The Workday Liberal

Check out the transcript of Lt. General William Odom's statement favoring rapid and orderly withdrawal by the American military from Iraq as the best strategy, which was given before the Senate Committee on Foreign Affairs.

The one highlight I would give to this masterpiece is towards the end of Odom's statement. The following point is the crux of the issue and expressed so well by Odom that I will end the post with his words:

[I]t is insisted that chaos will follow our withdrawal. We heard that argument as the “domino theory” in Vietnam. Even so, the path to political stability will be bloody regardless of whether we withdraw or not. The idea that the United States has a moral responsibility to prevent this ignores that reality. We are certainly to blame for it, but we do not have the physical means to prevent it. American leaders who insist that it is in our power to do so are misleading both the public and themselves if they believe it. The real moral question is whether to risk the lives of more Americans. Unlike preventing chaos, we have the physical means to stop sending more troops where many will be killed or wounded. That is the moral responsibility to our country which no American leaders seems willing to assume.