Iraq: This Déjà Vu Is Insane

by: Rep. Jim Splaine

Sat Feb 17, 2007 at 19:49:50 PM EST

During these past few days I have been watching, reading, and listening to the discussion in Washington about Iraq.  Democrats, joined by some Republicans, have been making a strong case for ending this insanity as quickly as possible.

To me and perhaps to many of us who have reached that point in our lives where we have fewer years to live than we've lived, it sounds so much like déjà vu all over again.

I heard so many of the same arguments for staying there and for getting out when I was a
much younger pup, during the Vietnam War.

Just about the only differences between then and now is that in the 1960s and 1970s we had a military draft which meant many of us could go to Vietnam anytime, and we actually saw the body bags of our friends and neighbors delivered at our airports back from overseas.

This time, we have the funerals and read about the horror, and we see the terror on our television, but we're still a bit isolated. 

This war has to end.  George W. Bush got us into this, but it isn't just his problem.  We have to get out.  We need to apologize for attacking Iraq without provocation.

Sure, we got rid of a dictator, but we've lost so many of our soldiers and we've killed so many of their people.  We have to get out.

Sure, this is a civil war and they're infighting among themselves, but we created much of the upheaval.  We have to leave.

Sure, we had some reason and our faulty intelligence about Weapons of Mass Destruction gave us some cause, but we shouldn't have attacked.  We shouldn't be there any longer.

Like our politicians during the Vietnam War, it seems like so many of them in Washington today want to save face, leave "gracefully," whatever that means, and of course we have to leave without creating even more of a mess when we do.  But staying in Iraq another six months or a year or two will not prevent chaos; it will likely make more of it.

But this war has to end.  We don't need a target date to pull out.  We just need to get out.  We need to apologize for the attack, reduce our troop level to zero, get our brave soldiers home safely, claim the good we did by getting Saddam and his Republican Guard out of power, and work diplomatically with the Iraq government and regional interests to try to bring some stability to that part of the world.  That makes more sense than what we're doing now.

And we must vow to learn THIS TIME from history.  We can't win these kind of wars.  They make no sense.  Let's lead the world toward peace, and not attack another nation or people in war.

America is better than this.