Chuck Hagel: Iraq and Afghanistan Aren't Ours to Win or Lose

[tekisui]

Source: The Cap Times

Chuck Hagel | Posted: Friday, September 4, 2009 7:00 am

The other night I watched the film "The Deer Hunter." Afterward, I remembered why it took me so many years to be able to watch Vietnam movies.

It all came tumbling back - the tragedy, the innocent victims, the waste. Too often in Washington we tend to see foreign policy as an abstraction, with little understanding of what we are committing our country to: the complications and consequences of endeavors. It is easy to get into war, not so easy to get out. Vietnam lasted more than 10 years; soon, we will slip into our ninth year in Afghanistan. We have been in Iraq for almost seven years.

When I came to the Senate in 1997, the world was being redefined by forces no single country controlled or understood. The implosion of the Soviet Union and a historic diffusion of economic and geopolitical power created new influences and established new global power centers - and new threats. The events of Sept. 11, 2001, shocked America into this reality. The Sept. 11 commission pointed out that the attacks were as much about failures of our intelligence and security systems as about the terrorists' success.

The U.S. response, engaging in two wars, was a 20th century reaction to 21st century realities. These wars have cost more than 5,100 American lives; more than 35,000 have been wounded; a trillion dollars has been spent, with billions more departing our Treasury each month. We forgot all the lessons of Vietnam and the preceding history.

No country today has the power to impose its will and values on other nations. As the new world order takes shape, America must lead by building coalitions of common interests, as we did after World War II. Then, international organizations such as the United Nations, NATO, the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund and GATT (now the World Trade Organization) - while flawed - established boundaries for human and government conduct and expectations that helped keep the world from drifting into World War III and generally made life better for most people worldwide during the second half of the 20th century.

Our greatest threats today come from the regions left behind after World War II. Addressing these threats will require a foreign policy underpinned by engagement - in other words, active diplomacy but not appeasement. We need a clearly defined strategy that accounts for the interconnectedness and the shared interests of all nations. Every great threat to the United States - whether economic, terrorism, proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, health pandemics, environmental degradation, energy, or water and food shortages - also threatens our global partners and rivals. Accordingly, we cannot view U.S. involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan through a lens that sees only "winning" or "losing." Iraq and Afghanistan are not America's to win or lose. Win what? We can help them buy time or develop, but we cannot control their fates. There are too many cultural, ethnic and religious dynamics at play in these regions for any one nation to control. For example, the future of Afghanistan is linked directly to Pakistan and what happens in the mountains along their border. Political accommodation and reconciliation in this region will determine the outcome.

More, good read: http://host.madison.com/ct/article_47016b79-5372-5188-98c5-353b7b2ec49c.html

[LynnTheDem]

1. One wee question for ya Chuckie; did you vote YES to invading Iraq & Afghanistan?

Oh, look...yeah you did.

[progressoid]

2. As did much of our Democratic leaders.

While I disagree with most of Chuck's stances, I have to give him credit for seeing and voicing the error of these wars.

Would be nice if more of our Democratic leaders did the same.

[Inuca]

3. He was an extremely reluctant yes vote

And very much aware of the risks involved. I watched a while back his speech in the Senate before the vote. He gave perfectly valid and powerful arguments for voting no, the whole speech sounded like building toward saying that he is going to vote against, until the very end. Why he (and quite a few others on the dem side) ended up voting yes, I doubt we will ever know for sure. Politics probably played a role. behind the scenes info that we still don't know also, I guess....