John Edwards on withdrawal from Iraq

Tom Hayden comments on Edwards new, and more realistic, policy on withdrawing American troops from Iraq in Edwards First Major Candidate Calling for All Troops Out, Breaks with Establishment Consensus on Iraq Huffington Post 01/02/08:

One day before the Iowa caucuses, John Edwards has become the first major presidential candidate to favor withdrawing all American troops, including advisers, from Iraq, doing so in response to queries from a leading military correspondent, the New York Times' Michael Gordon.

The positions taken by Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, while favoring de-escalation, would leave tens of thousands of American advisers, special forces and substantial back-up troops in Iraq for five years, at least until 2013. The mainstream media also has promoted the view that there is "no way out" of Iraq, according to a comprehensive survey by Peter Hart in Extra! [Nov.-Dec. 2007]. If these views prevail, the US government will be funding, arming, training and defending a repressive sectarian state in Baghdad for years. Already, for example, there are over 50,000 Iraqi prisoners held in detention by the US and Baghdad authorities, the vast majority of them on no charges. Evidence of torture and ethnic cleansing by the Baghdad regime has been accumulated in numerous official reports as well. (my emphasis)

Our lazy press corps is failing the public again, dull-wittedly passing on the Cheney-Bush spin that it's more-or-less impossible to get American troops out of Iraq.

I'm confident that both Clinton and Obama would move toward getting the troops out. And it seems to me that once that process starts, the notion of leaving some substantial American military or advisory presence there is going to quickly prove to be unrealistic because none of the major Iraqi factions are going to want to sponsor that arrangement. But Edwards is now taking the more realistic position.

Hayden closes with the observation that Edwards antiwar position "could become a rallying point in the Democratic platform debate", even if he loses in the primaries. Whoever the candidate is going to be, he or she need to go into the general election with an Iraq withdrawal position like the one Edwards has adopted.

Tags: barack obama, establishment press, hillary clinton, iraq war, john edwards, mainstream media, mainstream press, tom hayden