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In This Section:

Don't Drink the Tea Party Kool-Aid
Destabilizing Pakistan
National Priorities Project Tallies Cost of War through September 30, 2010
Lobbyists Retreat but Never Surrender
Russia and U.S. Lead Calls to Reduce Nuclear Arsenals
Sarah Says It's "Absurd Not to Consider" a Palin Presidency
The Terror-Industrial Complex
Smoke the Bigots Out of the Closet
No We Can't
Obama's Budget Reveals the Bankruptcy of American Capitalism
The Quiet Revolution
Why We Can't Afford to Let Obama Give Bush's War Criminals a Free Pass
The Winter of America's Discontent
The Free Market Fetish
Why Costa Rica Scores Well on the Happiness Index

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Democratic Party Leadership and the Iraq Quagmire

Howard Dean recently stated regarding Iraq, "Now that we're there, we're there and we can't get out." While Progressive Democrats of America (PDA) honors and respects Governor Dean's effort to expand, empower, and energize the Democratic Party grassroots base, and further respects his engagement of small contributors and individual activists, we take strong exception to Governor Dean's statements on Iraq.

We do not believe his statements reflect the will or the wisdom of the majority of the American people who oppose the Bush administration's ongoing disastrous and immoral war policies. The Democratic Party National Platform for America states, "Promoting human rights is a basic value of our foreign policy." Our foreign policy regarding Iraq has failed to live up to this promise.

The facts are quite clear:

• The Bush Administration, using false intelligence estimates, misled the country into an illegal, unnecessary and unwise invasion and occupation of Iraq, a country that had neither attacked, nor posed an immediate threat to, the United States.
• As a result of that action, more than 1,500 American troops have been killed, more than 10,000 other brave Americans have been maimed or injured, and tens of thousands of Iraqis, including many innocent civilians, have also lost their lives, been injured, and seen their property and country's infrastructure destroyed.
• The occupation has created a severe burden on our economy, stretched the capacity of our armed forces, including Reserve and National Guard troops who are serving unexpectedly long and difficult tours in Iraq, and continues to cause deep concern at home and abroad about the policies and intentions of the United States. The latter has developed to such a stark degree that the United States is widely regarded with suspicion, hostility and distrust.
• Any argument along the lines of "We are there, so we have to stay" ignores the detailed, multifaceted and eminently workable plans for withdrawal that have been offered from many quarters. "We have to stay" empowers the rhetoric, profiteering and poor planning of the very officials who dropped us into this mess in the first place. "We have to stay" is the easy answer, and as Americans united for the cause of justice, we should strive to get past the easy answer to find the correct one.

Forty eight of fifty one Vermont towns that considered resolutions opposing the war in Iraq and calling on the President and Congress to get the troops out of Iraq passed the resolutions at town meetings this March. In other words, the grassroots spoke and spoke clearly. The California State Democratic Party Convention in April, the largest gathering of state-party Democrats in the nation, passed a resolution calling for the termination of the occupation of Iraq and withdrawal of American troops from that country. In other words, the Party base spoke.

In light of these facts, PDA calls upon Governor Dean and the Democratic Party leadership to advocate and work for:

• Termination of the occupation and withdrawal of American troops at the earliest possible time.
• Creation of an international body that can assist the Iraqi people in freely and peacefully determining their own future.
• Participation by the U.S. in multilateral reconstruction, not with soldiers and Houston-based corporations, but with engineers, aid workers, reparations, and with respect for Iraqi autonomy.

Leadership necessitates an ability to articulate a vision of how things can and should be. We long to see such a vision advanced by the Democratic Party leadership regarding Iraq. Failure to do so arguably cost the Democrats a presidency. There is nothing more debilitating than leadership that can't describe why it is doing what it is doing.

PDA calls for an end to the occupation of Iraq that is making the situation there and here worse, not moving Iraq toward a point when we can better withdraw. PDA calls upon the Democratic Party leadership to make this their demand as well. Justice demands it. Sane foreign policy demands it. Domestic needs and programs demand it. Morality demands it. The American people demand it.

We hope Chairman Dean also comes to understand the ultimate wisdom of immediately withdrawal and ceases empowering the rhetoric and actions of those who got us in this mess in the first place.