Jackson's Freehold

Senator Chambliss offered a very measured and balanced response to my letter urging the U.S. Senate to fully debate the President’s Iraq war plans. Senator Chambliss “expressed” his concerns with the war effort, but was “pleased” that the President had taken “serious” and “thoughtful” steps to “revise” his Iraq Strategy.

It seems Senator Chambliss has fully hitched his team to President Bush’s War Wagon. Unfortunately, this is the “measured” and “balanced” leadership we can no longer afford from Georgia’s senior Senator.

While Republican Senators, with Senator Chambliss fully on board, refuse a debate on the President’s new plan and obfuscate the real issues of national security and safety, escalations in Iraq now point ominously toward Iran.

The issues used to convince a traumatized American public (after 9-11) to go to war, i.e. weapons of mass destruction, are conveniently lost to the past. While the latest iteration of the President’s plan, having lost all semblance of American national security, spin a web binding an Iraqi future to an American commitment.

Clearly Republicans do not want to debate who broke Iraq, why America has to fix it, and ultimately whether Humpty Dumpty can even be put back together again. The fact that Republican Senators, as well as Democrats, share responsibility for the debacle is beside the point this late in the game. And that game was something of a national madness brought about by the fevered dreams of the President, Vice-President, and their cadre of neo-conservative armchair generals. Debating the steps taken to lead us to our current Iraqi debacle is now imperative as we seem determined to allow the same madness to take us down the rabbit hole to further strategic blunders.

The President, if he had listened, was warned that his policies were foolishness itself. In the “Art of War” that venerable Chinese strategist Sun Tzu had stated that the best war is the one that is never fought having achieved victory without a fight. And the United States was well positioned to do just that in Iraq before madness overcame this U.S. administration. The risk is still high that this same strategic blindness will lead the U.S. even deeper into the Middle-East mess.

Senator Chambliss it is time to stop playing their game and to bring a stop to this madness, show the leadership and statesmanship demanded in this troubled time. Let’s engage and debate fully the policies that have led us to the “greatest strategic blunder” in U.S. history (Lt. Gen. William Odom). Join courageous Republicans like North Carolina congressman Walter B. Jones (House Joint Resolution 14) in working to prevent a further erosion of U.S. national interest. Join in moving the Senate toward debate on the future direction of U.S. Mid-East policy.