Meet the New Boss...She's the Same as the Old Boss.
Congresswoman and Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), was unabashed in her criticism that the Bush Administration and certain members of the House and Senate whom she believes demonstrated any lapse in personal ethics.
There were certainly many instances where her criticisms were spot on, and Ms. Pelosi even authored the Honest Leadership and Open Government Act of 2006 which included useful reforms and needed regulation for how business should be conducted in the House. As promising as this Act was, however, the new Speaker has regularly demonstrated that the level of honesty and up-front behavior she has advocated for so long does not apply to herself.
Speaker Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid sent a letter to President Bush on January 5, 2007 stating their opposition to his military surge in Iraq on the basis that…
"We want to do everything we can to help Iraq succeed in the future but, like many of our senior military leaders, we do not believe that adding more U.S. combat troops contributes to success. They, like us, believe there is no purely military solution in Iraq. There is only a political solution."
The last two sentences contradict each other. The first states that there is no “purely military solution,” and the second states that there is “…only a political solution.”
In December of last year, Lieutenant General Peter Chiarelli, former Commander of the Multinational Corps in Iraq pointed that , "We need to get out of thinking this is solely a military conflict…All our nation's strengths – diplomatic, economic, political – must be leveraged…"
Soon after taking control of US troops in Iraq this year, General David Petraeus reiterated that a military response by itself would not end the conflict in Iraq. He made it clear that political and socio-economic means must be employed to end the war, and that these efforts should be backed by appropriate military action.
None the less, Speaker Pelosi continues to mislead her constituents in a very subtle but significant way. In her March 23rd speech on the House floor Ms. Pelosi stated…
“Our commander in Iraq, General David Petraeus, recently said: ‘There is no military solution to a problem like that in Iraq.”
It is clear from this speech and others that Speaker Pelosi simply wants to get US troops out of Iraq as soon as possible regardless of the consequences. She makes no mention of stepping up political or socio-economic pressure beyond the possibility that an imminent US pullout would somehow force the Iraqi belligerents to come to terms. Simply training enough Iraqis to replace US forces as the Speaker and other political leaders have suggested is an extremely poor gamble, given what we already know about the sectarian nature of the conflict.
If we simply train Iraqi military forces and then pull out, we can be assured of an even bloodier civil war. If we pull out without training them, they’ll fight with what they have now.
Speaker Pelosi is correct in her statement that “Benchmarks without deadlines are just words…” However, setting the wrong benchmarks with unrealistic dates are disastrous. Instead of misquoting our military leaders for her own ends, Speaker Pelosi should be working with them to develop a proper counterinsurgency plan that our more knowledgeable officers have been calling for all along. It should be a plan that dramatically increases our political, civil, and economic interaction and relies on the military to support its security needs. Practical milestones with realistic time lines can be set that convert this unconscionable gamble into a calculated risk with a much more likely positive outcome.
"We want to do everything we can to help Iraq succeed in the future but, like many of our senior military leaders, we do not believe that adding more U.S. combat troops contributes to success. They, like us, believe there is no purely military solution in Iraq. There is only a political solution."
The last two sentences contradict each other. The first states that there is no “purely military solution,” and the second states that there is “…only a political solution.”
In December of last year, Lieutenant General Peter Chiarelli, former Commander of the Multinational Corps in Iraq pointed that , "We need to get out of thinking this is solely a military conflict…All our nation's strengths – diplomatic, economic, political – must be leveraged…"
Soon after taking control of US troops in Iraq this year, General David Petraeus reiterated that a military response by itself would not end the conflict in Iraq. He made it clear that political and socio-economic means must be employed to end the war, and that these efforts should be backed by appropriate military action.
None the less, Speaker Pelosi continues to mislead her constituents in a very subtle but significant way. In her March 23rd speech on the House floor Ms. Pelosi stated…
“Our commander in Iraq, General David Petraeus, recently said: ‘There is no military solution to a problem like that in Iraq.”
It is clear from this speech and others that Speaker Pelosi simply wants to get US troops out of Iraq as soon as possible regardless of the consequences. She makes no mention of stepping up political or socio-economic pressure beyond the possibility that an imminent US pullout would somehow force the Iraqi belligerents to come to terms. Simply training enough Iraqis to replace US forces as the Speaker and other political leaders have suggested is an extremely poor gamble, given what we already know about the sectarian nature of the conflict.
If we simply train Iraqi military forces and then pull out, we can be assured of an even bloodier civil war. If we pull out without training them, they’ll fight with what they have now.
Speaker Pelosi is correct in her statement that “Benchmarks without deadlines are just words…” However, setting the wrong benchmarks with unrealistic dates are disastrous. Instead of misquoting our military leaders for her own ends, Speaker Pelosi should be working with them to develop a proper counterinsurgency plan that our more knowledgeable officers have been calling for all along. It should be a plan that dramatically increases our political, civil, and economic interaction and relies on the military to support its security needs. Practical milestones with realistic time lines can be set that convert this unconscionable gamble into a calculated risk with a much more likely positive outcome.
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