As veteran of the Iraq war, I am proud to support Rep. John Murtha, who has called on Congress to develop a responsible timetable for the withdrawal of American soldiers from Iraq.
Those who have accused Rep. Murtha of wanting to "cut and run" are, ironically, the very same people who cut and ran during the Vietnam War. In an effort to distract attention from their failure to secure reliable pre-war intelligence and their failure to design a winning plan for post-war reconstruction, they have tried to make any discussion of troop redeployment synonymous with disloyalty.
These bait-and-switch tactics aren't working. Rep. Murtha recognizes – as do the vast majority of Americans - that the Bush administration's open-ended war has weakened morale among U.S. citizens, made it more difficult for the National Guard and Reserve units to meet their enlistment targets, and engendered despair among ordinary Iraqis, who see no end insight to America's military presence in their country. This is bad for the Iraqis, bad for regional stability and bad for America's homeland security.
Redeploying American troops would send an important message to the Iraqis that we are eager for them to govern and control their own national destiny. Likewise, the American people need to know that their military is not going to be bogged down in Iraq, with no end in sight, and that our armed forces are ready and able to meet future challenges at home and abroad.
The question before us, now, is: how do we re-deploy our troops in a responsible and timely fashion?
Like Rep. Murtha, I am proposing transfer of counter-insurgency operations to the Iraqis within a reasonable interval after the December elections. The American military should continue to lend air support, logistical support and quick reaction forces to help the Iraqi army meet the transition to home rule. But early next year, the bulk of our servicemen and servicewomen should be redeployed.
Redeployment will not succeed if we do not radically overhaul the reconstruction process. Thus far, that process - so critical to success -has been an unmitigated failure. Today, roughly half of all Iraqi households are still without clean water, the average household is without electricity for 10 hours each day, and (outside of Baghdad) only 8 percent of households have access to a sewage system. The reconstruction fiasco has created a drag on Iraq's economy - nearly 50 percent of the country is under-employed or unemployed - and fertile ground for political instability, terrorism and insurgency.
In the short term, we need to do two things:
First, remove reconstruction command authority from civilian officials and place it directly in the hands of the United States military.
And second, transfer as many of the reconstruction contracts as possible to Iraqi firms.
American and multinational corporations that are currently handling reconstruction in Iraq have been awarded "cost-plus" contracts which assure them a profit and provide no economic incentive to finish the jobs they've been hired to undertake. As a result, enormous sums of money have been diverted to security services for American contractors, and generous salaries for American businessmen working in Iraq.
Iraqi firms have proven that they can get the job done quicker and cheaper. In Karbala and Kut, two Iraqi firms spent a total of $185 million to build twin water treatment facilities. By contrast, a partnership between two London-based and California-based companies spent $200 million to build just one water treatment plant.
When we transfer reconstruction authority from civilian officials to American military officials, and when we put an end to cost-plus contracts by shifting the bulk of the reconstruction to Iraqi firms, we will effectively give a boost to the Iraqi economy and speed up the restoration of Iraq's infrastructure. Then, we can responsibly re-deploy our troops and bring them back home.
It's important that we take these steps immediately, and nobody understands this truth better than Rep. Murtha. As a decorated veteran of the Vietnam War, he knows that representative democracies cannot sustain open-ended wars; their citizens will not tolerate them, and they exact a devastating toll on a country's ability to maintain a robust national defense.
This isn't a partisan observation. It's the Powell Doctrine, and it's grounded in recent history. By the mid-1970s public support for the war in Southeast Asia had eroded so dramatically that, shortly after the withdrawal of U.S. forces from South Vietnam, Congress cut off all funding for the government in Saigon. As a result of America's abandonment, that government fell.
By refusing to develop an exit strategy, the Republicans are leading us towards a day when Americans prove equally indifferent to the future of Iraq. We must not allow this to happen. To abandon Iraq would carry terrible consequences for regional stability and America's homeland security.
Prominent Republicans have tried to reduce this important debate to a battle of will between anti-war doves and pro-war hawks. But this just isn't the case. We critics of the Bush administration's disastrous Iraq policy aren't anti-war. We're anti-failure.
In saying, quite forcefully, let's “get ‘er done!” Rep. Murtha has once again demonstrated the courage and leadership he honed over 37 years of distinguished service in the Marines. Other members of Congress would do well to listen.