Republican leadership has got us into this mess.

Posted by Becky at May 16, 2007 12:37 PM