Out of Iraq: New York Review of Books

[oldhat]

http://www.nybooks.com/articles/17470

Out of Iraq
By Stanley Hoffmann

The war in Iraq has become a costly trap from which the United States should extricate itself soon. With the election only a few weeks away, the Republican administration insists on "staying the course," on denouncing all the different insurgents as desperadoes, and on reassuring the public that things are improving just as more than one thousand American soldiers have died and attacks are sharply increasing. Those who have put their hopes in a change of administration have several reasons for being frustrated and disappointed.

First, the Democratic team has seemed anxious not to upset voters who have been persuaded by the administration that the "War on Terror" depends on the American "liberation" of Iraq and do not want to hear about the limits of American power. John Edwards has talked of ultimate victory, and John Kerry has crippled his campaign by his all-too-calculated contradictions, especially when he stated that he would have voted for the congressional resolution that granted power to initiate war to the President even if he had known in October 2002 what is known now. He should simply have observed instead, as Senator Hillary Clinton did, that had we known then what we know now, there would have been no resolution and no vote.

The two Democratic candidates have been critical of the ways in which the Bush administration invaded Iraq and bungled the occupation. But they could have put forward much earlier arguments that Kerry was only beginning to make in late September.

(1) Saddam's regime did not present a clear and present danger to the United States;

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