Sign Max Cleland's Petition to President BushSorry you didn't go when you had the chance.
I write to you today to ask you to take action. Please take a moment to read this message and join us by signing a very important petition to the President of the United States urging him to not repeat history by letting Iraq become a military quagmire.
"The public has been led into a trap from which it will be hard to escape with dignity and honor. They have been tricked into it by a steady withholding of information," he said. "The Baghdad communiqués are belated, insincere, incomplete. Things have been far worse than we have been told, our administration more bloody and inefficient than the public knows. He added: "We are today not far from a disaster" — T. E. Lawrence (Lawrence of Arabia) Sunday Times of London August 22, 1920
DISASTER IN THE DESERT
Let me see if I can get this straight.
The President of the United States decides to go to war against a nation led by a brutal dictator supported by one party rule. That dictator has made war on his neighbors. The President decides this is a threat to the United States. In his campaign for President he gives no indication of wanting to go to war. In fact, he decries the over extension of American military might and says other nations must do more. However, unbeknown to the American public, the President's own Pentagon advisors have already cooked up a plan to go to war. All they are looking for is an excuse.
An element of the U.S. military is under attack. The President, his Secretary of Defense and his advisors sell the idea to Congress and the American people that it is time to go to war. Based on faulty intelligence, cherry-picked information is fed to Congress and the American people. The President goes on national television to explain the case for war, using as part of the rationale for the war an incident that never happened. The Congress buys the bait hook, line and sinker and passes a resolution giving the President the authority to use "all necessary means" to prosecute the war.
The war is started with an air and ground attack. Initially there is optimism. The President says we are winning. The cocky, self-assured Secretary of Defense says we are winning. As a matter of fact, the Secretary of Defense promises the troops will be home soon.
However, the truth on the ground that the soldiers face in the war is different than the political policy that sent them there. They face increased opposition from a determined enemy. They are surprised by terrorist attacks, suicide bombers, village assassinations, increasing casualties and growing anti-American sentiment. They find themselves bogged down in a guerrilla land war, unable to move forward and unable to disengage because there are no allies in the war to turn the war over to. There is no plan B. There is no exit strategy. Military morale declines. The President's popularity sinks and the American people are increasingly frustrated by the cost of blood and treasure poured into a never-ending war.
Sound familiar? It does to me!
The President was Lyndon Johnson.
Got Ya!
The cocky, self-assured Secretary of Defense was Robert McNamara.
Got ya again!
The Congressional resolution was the Gulf of Tonkin resolution.
You are catching on!
The war was the war that I, John Kerry, Chuck Hagel, John McCain and three and-a-half million other Americans of our generation were caught up in. It was the scene of America’s longest war. It was also the locale of the most frustrating outcome of any war this nation has ever fought.
Unfortunately, the people who drove the engine to get into the war in Iraq never served in Vietnam.
Not the President.
Not the Vice-President
Not the Secretary of Defense.
Not the Deputy Secretary of Defense.
Too bad. They could have learned some lessons.
First, they could have learned not to underestimate the enemy. The enemy always has one option you cannot control. He always has the option to die. This is especially true if you are dealing with true believers and guerillas fighting for their version of reality—whether political or religious. They are what Tom Friedman of the New York Times calls the "non-deterables." If those non-deterables are already home in their country, they will be able to wait you out until you go home.
Second, if the enemy adopts a 'hit and run' strategy designed to inflict maximum casualties on you, you may win every battle but the battles you fight (as Walter Lippman once said about the Vietnam War,) can’t win the war.
Third, if you adopt a strategy of not just pre-emptive strike but also pre-emptive war you own the aftermath. You better plan for it. You better have an exit strategy because you cannot stay there indefinitely unless you make it the 51st state. If you do stay an extended period of time, you then become an occupier, not a liberator. That feeds the enemy against you.
Fourth, if you adopt the strategy of pre-emptive war, your intelligence must be not just "darn good," as the President has said it must be "bullet proof," as Secretary Rumsfeld claimed the administration had against Suddam Hussein. Anything short of that saps credibility.
Fifth, if you want to know what is really going on in the war, ask the troops on the ground not the policy makers in Washington. The "ground truth" as the soldiers call it, is always more accurate than the truth expounded through the mouths of those who plan the war and have a political, personal and emotional investment in their policy. They will bend any fact, even intelligence, to their own ends. If the ground truth and the policy truth begin to diverge, "Shock and Awe" will turn into what one officer in Iraq has described as, "Shock and Awe S---!"
Sixth, in a democracy instead of truth being the first casualty in war, it should be the first cause of war. It is the only way the Congress and the American people can cope with getting through it. As credibility is strained, support for the war and support for the troops goes down hill. Continued loss of credibility drains troop morale, the media becomes more suspicious, the public becomes more incredulous and the Congress is reduced to hearings and investigations.
Instead of learning the lessons of Vietnam, where all of the above happened, the President, the Vice-President, the Secretary of Defense and the Deputy Secretary of Defense, have gotten this country into a disaster in the desert. They attacked a country that had not attacked us. They did so on intelligence that was faulty, misrepresented and highly questionable. A key piece of that intelligence was an out-right lie which the White House put into the President’s State of the Union speech. These officials have over-extended the American military, including the Guard and the Reserve and expanded the United States Army to the breaking point. A quarter of a million troops are committed to the Iraq war theater, most bogged down in Baghdad. Morale is declining and casualties continue to increase. In addition to the human cost, the funding of the war costs a billion dollars a week adding to the additional burden of an already depressed economy. The President has declared "major combat over" and sent a message to every terrorist, "Bring them on." As a result, he has lost more people in his war than his father did in his and there is no end in site. Military commanders are left with extended tours of duty for servicemen and women, told long ago they were going home, and keeping American forces on the ground where they have become sitting ducks in a shooting gallery for every terrorist group in the Middle East.
Welcome to Vietnam Mr. President. Sorry you didn't go when you had the chance.
Please take a moment to read this and then join me in signing a petition to the President of the United States urging him to not repeat history.
Dear Mr. President,
We are writing this petition about your ongoing war in Iraq with one goal in mind: please do not allow history to repeat itself. Vietnam veterans from around the country, both Democrat and Republican have urged you to develop a clear and coherent strategy for protecting our troops and securing peace in a hostile environment. But thus far you have provided us with no guidelines in your attempt to avoid a quagmire in the deserts of Iraq. Our military is stretched to its limits, troop morale is down, we have yet to secure the backing of critical allies and you have provided no exit strategy. Above all you risk not only losing the war, but losing the backing of the American public. This country deserves straightforward answers from how much you expect the overall war to cost to the length of time US troops will be deployed to how you plan to bring the international community into the fold. We should not have to continue to shoulder 95% of the cost and casualties in this "make-it-up-as-we-go-it-along strategy." Our troops and this country deserve far better.
Yours truly,
(petition signer's name)
http://www.dscc.org/information/desertdisaster/
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