A Responsible Plan

In the five years since the United States invaded Iraq, nearly 4,000 American troops have lost their lives, 27,000 more have been injured and maybe as many as a million Iraqis have died. And we learned last week the cost of the war might exceed $3 trillion.

When I stood up to oppose an invasion of Iraq in 2002 it wasn't a popular thing to do. I was running for the U.S. Senate and the "experts" said it would be easier if I were in favor of the war. "This isn't the time to take a stand," they told me. Going along with the invasion might have been the easy thing to do, but I knew it wasn't the right thing to do.

It's not so hard to oppose the war now. In fact, saying "let's get out" has become the easy thing to do. Let me be clear: we have to stop the war and end our occupation of Iraq. More "surges" or "pauses" won't solve anything. But we need a plan -- a responsible plan to not just end military operations in Iraq but to also start putting our efforts into using non-military means to address the political, economic and humanitarian problems in the region. At home we have to rebuild a broken military and repair our institutions of government. The checks and balances built into our Constitution must be restored and we must restore our commitment to an independent media.

The problems that the Iraq War has created are complex and reach into every corner of our society. The solutions are complex, too, but within our reach. Working with Darcy Burner (candidate in WA-08) and Donna Edwards (candidate in MD-04) we have developed a package of policy proposals that, if elected, we will work to pass in Congress. The Responsible Plan to End the War in Iraq goes well beyond ending military activity in Iraq -- it includes proposals that not only get us out of Iraq, but begin to repair the damage the war has done to our economy, our society and our standing in the world. We have also focused on what went wrong in the run up to the invasion, with the goal of preventing a future Administration and Congress from getting us into another unjustified, indefensible, misguided war.

The plan has the support of respected military figures:

• Major General Paul Eaton (US Army ret.), the general in charge of training the Iraqi military immediately after the invasion in 2003 and 2004.
• Brigadier General John Johns (US Army ret), a specialist in counterinsurgency and nation-building
• Captain Larry Seaquest (US Navy, ret) former commander of the USS Iowa and a former Acting Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense.

Along with Darcy, Donna and me, six other challengers have also committed to supporting the Responsible Plan to End the War. We will unveil the complete plan this Monday at the Take Back America Conference in Washington, DC and will make it available online at that time at www.responsible plan.org. You can also go to my website, chelliepingree.com. I'd love to hear from you.

Cleaning up after the Bush administration is going to be a big job -- and the only way we will be able to tackle it is by working together. I hope you'll join us.

Comments

[Mormondude]

Can't wait to hear it.

Leaving a bloodbath in Iraq isn't going to win us any friends around the world. Demanding that other countries increase their military presence as we decrease ours won't either.

It seems that Hillary and Obama haven't thought this through. Hopefully your proposal will actually chart a path forward that is achievable.

[MagisterLudi]

putting our efforts into using non-military means to address the political, economic and humanitarian problems in the region."

The central problem with the region is the economic and political stagnation of the Muslim civilization. Most states are frozen somewhere between the Middle Ages and pre-Industrial Revolution. It is unfortunate. But the solutions will come from within that civilization, not without.
Muslims, like any other culture would, deeply resent the position of a little dimwit brother. And would not accept help from the most prosperous sibling, perhaps justifiably.
Those who would accept our help are infinitely resentful for it.

Think of how little Egypt achieved with 2 billion in yearly assistance. Think of how regressive most Gulf States are with the trillions of dollars in wealth. It's not about assistance, they richer that we are, it's about patience.

The Western progressivist idea is that any problem can be solved with enough good will and resources. Historical precedents rarely support this mistaken notion.

"...There are things you can't impose. Freedom, for example. Or democracy. Democracy is a very strong medicine which has to be administered to the patient in small, gradually increasing doses. Otherwise, you risk killing the patient. In the main, the Muslims have to do it themselves"

Bernard Lewis, leading historical authority on Middle East.

I highly recommend his book: "What Went Wrong?: The Clash Between Islam and Modernity in the Middle East" (2002)

[rivrgrrl]

Funny......all the 'western progressives' I know believe we never should have gone in in the first place.

If you are so worried about money being wasted over there, then you must have a problem with us currently spending 12 Billion a month under monkeydanceboy's plan.

Why are you looking for reasons to criticize this plan when 1) you haven't even read it and 2) are so locked in your way of thinking that any plan put forward by the left is doomed to fail.

Slow day at the office?

[Londonliberal]

Since Magister Ludi professes in his profile concern about what a prominent Neocon termed "Islamofascism", it is hardly surprising that that he trots out poor old Bernard Lewis who in his dotage became the darling of the Neocons and gave them a pseudo intellectual rationale for the unlawful invasion of Iraq.

The only trouble is that Lewis's productive period as a historian was spent in Turkey where he became a Kemalist - and while he was being lionised by the locals, his study of the archives was rather cursory - and it shows, particularly after he left England for Princeton. As Michael Hirsh pointed out in his November 2004 article "Lewis Revisited" in Washington Monthly:

"America's misreading of the Arab world--and our current misadventure in Iraq--may have really begun in 1950. That was the year a young University of London historian named Bernard Lewis visited Turkey for the first time."

see: http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2004/0411.hirsh.html

As Hirsh points out in some detail: "A growing number of Middle Eastern scholars who in the past have quietly stewed over Lewis's outsized influence say this is exactly what happened. To them, it is no surprise that Lewis and his acolytes in Washington botched the war on terror. In a new book, provocatively titled The Case for Islamo-Christian Civilization, one of those critics, Columbia scholar Richard Bulliet, argues that Lewis has been getting his "master narrative" about the Islamic world wrong since his early epiphanic days in Turkey--and he's still getting it wrong today."

I don't really see how someone who espouses the Neocon view of the Bush/Cheney "Enterprise of Iraq" can have anything useful to say at all on how the USA should extricate itself and its troops (and the remaining UK forces as well by the way) from the whole sorry debacle. But he wants the troops to stay while the assets are "divvied up".

By that he means the oil reserves and doubtless he wants Exxon and Mobil to participate in the divvying up process.

Nothing could be more fatal to relations with the Arab world. And in case we forget there is still an awful lot of oil in the Middle East which the West now has to compete for with China, India and the other developing economies. And the way the US dollar is going, the crude is not going to get any cheaper and may soon be priced in € rather than $ anyway.

This poster has some way to go before he will qualify as Magister Ludi - although he has the elitism, the hubris, the stagnation, and the sterility which are the limitations of the Glass Bead Game

[richw23]

Instead of nit-picking I'd like to say you're my new hero. Everyone I hear it seems is either for walking away or continuing on. It's nice to hear someone actually introduce ethics and morality into the discussion that doesn't involve us vs. them but healing us vs them.

It may be Quixotic, but some things are moral imperatives, in my opinion, and GWB has mired us down in a huge one.

[mgloraine]

I would like to see a long-term plan (such as the one being proposed) which would include the US taking steps to join the community of civilized nations rather than persisting with the fantasy of the USA as the "unitary superpower". BushCo and all Republicans (including McCain) regard the United Nations with disdain, routinely ignoring the resolutions arrived at by representatives of almost every country on Earth, unless it serves their immediate purpose.

The USA does NOT exist in a vacuum, and the decisions made by our government officials do NOT override or trump the rights and concerns of every other nation on Earth. When our Chief Executive decides that he or she knows more or is better qualified to make decisions regarding the fate of other sovereign nations in direct contradiction of the collective will and wisdom of the majority of Earth's inhabitants, then we have an ignorant, arrogant, self-centered despot in the White House, and NOT the "Leader of the Free World" by any stretch of the imagination.

When our executive chooses to ignore the rest of the world, we get human rights debacles like Nixon's "secret" war in Laos and Cambodia, Reagan's illegal war in Central America (he even ignored Congress' prohibitions against it) and the associated Iran-Contra scandal, and GW Bush's wars for profit and ethnic cleansing. Americans killing innocent people and deterring democracy so that a handful of corporations can make huge profits.

When our true allies, such as France, attempt to dissuade us from pursuing a disastrous course of action, like invading Iraq, it should cause our executive to pause and reconsider, rather than to launch an embarrassing tirade about "freedom fries". Our friends were warning us that we were about to make a really big mistake, but our chickenhawk Decider chose to ignore all of the facts and proclaim that he had more and better intelligence information than the rest of the world combined. That claim has since been shown to be completely bogus, and the ability of our intelligence agencies to gather even unclassified, common-knowledge information has been demonstrated to be sadly lacking.

For humanity to survive in the face of global warming and other impending environmental crises, ALL of Earth's inhabitants have to participate in recognizing the problems and pursuing solutions. There is no American "bubble" which protects us from the consequences of disastrous policies. The same is true for combatting terrorism, drug-trafficking, human-rights abuses, and so on.

If our elected officials insist upon standing alone against every other nation on Earth, that will make the USA the obvious "rogue" nation with a sociopathic agenda. The rest of humanity might well decide that the USA poses an unacceptable risk to life and liberty and take the steps necessary to effect regime change, or possibly just bomb us back to the stone-age.

[benalbanach]

Ok Ok Ok .....Fix your economy. Fix your reputation.Fix your military(After all there will be more adventures ahead !) Do all that..But please.... do not forget to apologise to the people of Iraq....And of course do mention them in your prayers.

[PauCK]

WHAT WAR ??

I keep coming back to the question...who are we at war with?

We beat Sadam and he and his army is gone. That was the "war to liberate Iraq" and, so far as that goes, we won and it is over.

WE opened the door to civil war that allows our "subjects" to kill us and each other.

We are not at war now. We are an occupying army trying to be a police department, enforcing laws in a nation we don't understand and can't even relate to. We are helping to kill the very people we liberated.

Please stop calling this a war...it is now a police action.

( Remember Korea? We never left there either. )

[jqcitizen]

Pau- You are not alone in asking: What War?

Sadam was as much a threat to the Western Hemisphere as Fidel Castro. Both were held in check by threat of total destruction. Kennedy convinced Kruscheff (Cuba) and the 'no-fly-zones' in north and south Iraq kept Sadam from being any threat. These losers can only remain in power by forcing their own countrymen into submission.

I believe it is wrong for the Bush/Cheney administration to say that only American 18 year old kids can be trained, in 90 days, to become top-notch saviors of the world, and Iraqi kids are incapable.

US Marines are trained to kill enemies not to be law enforcement officers.

The situation in Iraq is now an occupation and Iraqi police and Diplomats should clean this mess up.

[MagisterLudi]

For people who are actually interested in discussing Iraqi solution,

Here are some questions:

1. In whose hands do we leave the heavy military assets (tanks, artillery, choppers, old MIGs etc) ?

2. In whose hands do we leave economic assets?

3. Do we leave province by province?

4. Do we keep Green Zone for American Personnel?

5. Do we station troops in some neighboring countries, just in case?

6. How many of the troops we rotate to A-stan?

7. Who leaves first: heavy armor, army or?

8. How much troops we keep to intially protect American embassy and other support installations.

9. Back up plan if the civil war begins in earnest when US leaves.

10. Do we provide some sea access to the Sunnis?

11. Are any diplomatics accords need to be negotiated with neighbor countries prior to departure?

12. What propaganda steps we need to take to counter Jihadist and Iranians from taking credit for US departure?

The questions are many, but so far the proposed solutions are few.

But for the "get out now" crowd, overwhelmingly Obama supporters, " hope and mirrors solutions" seems best. Pack the bags and in 48 hours depart Saudi Border... what silly stuff.

[Londonliberal]

It might be worth noting that Iraq was never a 'real state' but was born out of the carve up of the Ottoman Empire post WW1. It may well fracture as a consequence of the Bush/Blair "Enterprise of Iraq" - a phrase adapted from Phillip II of Spain's name for his attempt to invade England. The Enterprise of Iraq is going to prove just as big a disaster as was the Armada. With that preface the answers to the questions might be:-

1. The USA should remove from Iraq any equipment it is unwilling to leave to the present government bearing very much in mind the hands such equipment might fall into.

2. It is not the business of the USA who has "economic assets". Iraq is a sovereign state.

3. A matter for military judgment but province by province seems as sensible as any solution - just hope that the last out do not have to go from the embassy roof.

4. The "Green Zone" is sovereign Iraqi territory and not that of the USA.

5. Which neighbouring Country do you think will want a large US presence after Iraq ? Jordan, Turkey, Syria, Iran are all unlikely to put out the welcome mat. The nearest places are likely to be Kuwait/Saudi Arabia - and the welcome is wearing out there too.

6. As many as the military judges it can reasonably afford to send.

7. Ask the military.

8. The usual Marines - otherwise relocate the Embassy pro tempore to Kurdistan until it is seen whether the situation will stabilise.

9. Plan to get the civilians out and leave peacekeeping to those who still have credibility which excludes the USA, the UK and just about anyone else who participated in the Bush/Poodle Blair so-called "coalition of the willing".

10. Not a matter for the USA to decide.

11. No.

12. Nothing the USA now says will really help - the damage has been done.

Conclusion: The USA will leave Iraq without honour just as the UK and France left Egypt after the Suez invasion. Eisenhower was right about Suez, the Cheney/Neocon thesis that the invaders of Iraq would be welcomed as "liberators" was pie in the sky and now the price has to be paid.

It will be bitter medicine to swallow - but a salutory lesson which every Imperial power has had to learn the hard way.

[jazzman]

13. Elect Obama because he's the only one who thinks strategically and comprehensively about such matters.

[MagisterLudi]

London Liberal. I appreciate your opinion as a member of British Muslim community. However, it seems to have little relevance to the facts on the ground.

Primarily, because "sovereign State of Iraq" no longer exist. There are warlord type of enclaves: Sunni, Shia, Kurd, with some Al Qaeda controlled areas here and there.

Therefore, it is very much up to Americans, as the occupying power to negotiate and divy up the assets of former Iraqi state among the interested parties. Maybe former Iraqi citizens will attepmt to put their country together. Good for them. But this is not a guarantee.
And unquestionably, those who oppose American interests will get smaller peiace of the pie.
And, it's up to Americans to decide on actions beneficial to US interests and hopefully the cause of Iraqi stability.
I did not say it was fair. I did not support Iraqi invasion. But this is where it stands right now.
Are you choosing to be part of the problem or a solution?

[krocklin]

The trouble is:

1) The media is sanitizing the War (s).
2)The Democrats aren't effectively exposing all the errors, corruption and misguided ideology that led to the war and perpetuated it.
3) The public is misinformed, ignorant and easily manipulated.

This combination will assure that efforts to change anything in this country - Wall Street, the lobbyists, the corporations - will continue to fail.

[Democrab]

I hope you oppose Olympia snow again on her next try for the senate.

And this time make the media force her royal highness into debating you on camera.

[pmag88]

I like the idea of having a military tooled up for ‘dual use’. Investment into the training and equipment for a dual use military with an emphasis on humanitarian aid and reconstruction is a great idea. If the money we spend on the military is working for us all the time and not just in times of war, thats a good thing.

If we’re going to stay and help rebuild Iraq I feel it should be mostly as facilitators and financiers rather than contractors. The bulk of any monies spent should go to Iraqi civilians so they are invested in rebuilding their own nation. Perhaps if we started from that premise we could also get investment from other countries in the region and around the world.

We also need to start rebuilding our own infrastructure and what better place to start than New Orleans. The reconstruction of New Orleans would be a great way to begin developing and training a dual use military.

[Bluetiger]

We have proven we cannot be responsible.
If we try to fix what we have done there will be more greed, more bad choices, more problems.
We need to leave, now!
They can fix it better than we can.

[MagisterLudi]

"Leave now" is not a solution. It's equivalent of throwing away the overdue credit card bills hoping they'll go away. There needs to be a sensible policy, both tactical and strategic for leaving Iraq. This is the first thing the next administration will have to address.

[rivrgrrl]

Did you even bother reading the report the author put out? All of it? I did. You'd be surprised how many of your questions are answered and how wrong your present picture of a peaceful resolution to the Iraqi quagmire is.

[AlexHammer]

See 41 recent stories on Chellie Pingree from Maine News
http://newsofmaine.blogspot.com/search/label/Chellie%20Pingree

[RogerHWerner]

I'd love to hear Pingree's take on why a Democratically controlled Congress hasn't done anything but pontificate to end the Iraq war or curtail executive power since the 2006 election. The excuse that Congressional majorities are too slim simply doesn't wash. What makes a great deal of sense is that Democratic leadership isn't opposed to the war or concentration of power in the Executive branch. We might debate why this may be the case (I suggest Pingree start by asking Democrat Jane Harman) but facts are facts: All we have seen from Democratic leadership for more than a year are excuses and a great deal of hot air. The first thing on Speaker Pelosi's agenda in January 2007 should have been articles of impeachment as this would have put Bush/Cheney on notice that the their party was over. Instead, Pelosi took impeachment off the table even before assuming her new duties. With impeachment hearings in place, all manner of possibilities might have presented themselves including ending the war. When she prematurely ended all talk of impeachment even when there were myriad justifications for it, she sent the administration that nothing substantive would change. Perhaps that wasn't the intent of the message but that was the net effect.

I encourage Pingree to act on her ideas if she is elected but she shouldn't delude herself into believing that she'll get any support from party leadership. Even if a Democrat is elected to the Presidency, I doubt if party leadership will change their tune about the war or executive power any time soon.

[Londonliberal]

The fundamental error in this post is that the Congress is not democratically controlled unless a Presidential Veto can be over-ridden - and that is not presently the case.

The point needs to be made that the Bush administration's decision to go to war - and to fund it with a deficit without raising taxes to pay for it was nothing short of insane. The Bear Sterns bail-out is just the tip of an iceberg which has already landed the USA in recession and may very quickly and easily tip over into a depression, the likes of which have not been seen since 1929. A financial clean-up will be needed to prevent this - and it will not be without pain.

Unfortunately, the Clinton scorched earth strategy means that the Democratic campaign is not concentrating as it should on making the link between the Bush decision to go to war and the current financial meltdown. McCain will continue the Bush policy and he is getting a free ride.

Obama is the candidate who can speak out about this - Clinton is disadvantaged by her vote for the war. Obama is also likely to increase the chances of a real working majority in Congress while Clinton's higher negative figures among independents and moderate Republicans will work against a good majority in Congress.

If the Democrats do not unite - behind the stronger candidate - right now, the opportunity will be lost and the risk of a real recession with all that entails will be that much greater.

[mouselion]

Obama can and must make the economy connection to the Iraq war. He must effectively communicate how McCain's approach will only further drive us into financial insolvency. If he can connect these dots for the American people, he will win the presidency. He must stress the message that strength and security and social infrastructure are not mutually exclusive from each other.

[MagisterLudi]

"Clinton is disadvantaged by her vote for the war."

You mean a candidate is somehow hampered because of a vote taken some 5 years ago?
You mean Clinton cannot work on Iraqi withdrawal because of that?!

Several years ago Obama voted to allow credit card companies to continue to rob consumers and charge 40%-50% interest rates.

Is Obama " disadvantaged" from regulating credit card companies?

Is this a reasonable understanding political realities?

I doubt it.

[cblcar]

Let us not forget that Obama voted AGAINST the 2006 Kerry/Feingold bill to begin withdrawing troops.

[rivrgrrl]

There's a good possibility that a newly elected Pingree won't have a Speaker Pelosi to contend with.

Pingree et al's plan is a good one and very doable. This plan outlines the kinds of positive actions that can be taken to end the monkeydanceboy's debacle that Iraq has become.

[DietrichMoody]

Stop with "Cleaning up after the Bush administration " because our mentality and thinking has to change. Our thinking about how we got into this war. " "Cleaning up after the Bush administration " just means MOVING THE DIRT AROUND, nothing more. Wear have a hear the "cleaning up after a Bush" euphemism? Oh yeah, Clinton.

We need to get out of this Reagan Era mentality, the same mentality that lead us into this Middle East mess we are in the the trickle down economics disaster we are experiencing. 28 years of bad policy. So, let concentrate on not moving the dirt around but actually sweep it out. We need to stop following the economic and social models we've developed over the last 28 years.

[mouselion]

The Bush Administration effectively curtailed any changes in our economic model by taking the U.S. to Iraq. A major overhaul of our economy (with some necessary pain in the process) by transitioning to alternative energy sources and researching and developing new energy technologies has been systematically, intentionally stymied.

The economic pain that we are now feeling from the Iraq war is the pain that we should be feeling from transitioning our economy and infrastructure towards energy independence. This would have been a painful yet positive situation to be in. However, now, any efforts towards a better approach have been stymied so that Cheney's buddies can invest in Iraq's oil production infrastructure, while we remain dependent on foreign oil and several trillion dollars in debt for their privilege to create a profit-driven opportunity for themselves

[dshwa]

My vote is a New Deal style plan involving mass transit. Build up the rail system with technology that's as green as it can be made to be. Benefits: Provides jobs for average Americans, and a transportation system that isn't as reliant on gasoline. Hybrid busses, built in America (prerequisite for getting the government to buy them) for local travel and trains and railroad tracks for distance. (all parts made in USA or we don't buy them.) Creates a demand for U.S made steel (reviving that industry and the blue collar communities hit hardest by the overseas movement) and other manufacturing jobs. Spurs investment in green industries to provide power and come up with new ways to provide it. Provide money for marketing to take away the stigma of public transport. Incentives to build these plants in places where the auto industries loss of manufacturing jobs is a problem, so as not to hurt those areas too badly as we transition away from cars. Out in the suburbs, build parking ramps at rail/bus stations so people can get to them. Provide tax benefits/incentives for money spent on rail passes/ bus passes. This kind of massive governtment spending is beneficial, because unlike in Iraq, the money creates jobs and industry which will grow the income tax base in ways trickle down never could.

[hopelessobama]

its so pathetic to try and manipulate body counts for political advantage. can you imagine what the democrats would have done to a republican who tried to use the hundreds of thousands of dead against FDR? they probably would have been sent away to one of FDR's illegal prison camps where japanese-americans were locked away.

its simple, if liberals are prepared for the destruction of iraq per our withdraw, then go ahead, but remember what obama does to iraq will be on his hands. if you abbandon these people, you will reap the whirlwind from the world. withdrawing for your own political gains is truely sad. a young democracy has asked for out help, and you have said 'no'.

[thatvisionthing]

"its simple, if liberals are prepared for the destruction of iraq per our withdraw, then go ahead..."

You ARE hopeless, what would you call the last five years? The CONstruction of Iraq???? It's so pathetic to NOT do a body count, that's a nice disappearing trick, I mean maneuver. (There's a name for it, "perception management." It started with Reagan and the CIA wars in Central America. Negroponte's death squads...) With managed perception, why, we're not even up to 4,000 real dead yet, I don't think.

With managed perception, we're only counting our military troops, and not contractors. We could totally pull all our troops out and still have 100,000 paid killers and their support staff on the job.

Manipulated body counts indeed. Get real.