It's Time to Get Serious

For the third time in as many election cycles, the administration and its ever-shrinking pool of supporters are winding up the fear machine, insisting that only Republicans can keep America safe from terror, because only Republicans are "serious" about fighting terrorism. This is a Rovian tactic: deflect attention from your weakness by preemptively charging your opponent with the same weakness. This administration's approach toward terrorism could hardly be less serious.

The Washington Post recently reported that in early 2002, Bush pulled most of the U.S. forces tracking Osama bin Laden out of Afghanistan in order to prepare for the invasion of Iraq. The trail for bin Laden has gone "stone cold" since then, and Bush's election-year stunt of ordering agents to "flood the zone" in a renewed search is meaningless because, according to former and current counterterrorism officials, no one knows where the zone is.

Another current example of the administration placing politics above principle is George Bush's request that Congress write into law the use of interrogation techniques which are, at the very least, "cruel, inhumane or degrading," if not outright torture. Such techniques have been explicitly disavowed by both the Pentagon and the FBI. Most people would agree these techniques also violate the Geneva Convention, and are thus prohibited by a recent Supreme Court ruling. In this same ruling, the court also rejected the creation of military tribunals which Bush wants Congress to legalize. Several top military lawyers oppose tribunals lacking fundamental fairness, as do leading Republicans. There can be no doubt that Bush's proposal is simply a political ploy to make Democrats appear weak, and not a genuine effort to make America safer.

Yet the starkest example of the Bush administration's political games is their management of the U.S. occupation of Iraq. A recently declassified Senate Intelligence Committee report confirms that the administration knew there was no working relationship between Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda, even as they were citing the nonexistent link as a rationale for war. And while it has been known for some time that the U.S. invaded Iraq with no plan to secure the peace, that point was recently highlighted again by Brig. Gen. Mark Scheid, former chief of logistics war plans. General Scheid reports that not only did Donald Rumsfeld intentionally avoid all postwar planning, he threatened to fire anyone who mentioned the need to plan for a post-invasion occupation.

From the beginning, the size of the U.S. force in Iraq was not sufficient for the job of creating a "free and democratic Iraq," and the administration has known it all along. It is sometimes possible to extinguish a fire by throwing a large, heavy blanket over it. But if the blanket is too small or too light, it becomes fuel for the fire. This is clearly what has happened in Iraq, where more than 2600 U.S. troops have died, tens of thousands have been injured, and yet the sectarian violence has never been worse.

The fire hasn't only burned our troops in Iraq. Two years ago, House Armed Services Committee chair Duncan Hunter expressed concern that extended deployments and callups were mortgaging our military's future. More recently, Republican Senator Chuck Hagel declared that the continued occupation of Iraq is "an absolute replay of Vietnam" which is "destroying the United States Army." A weakened military not only leaves us more vulnerable, it also hobbles our foreign policy in Lebanon, Darfur, Somalia and North Korea, to name just a few places where our diplomacy is no longer backed by a credible threat of force.

This is why I agree with John Murtha, who is genuinely serious about making America safer. Since the current course is damaging and unsustainable, we must either leave Iraq or substantially beef up our presence there by reinstituting a military draft. Like Murtha, I don't support a draft; I support responsible redeployment. To repeat: I don't support a draft at this time. But if the U.S. is committed to sustain its occupation for at least another 2.5 years, like George Bush demands, we cannot close the door on any option which will strengthen our military as threats to our national security dictate.

Co-written by Coleen Rowley, Candidate for Congress in Minnesota's 2nd District and David Bailey, researcher and writer for the campaign.