Saturday, August 25, 2007
Link to Article
Your turn: It is time for Iraqis to take control of their country
By Bob Olson, St. Cloud
It's been more than four years since American military forces rolled into Baghdad, liberated millions and provided President Bush with the opportunity to give a victory speech beneath a "Mission Accomplished" banner on the deck of the USS Abraham Lincoln.
It's been more than three years since sovereignty of Iraq was handed back to Iraqis, prompting the president to declare "let freedom reign" in a note to then-National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice.
It's been more than two years since Iraqis celebrated voting in national elections by waving ink-stained fingers at foreign news reporters. But despite the great effort and many victories of American troops, the sectarian violence in Iraq rages on with no end in sight.
Today, almost 162,000 of our very bravest are caught in the middle of a bloody Sunni-Shiite civil war — even though their commanding general warned in March there is "no military solution" to the conflict.
More than 3,700 American soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines have paid with their lives for a failed policy.
Our global standing is in a free fall, terrorism is up worldwide and Osama bin Laden, the mastermind behind the murder of nearly 3,000 American citizens, is still running free.
After years of tragic missteps, the administration's upcoming report on the "surge" offers us a chance to turn the corner for the better, but we're not going to get there with more of the same short-sighted thinking that has prevented people of good conscience from admitting error and taking the right steps to fix past mistakes.
It's time to get beyond the petty politics of a minute-by-minute news cycle and do the right thing for America. The Iraq war shouldn't be a political issue exploited or feared by Democrats and Republicans. It's an issue we must work together to resolve. We have to act now.
It's time to remove American forces from day-to-day combat roles in Iraq and begin the process of bringing them home. A lasting peace can't be built on the backs of our troops — it can only be achieved by Iraqis. For now our military should be training Iraqis, patrolling the borders and conducting counterterrorism missions against foreign al-Qaida fighters, not choosing sides in battles between warring Sunni and Shiite factions.
It's time to end our lethal addiction to foreign oil so we can get out of no-win entanglements in some of the planet's most dangerous regions. The technology and know-how is here now. All we need is the political will to get things done.
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.
In 2005 the president told American troops stationed in South Korea that "as Iraqis stand up, we will stand down." The time for clichés is over. Now it's time for Iraqis to actually follow through and take control of their own country — they're the only ones who can.
This is the opinion of Bob Olson, who lives in St. Cloud and is a DFL candidate in the 6th Congressional District in 2008.