Jack Nelson-Pallmeyer on Iraq:
I call for the United States to announce immediately its intention to end the occupation of Iraq, with the goal of withdrawing all US troops (and all private contractors) in a period of approximately six months.The Bush administration never had an exit strategy for Iraq because it does not plan on leaving. The Bush administration invaded and occupies Iraq in pursuit of two principle goals: to establish permanent military bases and to control Iraq’s vast oil supplies. Responsibly ending the occupation depends on rejecting these goals.
Most Iraqis oppose the US occupation and will never agree to the United States having permanent military bases or controlling Iraqi oil. The Bush administration’s recent escalation (surge) does nothing to address Iraqi grievances. We are no closer to a political resolution of conflicts that separate Iraqi factions and the reasons Iraqis are hostile to US forces continue to fester.
Ending the occupation is the essential first step to reconciliation within Iraq. The United Nations, international community and Iraq’s neighbors could help promote Iraq stability and reconciliation but they will not help the United States establish permanent military bases or control Iraqi oil. Their assistance depends on ending the US occupation.
We have a moral and fiscal responsibility to help reconstruct Iraq, to help the more than 4 million Iraqi refugees created by the war and to fully support returning US veterans.
All of our hopes and dreams are held hostage to the Iraq war. The $12 billion per month we spend on the war not only hurts Iraqis, it also cripples domestic efforts to address pressing environmental, health, education and other needs at home. It is shameful that the Bush administration demands hundreds of billions of dollars to continue an unnecessary war while refusing to adequately fund programs for returning vets or health care programs for uninsured US children.
Nelson-Pallmeyer does an excellent job of not only demonstrating the problems we continue to face in Iraq but also connecting those problems with those we are facing here at home. A Republican Party which prides itself on fiscal discipline is willing to spend billions of dollars every single month on venture that has brought us no closer to a stable Iraqi government than we had at the beginning of the occupation. While I am not certain that it is healthy or productive to continually dwell on the failures of this administration, it is abundantly evident that Nelson-Pallmeyer would be a strong voice in the United States Senate for getting us out of Iraq and perhaps using that $12 billion per month the Republicans are willing to spend on domestic priorities.
I say it’s time to leave Iraq. Our troops have served magnificently, but even General Petraeus has stated that military action alone cannot fix Iraq.It’s been clear for years that this war was a mistake, and that mistake after mistake has been made in the conduct of it. And in my books, on my radio show, and all over this country, I’ve been speaking out for years about this sad, tragic mess. Now it’s time for all of us to come to terms with the truth about the situation there.
- There is no reason to believe that the Maliki government is able, or even willing, to meet the political benchmarks necessary to make progress in Iraq: devising a fair plan to share oil revenues among ethnic groups, reversing the disastrous de-Baathification and putting Sunnis back to work, engaging and eliminating sectarian death squads, and starting a reconciliation process to defuse sectarian tensions.
- Conversely, there is every reason to believe that the Maliki government just wants us to stay there so that they can consolidate their power. Our troops should not be there to make that happen.
- The best way to convince the Iraqi government that we’re leaving is to actually start leaving. I support immediately beginning the process of bringing our troops home. Our withdrawal should not be precipitous, and we should have a national conversation about the best way to complete our disengagement – we should put more thought into how we get out than we did into how we got in. But we should start now.
- At the same time, we should be convening a regional conference including Iran, Syria, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Turkey, and Egypt to come up with a long-term plan for Iraq and ensure that a regional conflict does not arise. Jordan and Syria have over a million Iraqi refugees. Nobody wants Iraq to devolve into utter chaos. It’s inconceivable that the Bush administration hasn’t roused itself to initiate regional diplomacy.
Mike Ciresi on Iraq:
As your U.S. Senator I will:
- Never send American troops to war unless there is a clear and present danger to our national interests.
- Never send American troops to war without a plan and without sufficient equipment and force to win the peace.
- Vote to rescind the original war resolution bill.
- Support a surge in diplomacy and an international peace conference covering Iraq and the Middle East.
- Support a withdrawal plan that gets us our combat troops out within 8 months.
- Support a plan to redeploy our troops into training functions and on to the borders of Iraq to interdict people who are coming in from either Iran or Syria.
- Require Iraqis to stand-up and defend their own country in this civil war and meet economic and political benchmarks calibrated to our troop redeployment.
- Direct our troops to combat terrorism and seek out al-Qaeda.
- End our involvement in a war that does nothing to stabilize the Middle East.
I am going to give this one a tie between Ciresi and Nelson-Pallmeyer. Ciresi gets the win for his detailed method on which he believes we should proceed while Nelson-Pallmeyer gets the win for his principled stand against this administration's goals for Iraq as well as his forward looking vision of what could be done here at home if and when we stop spending billions per month on a war that most believe was not worth waging.
I encourage anyone who supports one of these three candidates to comment about the positive aspects of their candidates health care positions. Perhaps I missed some policy statements or other evidence highlighting what your candidate will do in terms of Iraq.
Stay Tuned, in the next episode we will examine these three candidates on the environment.
2 responses to "Al, Mike, & Jack: An Issue Analysis (Iraq)"
I support Jack Nelson-Pallmeyer. His health care position is that he supports single payer. Single payer is the most efficient, with best best health outcomes. It covers everybody; it keeps us all healthier.
Jack doesn't mince words. He understands that his role in the Senate can be as a leader for a movement for better health care for all Americans. Right now, since Paul Wellstone died, there is no person in the US Senate who is willing to sponsor a single payer plan. Jack will be that person.
Kip Sullivan, a Minnesotan who is a national expert on health care policy states that single payer is far superior to other plans.
Mike Ciresi's plan keeps the health insurers digging into government coffers and our pockets and guzzling our wealth. It still allows them way too much control over the process. His is a far more expensive plan with the likely possibility that over time the safeguards for consumers his plan puts in would be eroded.
Franken's position on health care again minces words, as he does with his Iraq position. He says that single payer would be best. But then he says that he doesn't advocate for it, as the political time is not right for it. (But how does that moment arive when our representatives in Washington won't represent us?)
Franken is for a 50 state solution. That means that all 50 states would have their own plans. What if Minnesota's plan was far superior to Wisconsin's? What's to stop Wisconsin from giving their indigent population bus tickets to Minnesota?
That's just one of the problems with Franken's plan for helath care. He is selling it as a path to nationalizing whichever plan is "best", but that won't happen. It is a path toward dissapating and fragmenting the single payer movement; at the same time it is a sure way for the insurance industry to control the ultimate process and one by one pick off the few states that might go single payer. At any rate, it will be incredibly disorganizing and chaotic to have 50 states with 50 different plans.
The devil is in the details... While both Jack and Mike want us out of Iraq ASAP, only Mike has a detailed plan to get us out. Same with health care... Jack has a too simple to work plan that'll never pass (try taking people's health insurance away and getting them to accept a one-size-fits all plan). Al argues for "states rights". Mike realizes that like all the great Democratic reforms like Social Security (built on the veteran's pensions and alongside public employee pension programs) the only way to universal health care is by skillfully expanding and complementing existing programs.