Reply To Mr. Tom Poteete, Letter 2/1/07.

2/5/07


Tom,
I have a few notes in response to your letter. You mentioned that William Buckley, Charles Krauthammer and Newt Gingrich have expressed concern about how the war has been run.
So what is new? Can you name a war in which everything went as planned? NO. One of the axioms of war is that no plan ever survives contact with the enemy.
People ARE allowed to disagree with the President and his plan. Even you. Even me. The difference is that while disagreeing with the tactics they agree with the strategy. Gen Petraeus is the commander on site and the President is giving him, as he has done with previous commanders, what he requests. George Bush is the Commander-in-Chief. He gets advice from his onsite commanders. He has agreed with most of us, the old plan was not working. What would you have him do? Should he simply pull all troops out or keep doing things that fail? NO.
I don’t know you but I suspect that you do not believe we are in a long hard global war against Islamic militants. That is, I think, one of the major reason that the people of this country are more and more against the war. They do not understand the implications of losing this war. When asked what the consequences of leaving without winning would be, a frequent response is "it couldn’t be much worse than it is now". Please people, remember what is at stake. If we leave Iraq without some stabilization of the situation there are many consequences. The short term, local, consequence is that there will be a bloodbath that would be difficult to imagine. If you don’t believe that, you are naive. One of the long term consequences is that the world will see that the US cannot be trusted to keep it’s commitments.
Unlike Vietnam there would be an additional price to pay. We would leave a county that cannot maintain itself and would provide a haven for terrorists with resources from Iraqi oil to plan and execute worldwide terror against the western world.
Brownback and Hagel have abandoned the President on what large numbers of Republicans believe is the single most important issue that exists. Some of them will show up in the polls as against the current policy but I haven’t heard any alternative idea except surrender under many different names. If you have a way to resolve this issue, provide it.
Name calling is not productive. The fact of the matter is that I have not been provided with any examples of name calling by responsible conservatives. No one is happy about how things are going but name calling by either side is not productive. We need to pull together and find a way to solve this sticky problem Otherwise we will be still trying to solve it when bombs go off here in the US.