NATIONAL SECURITY PRIORITIES
Yesterday afternoon I gave the fifth in a series of speeches detailing the problems with this Administration's flawed, Iraq-centric national security policies. You can read my speech here. You can read the previous four here.
I opposed the Iraq war from the start because it was a distraction from what should be our top priority - fighting the terrorist networks that threaten us. While I didn't get a lot of support back in June when I proposed a resolution calling on the President to put forth a flexible, public timetable to finish the military mission in Iraq, I'm not alone anymore. Recently over 40 Senators went on record supporting a flexible timetable for concluding our military mission in Iraq. Unfortunately, the White House still refuses to listen.
While the President is scheduled to give another speech on Iraq today, he was presented with the same opportunity on Monday, and he once again refused to come up with a public plan and flexible timetable to finish the military mission in Iraq. The President fails to recognize that success in Iraq will not come from a massive and unlimited U.S. military presence there. Our military was magnificent in deposing Saddam Hussein. They have achieved their primary military mission and it's time to start planning their return. Otherwise, our seemingly indefinite presence will continue to fuel a growing insurgency and will ultimately prevent the very political and economic progress Iraqis will need to develop a true democracy. This is no strategy for success. And that's not the military's fault, of course - it's the fault of the President and his flawed policies in Iraq.
We've been in Iraq for over 1,000 days now and there is still no plan from the White House to complete the military mission there. Every day, more and more elected officials and national security and intelligence officials come to understand what the American people have for some time - that we need a public, flexible timetable to finish the military mission in Iraq, not another presidential speech filled with the same empty rhetoric we've all heard before.
A timetable to complete the military mission will enable us to devote more resources to the other national security issues that demand our attention. While the President continues down a stubborn "stay the course" road, the terrorist networks that threaten us are getting stronger and Americans are increasingly becoming less safe.
Rather than once again repackaging the same old message on Iraq, the White House should focus its energy and resources on countering the conditions that spawn support for terrorist networks around the world, repairing and redeploying our military, countering emerging terrorist tactics, dealing with the threat of "loose nukes," and finishing the job in Afghanistan, just to name a few urgent priorities. The stakes are too high to delay any further.
Lieberman, the Nelsons and Conrad notably missing from the list of 40.
The disconnect between what the Bush Administration SAYS they are committed to when it comes to democracy, freedom and national security, and what they DO, gets wider and wider every day. I can think of nothing more dangerous than that.
December 14, 2005 7:58 AM | Reply | Permalink
Sen. Feingold,
You're a pretty smart guy. After all the debris and distraction that surrounds this war is cleared, will you come to the same conclusion that many of us have: namely, that the only reason to for the US to be in Iraq is to have the troops permanently there?
Why were we forced to "cut and run" in Afghanistan to pursue a faulty logic about Saddam Hussein? Why have the leaders of this Administration (including Colin Powell, who has disgraced himself IMHO) danced on the edge of every "fact" to push us into a war? Why was post-invasion Iraq allowed to fall apart from the beginning, creating the need for a prolonged stay? Why such a blind determination for "democracy" and these hyped elections?
Well, if it looks like a duck....
These same tactics are employed in every country that our military industrial complex wants into and we are not welcomed by that government. And Americans are lied to continuously by our government to accommodate those policies. When this election in Iraq results in being "asked" to stay to help protect the borders of a "fledgling democracy" against "foreign fighters", will the continuing loss of life of our soldiers be more or less honorable than all that have gone before? Will our soldiers, actively propping up yet another puppet government in the Middle East (remember the Shah?), be teaching the new security services from the new "stick in the eye" to McCain, double secret probation interrogation technique manual? Or will we acknowledge that Saddam's boys were pretty good at torture and just turn a blind eye once it's an elected "democratic" government doing it?
After listening to you debate that fool from Alabama last night, it's pretty obvious that you are up against people that have little, if any, cognitive power. After the news reports of DoD propaganda contracts, domestic surveillance of anti-war protesters by the Pentagon and this odious piece of trash legislation called Patriot, I am beginning to think I am in a time machine that is stuck in "1984".
December 14, 2005 8:08 AM | Reply | Permalink
Senator FEINGOLD notes correctly that the electorate has no illusions about this mess. My son, a 2LT now on duty in Iraq, certainly doesn't.
It is actually the puffed-up, vain, self-serving Congressional Leadership of the Democratic Party who think that the Vichy Democrats are going to lead the GOP to its senses and that bi-partisan concession-tending is how this country ought to be governed.
HACKER and PIERSON have blown that theory to Hell.
The downside is that just because the electorate has become thoroughly disillusioned does not mean they are embracing the Democrats. Indeed, my party's inability to articulate coherent opposition, its complicty in a far-ranging "ethics truce", and its inablity to discipline itself makes my own party conspicuously unfit to govern.
There is, at this point, nothing keeping this government from getting more extreme and unrealistic by the day and hour -- not scandal-mongerers, not prosecutors, certainly not our gaggle of perpetual incumbents and professional office-seekers and their coterie of campaign consultants and race-hustlers in Washington.
December 14, 2005 8:11 AM | Reply | Permalink
Can't spin gold from straw
Can't spin victory out of failure
Senator you are no longer a voice crying in the wildernress of First and Constitution Ave
By fits and starts, the Democrats in Washington, thanks to Senators and Congressmen of consistent conviction such as yourself, the Congressional Democratic Party, albvit by fits and starts, is beginning to find its voice. A genuine Oppostion Party is emerging and not a minute too soon
December 14, 2005 8:21 AM | Reply | Permalink
Bush will never make a plan for getting out of Iraq. Too many administration supporters are making a ton of money. They'll milk this for as long as possible or until the Congress refuses to pony up our tax dollars. Every time Congress votes yes for the billions we are spending it will delay our departure until the next round of funding. This is about a bunch of pigs feeding at the public trough in the most twisted way imagineable.
thepeoplechoose
December 14, 2005 8:40 AM | Reply | Permalink
Thank you again Senator for your time and leadership. As I read these posts one can't help but see the anger and frustration building amongst all of us. It occurs to me that the Democrats are NOT AFRAID TO RUMBLE. It's true there's no coherent Democratic policy/line we all agree on for the Iraq War. But that is a strength not a weakness. We like to debate, we are a diverse group with a huge number of opinions and when we allow those ideas to all be tossed in the pot for a good long stir chances are we'll get the best recipe for this country. And you know what, we're not afraid to adjust our course, say we're wrong, go back and reformulate because we're thinkers. I wish you strength because you already have the mind and the leadership.
December 14, 2005 8:48 AM | Reply | Permalink
It seems that much of the controversy revolves around the best way to establish the criteria or the milestones that would allow us to evaluate how successful we are in Iraq, which in turn would allow us to know when we have been successful enough that we can leave. I am a management consultant by trade, and I teach my clients that you cant know the right way to implement a project until you have decided what that project is intended to accomplish. The next step is to identify measures or milestones of success toward the goal. The President claims that the purpose of the occupation is to help establish stability and democracy in Iraq. He doesnt want us to leave until the Iraqi security forces are strong enough to take over from us.
The problem is, so far the administration is refusing to tell us how long they think that is going to take. Set aside the question of deadlines for a moment- how about just an estimate of how much time and resources the adminstration believes is going to be required to accomplish the purpose? If the administration were consulting me (I wish) then I would advise them to establish a benchmark of some kind, a simple quantifiable measure that would allow them to know if they are making progress tpward their stated objective, and how much farther we have yet to go. I think, if we had that much, the debate could then focus on whether or not the time and resources which we would still need to invest were worth it.
Here's one such benchmark: Percent of missions accomplished. According to Globalsecurity.org, in one sector north of Bagdad Coalition forces undertake from 120 to 160 missions per day. I dont know what the total number of missions per day in all of Iraq is, but of that number, some percent is being successfully carried out by Coalition forces, and some by Iraqi security forces. Here is my modest proposal: as the percentage of total missions successfully carried out by Iraqis increases, the number of American troops in Iraq should decrease. At some point, perhaps when the Iraqis are carrying out 90% or more of all missions by themselves, we can declare the occupation successfully completed.
If that were the benchmark, then it would be a lot easier to get past the political rhetoric and determine objectively whether or not we are making any progress over there, and if so, how quickly? If we are not making measurable progress toward our goal, or if progress is occuring a too slow a rate, then the argument to just pull out by a certain date would be that much stronger.
So- does anyone know? If anybody has any information regarding how many individual missions Iraqi and Coalition forces are currently undertaking, and how this has changed over time, I would be very appreciative.
December 14, 2005 9:00 AM | Reply | Permalink
Dear Mr. Feingold,
I want you to know that I very much appreciate your stance against the ongoing and multiple atrocities perpetrated by the Bush Administration. From the lies and the torture and the destruction of civil liberties and the war, its enough to keep a principled person on edge all the time. It is important to me that people in government recognize the destructive (to democracy) nature of these policies now in play, and at least raise a voice in protest, if not thwart their ugly designs.
As a liberal, I feel we are in a position of weakness for now, and that, like the wise karate master, we stand aside and let this huge blast of hubris and deluded policymaking go past rather than stand in its way and get steamrolled. I feel that it is time to be patient and to "witness" the ongoing crimes while making clear our positions and the logic and principles underlying them. I feel this is the opportunity for liberals to make clear distinctions between themselves and the fools running the show now. With patience and clarity from leaders such as yourself, I believe Americans will come to see things in a different light.
Thus, as regards the Iraq war, Democrats who stand up and try to offer solutions to George Bush's Iraq problem risk getting caught up in the intractible and I think unresolvable conundrum of what to do there. We have used up all our strategic options in Iraq and the only strategic objective we have My greatest fear is that Bush's strategy is to leave the Iraq mess for a Democratic administration to clean up, with all the attendant bad press for anyone left holding that stinking bag.
December 14, 2005 9:02 AM | Reply | Permalink
I stand and applaud you for your very well thought out position on the Iraq War Senator. I completely agree with your analysis that the war in Iraq is distracting from the real problems at hand in our efforts to address terrorism at the hands of a small group extremist Muslims. The problem now is that the "small group" has grown significantly because our actions in the region. I supported the invasion of Afghanistan and the removal of the Taliban from power. The Taliban supported and protected Al-Qaeda, who had attacked us. Our invasion of Iraq vis-a-vis our GWOT is the most counterproductive military operations in the history of our country.
We need to refocus on the real threats to our security and get the hell out of Iraq as soon as humanly possible. Thank you for your leadership up to this point, and I am sure in the future, on this issue.
December 14, 2005 9:18 AM | Reply | Permalink
Some time ago my wife and I had the pleasure of attending a talk you gave at the University of Texas at Austin. Your fine performance only reinforced the respect you had already earned by opposing the Patriot Act, alone, in the Senate.
More than any other country maybe, America is a concept. More than any other form of national identity perhaps, American citizenship is an ideal. The most corrosive challenge resulting from Republican governance in general and Bush administration policies in particular is to the living moral core of what it means to be an American, and to the definition of America as a country. Every single major issue connects back to this, in a pattern that has widened and deepened over the years while becoming more firmly delineated.
I submit that American national security will become moot if the current political necrosis destroys that core. At the end of the day, Americans fight for what they believe to be their moral identity as Americans, and the ability of their country to become the embodiment of that collective moral identity in the world. Americans have fought wars, both at home and abroad, in order to be true to the moral core which, in their own eyes, makes them worthy of the ideal of America.
Likewise, foreigners respect that moral core as long as they perceive it to be alive and filled with promise. They welcome the striving of America to better herself in pursuit of an ideal with universal appeal.
However, they will categorically reject any expression of American power that they view as untrue to those values. However formidable, the arsenals and the garrisons will be resisted if they appear to be in the hands of those who would undermine the defining values of this country. That makes the Republican Party and the Bush administration, in and of themselves, not only subversive to America's defining ideals, but also a threat to universal goodwill toward America. The fact that their every act in office, their every policy goal, is so alien to what makes America America, and Americans, Americans, is to be taken not merely as the betrayal of interlocked American values that it clearly is. Is needs to be seen as a sapping of the true foundation of national security: a national identity steeped in the moral striving of this nation's citizens and infused with the universal ideals they adopted for themselves and promised the world.
The maverick of yesterday can become the leader of tomorrow. I believe that you have the credibility and character to spearhead a national debate on what it means to be an American and what it takes to make this country America. By asking these questions tirelessly, you can bring Americans back to what is really at stake: the soul of this nation. As Americans debate what they will come to understand is the fundamental question of the day, the rest of the world will be listening. They, too, are looking for the America they lost.
December 14, 2005 9:20 AM | Reply | Permalink
McCarthyism all over again? Only this administration and their supporters have substituted communist with terrorist. eh? Is the ghost of Hoover and McCarthy whispering in the halls of our government? BOO!
What rights will be taken next?
[The American Heritage Dictionary gives the definition of McCarthyism as: 1. The political practice of publicizing accusations of disloyalty or subversion with insufficient regard to evidence, and 2. The use of methods of investigation and accusation regarded as unfair, in order to suppress opposition.
Today, WA. 2ndCD residents will present 2600 signed petitions to our Congressional rep. at his office in Bellingham,WA. calling for just that Mr. Feingold. We are watching and listening, contrary to what the Repubs say.
December 14, 2005 9:54 AM | Reply | Permalink
You put it very well, Senator Feingold. Thank you.
December 14, 2005 10:00 AM | Reply | Permalink
Well, I hope nobody's holding their breath waiting for that...
I'm one of your constituents from Madison and I want to say I'm glad you voted against the war in the beginning. I believe we never should have gone there in the first place. I never believed a word about the supposeed threat from Iraq and of course that's all long since been proven to have been lies. The criminal administration has squandered hundreds of billions of dollars that were looted from more needful programs and they continue to do so. They've squandered thousands of our military lives (including people from Madison and area) and continue to do so. Every day it goes on is a crime as I see it. I'm afraid asking bush for a timetable (which he'll probably eventually "give in" and present) will just be an opportunity to buy more time to continue letting our military members die and continue looting more funds even more sorely needed and funneling them to contributers. I fear a timetable won't mean anything different than any other bush initiative - his supporters profit and the rest of us pay. If Congressman Murtha says there's nothing more we can do there, how can anybody else argue different? What I'd like to know, as someone who has voted for you, is why you aren't advocating an immediate withdrawl, and an immediate cut in funding for the war? (I realize cutting funds would likely not pass given the criminal operation running the show in DC) I'd love to see you saying what many of the rest of us know - and I suspect you do too - that it was a scam from the start and we should end it immediately.
December 14, 2005 1:54 PM | Reply | Permalink
I'm still trying to figure out how we ended up where we are in Iraq. It all started out as a national security issue, and somewhere, it flip flopped into a nation building experiment. All of the reasons our president gave for the attack have turned out to be without merit. Consider this. In 1978, at the aircraft mechanic school I attended, over half the students were Iraqie military on a training contract with our government. We trained the Iraq military that we now say was used against the Iraqie people. We disbanded that army, and are now training another one, to do what? To be used against the Iraqie people. 2000 plus lives and a half a trillion$$$ later, we are nearly back where we started. There is always a reason why things are the way they are. Sometimes, there are lots of reasons. We need a president who is smart enough to understand that.
December 14, 2005 2:01 PM | Reply | Permalink
The notion of addressing one's pleas for a change in policy to Bush is indeed misdirected, since he will not change his mind on the issue, especially based on what anything those who always opposed the war have to say. Their reaction to Murtha is not reconsideration, but, characteristically outrage and counterrattack.
Seymour Hersh, in his recent article "Up in the Air", in The New Yorker, argues cogently that Bush can be expected to remain in Iraq, with a redeployment of troops and much greater reliance on bombing, through to the end of this term (to 2009). Here is a URL of this excellent article:
http://www.newyorker.com/printables/fact/051205fa_fact
At any rate, what should be the focus in politics for progressive Democrats in the Congress, as well as peace activists. I have been urging at least two (with a third, a UN General Assembly Special Session, on the occupation of Iraq not being the sort of thing US Senators are likely to promote LOL). But the other two are proposals that Feingold might support at some level, although the more crucial might be seen by Democratic politicians as too "divisive".
This potentially "divisive" approach is basically an insistence that the national Democratic Party unite behind a national plank calling for rapid, phased and negotiated withdrawal from Iraq, specifically not the approach of redeployment and continued occupation supported by Hillary Clinton, who was among the 40 voting for the 'flexible timetable' proposal. This would characterize her as what I call a 'fudgyhawk', who likes to make noises that would seek to appeal to those voters who support the "GET REAL AND GET OUT" position of Feingold, Murtha, Kucinich and others, but who really offer a different bill of goods.
I would hope that, at the very least, Feingold would unite with other Democrats in both Houses to both publicly and privately put maximum pressure on those hawk and fudgyhawk Democrats to unite behind a meaningful antiwar position on the war. Simultaneously, and no doubt in a way the vast majority of the antiwar Democrats in the Senate would disapprove, I would also support a group of courageous leading antiwar Democrats, in and out of government, to act as a kind of 'collective Al Lowenstein' for the 2006 elections, recruiting and powerfully supporting a raft of strong, winnable candidates with winnable platforms to challenge in the primaries each and every Democratic hawk or fudgyhawk up for re-election to Congress in 2006. This might not unseat very many, but even a handful of close calls and even a defeat or two of an incumbent would electrify a Democratic Party which has been moving willy-nilly in that direction.
But I don't think that political inertia and "circumstances" alone will unite the Democratic Party around a meaningful antiwar plank, not only in 2006, where it is impossible, but even necessarily in 2008. It is imperative that maximum antiwar popular pressure be brought precisely on this point, to get the Democratic Party to a 'tipping' point so that they will include such a position as part of a national platform, and will -- as was torpedoed in 2004 -- run an antiwar candidate and not have the likes of Hillary and/or Clark shoved down the party's throats. I don't think that a singular focus on Lieberman is really the way -- although I think that Weicker's possible challenge in Connecticut may be just what the doctor ordered in that case. It is the great number of waffling or pro-war Democrats who might complain that they were "deceived" about going in (a somewhat disingenuous claim, an issue Bush has exploited over the top) but now feel that, as so many said of Vietnam, now that we are "in" we can't just "get out" until everything is OK. Continued occupation based on meeting conditions of "satisfactory" circumstances before we really leave is essentially long-term and open-ended US military presence -- which is made to sound like the merest of common sense, and its meaning fudged over by smooth talking politicians. I hate to sound cynical, but, as they say, the cynics are right 90% of the time.
At any rate, that effort -- which means a certain degree of division within the Democratic Party in order to really get a unified antiwar PARTY position, rather than a lack of unity on this key issue of our time (the Repugs are unified) -- may be offenseive to many Democrats who feel it would 'weaken' the party. But note that I am not calling for challenges in the general election, except in safe Democratic districts. The antiwar movement does not want to be seen as spoilers, but we MUST aggressively pursue our position, often in the face of resistance and of underground repression (which I have been facing a lot of lately). It is in particular a travesty that antiwar activists failed to unite behind a strong candidacy of a strong candidate who was a serious and consistent advocate of withdrawal from Iraq in the primary for the open Senate seat in Maryland. It is indicative of a characteristic of US progressive politics -- somewhat like the character of "Black Sam" in Uncle Tom's Cabin in his carefully deliberate ineffectuality in trying to round up the horses on the Shelby farm to be used for a posse to catch the escaped slave Eliza. (Of course, in the story, Sam is an opportunist who knows that this ineffectuality is what the master's wife strongly desires, even though what he is doing is heroic; the kind of ineffectuality I have described in progressive politics in the US today is quite the opposite of heroic, although no doubt W Bush and his ilk might feel otherwise).
The other key strategy, a no-brainer that no one in a position to effectuate it (I am a lone, nonwealthy, disabled individual in MA, at my computer urging these things as widely as I can) seems willing to pursue -- again appararently blocked by one of the many instances of unadmitted 'glass walls' of repression that are not accountable to any kind of legal system worthy of the name -- is a national group that canvasses door-to-door for donations and members, mobilizing the members into active local chapters across the country opposing the Iraq War and militarism. This is the kind of mainstream dimension of antiwar pressure that the antiwar movement needs to mobilize. While this in no way precludes the kind of more militant and 'street' orientation of many, it is the most absolutely essential dimension of antiwar politics at the grassroots at this point -- mobilizing the sentiment, which is now majoritarian, of those who do NOT do things like going to peace rallies, to be effective in pressuring the government, and in pressuring the Democratic Party to unite to seriously oppose this war.
December 14, 2005 3:30 PM | Reply | Permalink
Senator, in memory of Gene and Paul this Minnesotan requests that you please consider taking up the banner for those of us way too old now to be McCarthy kids but eager to be Feingold grannies.
December 14, 2005 4:20 PM | Reply | Permalink
Senator, please consider the possibility that this war on terror itself is phony. 9/11 was not only a savage attack on America, it was also a mystery that demanded solving.
December 14, 2005 8:36 PM | Reply | Permalink
It seems to make little difference to most people, even though they know it, that the administration has gotten all of this terribly wrong. The majority in Congress and the populace in general has caved to pressure from hawks of being unpatriotic. I really think we need to pound on the facts of all this in a relentless fashion.
There is a distinction between being wrong and being patriotic. And it is not a subtle one.
And Bush, by yesterday stating that the intelligence was wrong, still has not come to grips with the idea that the Iraq war which was based upon that intelligence, was also wrong. He still insists that it was the correct action even though the conclusion is unsupportable. The way I see it is that the entire Bush presidency is on the line. His integrity rests upon supporting this illogical conclusion that everyone knows is flawed. It comes down to the loss of American lives and the expenditure of billions of taxpayers dollars vs. Bush admitting the war was a mistake. No matter what happens, years from now this will be clearly recognized and accepted as fact. And all the reasons for this having occurred won't amount to a piss hole in the snow. Only the result will be judged. And trust me when I say that a recognizable democratic state will not be among them.
Dems need to take a unified stand and call out the president on this most elemental aspect of the war and hammer on it until the public thoroughly gets the fundamental flaw in the logic and associated policy.
thepeoplechoose
December 15, 2005 1:10 AM | Reply | Permalink
There will be two litmus tests for evaluating the ultimate outcome of American foreign policy in Iraq.
(1) Without regard for the pretext, have one or more American military bases been made permanent? An ongoing military presence will be interpreted cynically by most international observers.
(2) How have relations between Iran and Iraq evolved? A close connection between two theocratic states would be an American policy failure. Normal relations between two pluralistic democracies would be a big win. Any other permutation of these two political possibilities would sustain instability in the region. The parliamentary election now taking place in Iraq is the catalyst for one of these outcomes, but the fact voting is underway doesn't foreordain any one result.
-feingold08
December 15, 2005 6:37 AM | Reply | Permalink
Sen. Feingold,
Today's parliamentary election in Iraq has had widespread participation and generally been free of violence. After 1000 days of mayhem, the Iraqis have created a hopeful moment for themselves. But now the question is whether there is a political formula they can use to make this hope more lasting.
I think the answer is as much for us to provide as for the Iraqis. The Bush administration needs to do all it can to encourage an all-encompassing coalition for national unity in the first months of the parliament's life - this to refine the constitution and legislative processes so they properly protect all parties and interests. Whether this leads to a loose federation of regional interests or genuine power sharing at the center is of less concern than establishing an approach that all parties think workable.
The second part of the formula is for Bush play riverboat gambler again - this time by agreeing to trust the Iraqis to manage their future by themselves once the ground rules of governance are in place. The clearest expression of his faith in democracy would be to remove our troops rapidly and, more importantly, to give the new government full and exclusive control of the country's oil infrastructure. The perpetual presence of America's military formations and America's corporate interests risks the defeat of our aspirations for the Middle East. The safest course is to take a chance on the Iraqis.
- feingold08
December 15, 2005 1:27 PM | Reply | Permalink