California Conservative

Sen. Chuck Hagel addressed the Paul Nitze School for Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University. During his speech, Sen. Hagel made several mistakes which I will point out here, starting with this one:

For almost four years, America has helped the Iraqi people build their own destiny. It has come at a high cost for America. As of today, over 2,900 Americans have given their lives in Iraq and over 22,000 Americans have been wounded. We have spent well over $300 billion in Iraq and we are still spending $8 billion a month. The Administration is expected to request another emergency supplemental for Iraq and Afghanistan early next year for between $120 and $150 billion.
Today, the defining factor in Iraq is widespread and devastating sectarian violence. Al Qaeda terrorists do operate in Iraq and we must confront them. But such terrorists are not the primary threat in Iraq. Iraqis are killing Iraqis. This is sectarian violence.

Today, the biggest factor in Iraq’s violence isn’t terrorists or Iraqis themselves. It’s Iran, which we learned last week is manufacturing and supplying Muqtada al-Sadr’s Mahdi militia with IED’s. We also learned in that report that the Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps is playing a role in destabilizing Iraq. Here’s how they’re doing it:

U.S. intelligence believes the weapons have been supplied to Iraq’s growing Shia militias from Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, which is also believed to be training Iraqi militia fighters in Iran. Evidence is mounting, too, that the most powerful militia in Iraq, Muqtada al-Sadr’s Mahdi army, is receiving training support from the Iranian-backed terrorists of Hezbollah.

For Sen. Hagel’s statement to be true, you’d have to believe that U.S. intelligence is wrong. Sen. Hagel’s statement can’t be true because this isn’t simply a case of sectarian violence. Instead, it’s an act of war by Iran. It seems to me that Sen. Hagel’s statement is overly simplistic. Let’s hope that that’s all it is. The only other possibility is that it’s what he truly believes. Sen. Hagel continues by making this mischaracterization:

Much of Iraq is embroiled in a civil war and 140,000 U.S. troops find themselves in the middle of this civil war.

I strenuously object to this being called a civil war. I’d further object that “much of Iraq is embroiled in civil war.” These characterizations are oversimplifications at minimum. How can Sen. Hagel keep a straight face and say that “much of Iraq is embroiled in civil war” when only the Sunni Triangle has much sectarian violence at all? Frankly, it’s misstatements like this that has caused the most erosion in the American people’s confidence.

If the U.S. “tilts” to support the Shi’a in Iraq’s ongoing violence, we would implicitly but undeniably align ourselves with Shi’ite interests that are backed by Iran. By choosing sides, the United States will compel the Sunni Arab world, which includes most of our friends and partners in the region, Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and others, to protect Iraq’s Sunnis.
With all due respect to Ayatollah Hakim, simply killing more “Baathists” will not achieve security in, or a future for, Iraq. But, a U.S. strategy to “choose sides” in order to bring order to Iraq could lead to direct regional involvement in the sectarian violence in Iraq and risk region-wide violence. This would be a generational catastrophe for the United States and the Middle East.

With all due respect to Sen. Hagel, he’s simply denying the facts when he says that “a U.S. strategy to ‘choose sides’ in order to bring order to Iraq could lead to direct regional involvement in the sectarian violence in Iraq.” In case Sen. Hagel hasn’t noticed, Iran and Syria already are contributing to the sectarian violence in Iraq.

Furthermore, our ongoing deployment in Iraq is debilitating our military force structure. According to General John Abizaid, the Commander of the U.S. Central Command, except for U.S. Army forces stationed in South Korea, nearly all other Army units are currently serving in Iraq or Afghanistan, returning from a deployment, or preparing to deploy.

While I admit that this is a problem, the reality is that we can’t afford to lose in Iraq. If we pay a price later, then we’ll figure out a way to pay for it later. Americans need to have our leaders tell us both the downside of what we’re doing and the downside of not doing what we’re doing. Simply put, we need to weigh the cost of doing something vs. the cost of not doing something. Failing to factor those things in leads to shoddy policymaking.

The Iraq Study Group put it very succinctly in their report to the President and Congress yesterday. They say:
“America’s military capacity is stretched thin: we do not have the troops or equipment to make a substantial, sustained increase in our troop presence. Increased deployments to Iraq would also necessarily hamper our ability to provide adequate resources for our efforts in Afghanistan or respond to crises around the world.”

It’s a shame that the Iraq Surrender Group sees things this way. The reality is that we can’t worry about “crises around the world” because we need to focus on the crisis in Iraq. We need to take things one step at a time. We can’t put out all the forest fires burning out there.

It’s time for people like Sen. Hagel to base their opinions on reality. The last thing we can afford is having policymakers basing their opinions on misrepresentations and false premises.

Technorati Tags: Chuck Hagel, Johns Hopkins, Hezbollah, Iran, IED

Cross-posted at LetFreedomRingBlog

This entry was posted on Friday, December 8th, 2006 at 3:11 am and is filed under Author: Gary Gross, Foreign Policy, Iraq, Middle East, Military, Terrorism. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.