How much stronger we would be in this critical fight if
we "seek national security ahead of partisan advantage"?...
It's time that America's leaders, who agree on our goals
but disagree on tactics, to start trusting each other
again so that we can work together again....
It's time for Democrats to acknowledge that President
Bush will be commander-in-chief for three more critical
years, and that in matters of war we undermine presidential
credibility at our nation's peril.
FINDING UNITY ON IRAQ
By JOE LIEBERMAN
NEW YORK Post Opinion
December 7, 2005
EDITOR'S NOTE: The following are excerpts from Sen. Lieberman's remarks yesterday at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessment's forum on "Next Steps for Successful Strategy in Iraq."
I WANT to say a few things about what I believe is on the line in Iraq, about how we are conducting ourselves here in Washington — and how what happens here affects what will happen there.
The most important debate going on here about the war is between those focused on withdrawal of our forces regardless of conditions on the ground, and the rest of us — who believe that our goal is not to withdraw but to win, so we can leave with the mission accomplished.
As I see it, the war, which arguably began as a "war of choice," has become a "war of necessity" we can't afford to lose.
The costs of victory will be high in American lives lost and American money spent. But the costs of defeat would be disastrous. They include: the collapse of the new Iraqi regime, civil war, regional war, a victory for Zarqawi and al Qaeda (which will embolden them to attack both other Arab countries and our homeland), the rollback of democracy in the region and the painful realization that the lives of American soldiers who have died in Iraq were given in vain.
And also a heavy cost of lost opportunities: We are in Iraq not just to defeat the terrorists — not even mostly to defeat the terrorists. We are there to provide the security for self-government by the Iraqis — the creation of a modern, open, thriving state in this historic center of the Arab and Islamic worlds. If we accept defeat in Iraq, we will have lost the opportunity to create a larger victory in the so-called war "for the hearts and minds" in the Islamic world.
It is probably these enormous costs of failure that explain why so few in Congress have joined the calls for a preset, timed withdrawal.
Last Wednesday, the president laid out his strategy for victory in a speech at the Naval Academy and accompanying white paper. The plan, developed over the 2 1/2 years since Saddam Hussein's overthrow, has resulted from trial and yes, many errors. It describes the strategy, the tactics, that I saw in Iraq two weeks ago and that I believe are creating progress there.
The response to the president's proposal by leading Democrats — including my colleagues Sens. John Kerry and Jack Reed — was important and instructive: Most did not call for an arbitrary withdrawal, but instead questioned some tactics and asked the administration to go to the next level of detail on its plans.
Which suggests that there may be more agreement here than meets the eye and ear in the dueling partisan press conferences that characterize public discourse in Washington today. I suggest there is a broad bipartisan agreement on goals, on our strategic interest in the successful completion of our mission in Iraq, with disagreements about tactics.
The urgency of the moment in Iraq calls us to remember the famous counsel of Sen. Arthur Vandenberg, the Michigan Republican who played an instrumental role in building bipartisan support for President Harry Truman's early Cold War foreign policy: "Politics must stop at the water's edge."
Vandenburg's full statement is altogether relevant now: "To me, bipartisan foreign policy means a mutual effort under our indispensable two-party system, to unite our official voice at the water's edge so that America speaks with maximum authority against those who would divide and conquer us and the Free World."
So, too, do the Islamist terrorists who attacked us on 9/11, and fight us in Iraq today, aim to "divide and conquer us and the Free World."
How much stronger we would be in this critical fight if we "seek national security ahead of partisan advantage"? That is why I feel so strongly that it is time for us to set aside for now the arguments about why we got into Iraq so that we can work together on how we can get out best in victory and honor.
With the stakes so large for our future safety, and liberty — and with the lives of 160,000 Americans in uniform on the line in Iraq everyday — it is urgent that all of us who want to complete our mission successfully put our national goals ahead of the party labels that too often divide us.
It's time that America's leaders, who agree on our goals but disagree on tactics, to start trusting each other again so that we can work together again. The distrust will be difficult to overcome, but history will judge us harshly if we do not stretch across the divide and join together to complete our mission successfully in Iraq.
It's time for Democrats to acknowledge that President Bush will be commander-in-chief for three more critical years, and that in matters of war we undermine presidential credibility at our nation's peril.
It's time for Republicans in the White House and Congress to acknowledge that greater Democratic involvement and support in the war in Iraq is critical to rebuilding the support of the American people that is essential to our success in that war.
To encourage that new partnership, I propose that the president and the leadership of Congress establish a bipartisan Victory in Iraq Working Group, composed of members of both parties in Congress and high-ranking administration national-security officials. This group would meet regularly, I would hope at least weekly, to discuss conditions and progress on the ground in Iraq and ways to alter or improve our strategy for victory.
Some will call this proposal, in today's intensely partisan Washington environment, naive and impractical. Perhaps they're right. But the return of such bipartisanship in the conduct of this war would raise popular support at home, encourage our brave troops in the field, discourage our vicious enemies and strengthen the resolve of the Iraqi people and the hundreds of millions of others in the Islamic world who want a better way forward than the hatred and death al Qaeda offers.
In 1941, Winston Churchill came to Rochester, N.Y., and said:
"When great causes are on the move in the world . . . we learn that we are spirits, not animals, and that something is going on in space and time which, whether we like it or not, spells duty."
My friends, great causes are clearly on the move in the world today. We were attacked by Islamist terrorists — attacked here at home. The centers of American power, our great cities, were attacked. The main battleground in this war is now Iraq. So I would say, in Churchill's phrase, that duty calls us down to take ourselves above the ordinary partisan debates of this capital city, to unite for victory, to walk the course together until our mission is completed, our security is protected, and the forces of freedom have once more emerged triumphant from the battlefields of power and of principle.
Joe Lieberman is the junior senator from Connecticut.
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