GraniteGrok

Four long years and we are searching our souls. We have sent our finest and our bravest soldiers on a mission that made no sense from the beginning.

Our nation was attacked by evil people who trained in Afghanistan. We have a right to go into Afghanistan to remove the terrorist training camps. As a matter of fact, we should be working even harder there to make sure our Afghanistan mission does not fail. We must not allow the Taliban and other terrorist groups to control Afghanistan again.  

However, we are unable to give Afghanistan our full attention because our president has led us into a war with Iraq. Why? There were no Iraqis on the plane that day. The Iraqis had no weapons of mass destruction. And they never asked us to come to their country. They do ask us to leave, though. And yet we will not leave.

To the extent that “we are unable to give Afghanistan our full attention” it is because our armed forces are too small.  It is shameful, and dangerous, that the world’s only “superpower” cannot muster the military strength necessary to deal with the two relatively minor theatres of conflict.
 

If it is vital to keep the Taliban and other terrorist groups from controlling Afghanistan, then it is even more vital to keep Al Qaeda from controlling Iraq, which is located in the strategically vital Middle East and is a major source of oil.  Shea-Porter is guilty of muddled thinking if she really believes that a terrorist-free Afghanistan more important to our national interest than a terrorist free Iraq.

I did not support the war, in the first instance, because I was skeptical about the claim that Iraq was a burgeoning nuclear threat, which was the main rationale for “regime change.”  But there is no question that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, unless you’re inclined to believe that hundreds of thousands of Kurds committed suicide, and did so in a manner to lead one to believe they had been gassed.    

The president will not listen to the Iraqis. The president will not listen to the American people. The president will not listen to the world. But Congress will. We are ready to go in a new direction and say no to the president, and no to his plan to escalate this war.

I would prefer a President and Congress that did NOT listen to the world.  I could care less what thugs like Hugo Chavez, Fidel Castro and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad think of us.

I was a military spouse. I am very, very proud of my husband's service. I am also on the Armed Services Committee. I know our troops need our support and they have it. But troops also need to know that their leaders will make sure that their mission is in the best interests of the United States before they are asked to go fight and die for their country.

Again, Shea-Porter seems to be debating herself.  If keeping Afghanistan terrorist-free is in our best interests, then why isn’t keeping the more strategically vital Iraq terrorist-free even more in our best interests?

I watched a young soldier walk down a ramp on the way to Iraq. He was looking at all of us, and we were looking hard back at him. And I think most of us had the same thoughts in our hearts, that we could not look him in the eye and tell him that his mission was so essential to the security of the United States and the freedom of the world that he had to go and he had to die if necessary.

Why could we not tell him that? Because the mission had changed. Several times the president told us why we were there, and it was always a different reason. The mission had changed. And therefore the soldier looked confused and we certainly felt confused also, because we could not tell him why we were there.

I wanted to run up to him and tell him I support you, I support you by making sure that you never get sent to a war again unless we know why you are there.
 

What is this talk I have heard tonight about freedom and liberty? This talk of glory that I heard on the floor. This romanticized language, this talk about Davy Crockett. There is no Davy Crockett in Iraq. Our troops need clear-eyed leaders, not this romantic rabble that we have been hearing. This war has cost us. We have paid a terrible price.

Even one casualty is too many, but compared to other wars we have not “paid a terrible price.”  As for Davy Crockett, I have the sneaking suspicion that Shea-Porter would have been on the side of Santa Anna.

Our troops are strained. Their families are strained. Our brave soldiers have died or they have been injured. The Iraqis have lost their lives. They have lost their society. They have lost their infrastructure. They are losing their middle class who are moving to other countries to keep their children safe.

If you’re really concerned about the troops, Congresswoman, then what are you doing to increase the size of the armed forces and to assure that we have the most advanced weapons in the world?

It appears that Shea-Porter believes that the Iraqis would be better off if Saddam were still in power.  They have a chance for free society.  Apparently, Shea-Porter believes that infrastructure and security are more important than freedom.

We are wary, they are wary, the world is now more dangerous. Iraqis were polled and the majority of them said they wanted the Americans to go home and let them work out their problems. For four years the administration and its supporters here have made no plan for them to do that.

Now they ask us on this side of the aisle what our plan is. This is a strange question. But it shows how confused this administration's supporters are, if they are looking to us and ask us what our plan is.

We have offered plans. They will not listen. I for one want the United States to succeed in this world. Therefore, I am going to listen to all of the generals who have pleaded with the president and pleaded with the president's supporters in this administration to do the right thing here.

But the president does not listen. I am going to vote to tell the president that I am against his escalation.

The “world is now more dangerous” is a whopper.  How many terrorist attacks on the United States have there been during the Bush administration and how many were there during the Clinton Administration?  And the blame for 9/11 goes to Clinton, because it was his incompetence and neglect that allowed it to happen.

Bush, in my view, has done plenty wrong.  But he has kept us safe.  For Shea-Porter to claim otherwise indicates she is blinded by her hatred for Bush, like so many in her Party.

I agree that the Democrat Party has offered plans.  In 2005, it wanted more troops!  But Congress’ constitutional role is not to act as co-Commander-in-Chief.  If Shea-Porter really believes that it is in the troops best  interests to be withdrawn from Iraq, then she is obligated to move to end the funding for operations in Iraq.