Harold Ford Jr: Amanda's Question For Donald Rumsfeld--And My Answer

[Jackson4Gore]

http://haroldfordjr2006.blogspot.com/

Amanda's Question For Donald Rumsfeld--And My Answer

The following op-ed is written by Congressman Harold Ford Jr. and appears on the TMPCafe blog:

Two weeks ago, our campaign for the U.S. Senate traveled the entire width of Tennessee by bus. We sought to listen to the people of our great state and to share with them a vision for a new generation of leadership in Washington.

The week was among my most rewarding in public life. In small towns and urban centers, in factories and armories, firehalls and lunch counters, we heard from thousands of Tennesseans, anxious for answers to the questions of our time: affordable healthcare, energy independence, a balanced budget, a secure nation, and college within reach for everyone.

The most memorable moment, however, came not 30 minutes into my first stop at a school assembly in Blountville, Tennessee.

Blountville is a small courthouse town tucked in the foothills of northeast Tennessee. It is in the heart of a district that has not elected a Democrat to Congress since the Civil War. So it was the natural place for a Democrat who believes in reaching across party lines to begin a statewide tour.

It was in the Blountville Middle School gym that Amanda, a seventh-grade student, raised her right hand in front of her schoolmates and asked me a simple question: "Why do we keep sending so many soldiers to Iraq? And why can't the ones who are finished doing their job come home?"

Amanda had good reason to ask. Her father, already a veteran of one tour in Iraq, is headed back this summer for another. He has been told he will be there for a year—until summer 2007.

I, along with most Americans, accepted the president's representation that war in Iraq was necessary to keep us safe, and voted to authorize the use of force. I have voted for every funding request the President has made for our troops there. I have traveled to Iraq four times, and remain hopeful for the country and its people.

I answered Amanda the best I could: that despite the missing weapons of mass destruction, that despite the growing insurgency, and that despite the fact that the president was wrong when he proclaimed "mission accomplished," as Colin Powell once said so accurately, once you break something, it's yours.

Iraq is now indisputably ours. We are obliged to do it right.

I no longer, however, have the same confidence in Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. As more reports come in from our war planners and generals in the field, there is a growing consensus that Secretary Rumsfeld's misjudgments have cost us time and, worse, lives in Iraq.

These are but some of the now-familiar observations of our highest-ranking military experts:

* "Secretary of State Donald Rumsfeld is not competent to lead our armed forces. He has shown himself incompetent strategically, operationally and tactically, and is far more than anyone else responsible for what has happened to our important mission in Iraq. Mr. Rumsfeld must step down." Army Maj. Gen. Paul D. Eaton, U.S. commander of training Iraqi security forces 2003-04, Sunday, March 19.

* "We made some serious mistakes in the immediate aftermath of the fall of Baghdad.… We didn't have enough troops on the ground. We didn't impose our will. And as a result, an insurgency got started, and … it got out of control." Gen. Colin Powell, former Secretary of State and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, April 8.

* "he commitment of our forces to this fight was done with a casualness and swagger that are the special province of those who have never had to execute these missions--or bury the results....a fundamentally flawed plan was executed for an invented war, while pursuing the real enemy, al-Qaeda, became a secondary effort." Marine Lt. Gen. Gregory Newbold, former Director of Operations for the Joint Chiefs of Staff, April 17.

* "I don't agree with Secretary Rumsfeld's management of the war. Specifically, I feel he has micromanaged the generals who are leading our forces there to achieve our strategic objectives. I really believe that we need a new Secretary of Defense because Secretary Rumsfeld carries way too much baggage with him." Army Maj. Gen. Charles Swannack, Jr., former commander, 82nd Airborne Division, and Task Force All American in Iraq in 2003-2004.

I trust these generals. They know the men and women we send to war ask very little, but they do ask one thing we cannot deny them: a plan for victory built on achievable goals, realistic troop strengths, and honest assessments.

And just as the goal of a safe, democratic Iraq is America's, the plan to achieve that goal was indisputably Secretary Rumsfeld's.

America is built upon a rock of personal responsibility. Our troops and veterans have accepted theirs. Tennesseans who have supported these great men and women have accepted theirs. And if a seventh-grader at Blountville Middle School can accept hers with grace and dignity, surely the Secretary of Defense can do no less.

Secretary Rumsfeld, it is time for you to account to Amanda. It is time for you to resign.

[Uncle Joe]

1. Kicked and recommended!

Because a day without somebody asking for Rumsfield to resign or be fired is like a day with out sunshine.


:kick:

[politicasista]

2. Go Harold! I hope he wins n/t

[Bucky]

3. I hate to agree with this position, but I do

Harold Ford is telling an unpleasant truth. I hate it, but it's true. We can't leave Iraq yet.

I loath this occupation of Iraq. I hate the way my recently graduated students are dishonestly recruited by the Army and Marines to go into that hellhole and fight an enemy they can't see among a population who wants them gone. As long as we are there, we will have to endure the steady drip drip drip of American deaths and, worse, the deaths-by-the-dozen that each new week's bundle of car bombings bring. But these same military experts who tell us that Rumsfeld screwed the pooch on every level of the planning of this war, also predict, with some personal insight, that if we simply packed and left Iraq on a few weeks' notice, the country would go up like a tinder box. They wouldn't be reporting Iraqi deaths by the dozens, but by the hundreds. There would be a couple of small genocides.

As horrible as it is, we have to stay in Iraq until plans can be laid, by a competant administrator, to extract our people without igniting the region. This is exactly why I opposed the war to begin with--there was never any exit plan, as the Powell Doctrine stipulates must exist before entering an armed conflict. The other part of the Powell Doctrine is also critical. We broke it; so we bought it. Bush lied when he told us what it would cost--the price is our international credibility and the blood of thousands of our troops. We can't fix it. The violence won't stop until long after the last American troop is gone--as must eventually happen. But we do need to patch it up as best we can until the rightful owners are in a position to take possession of their country.

A quick exit from Iraq seems to promise an almost happy ending to this story. But that promise is as big a lie as "we know they have weapons of mass destruction" or "it's not about the oil." The only mission accomplished is the needless deaths of thousands so far and the almost certain deaths of thousands more before it ends--and it must eventually. This is still a democracy, a collective political expression of the American will. The blood is not just on Bush's hands nor just on Rumsfeld's. We own this government. The blood is on the hands of all of us, including those of us who opposed the war. We own this government too. Even if we failed to control it, it's still ours. We will continue to pay until the Iraqi government can stand on its feet.

There won't be a happy ending. But the punishment for our country's hubris, for the error of too many of us buying Bush's lies, is not done with. Telling Iraq "I'm sorry" won't end it. Only time will end it, and time is going to move very slowly.

[Bucky]

4. Just curious, but do the other posters in thread work for Harold Ford?

This sure seems like it's being posted here as a way of getting Mr Ford some attention among people who normally support more liberal candidates.