Because, like, war is bad 'n stuff...

[bluegargantua]

Yes, Mr. Democratic Candidate, you don't like the War in Iraq. You thought it was a stupid idea, even though you may have voted for it (unless you're Lieberman in which case you thought it was a great idea and voted for it proudly and have completely picked the wrong political party to run for a nomination in -- I mean...the hell?).

So yes. You don't like the war. Very good, I don't like the war either. There's clearly an honesty issue here. There's a clearly a foreign policy issue here. There's lots of stuff to go beat up on Bush about. Good. Go to.

But my question is this: Given that we did go to war, what do we do now? Bring our troops home? Well, I'm gonna suggest that Bush will actually do that by the end of June or July. He does this so he can claim he ended the war and brought troops home and if the Dems complain then clearly they wanted to keep our troops out there in harm's way, the warmongers.

Right. So what do you do? Ideally, you'd like to have some sort of plan, some sort of positive, constructive thing to show people, but now all you can do is complain about the past. That's part of the problem with the current anti-war rhetoric we're already at war (or at least, we're in post-war occupation). You can be pissed off about it, but what I want to know is how you handle the mess you'll get if you become president.

If it was me? I dunno. It seems unlikely that Iraq can avoid sliding into chaos without a US presence, but no one is going to want to go back if Bush calls troops home. Maybe you could let things split along ethnic lines with Kurds in the North, Sunni in the middle and Shi'ites in the South. Perhaps a confederation (although those have never been terribly effective). In any event, things are going to suck all over. I wish I had a better idea.

Tom

Comments

[bonisagus.livejournal.com]

I would suggest a radical idea if you have not done so already. E-mail the candidates and ask the question. If nothing else the politically correct answer would be funny to read. You might even get a half-answer. It can't hurt to ask a simple question.