Submitted by Roger Johnson, Apr 25, 2007 19:45

With regard to the John McCain interview on Comedy Central's The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, I have the following comments:

Had John McCain or Jon Stewart said anything new it might have sounded like this -- "Most Americans and most of the world (including many or most Iraqis) believe that we entered Iraq for the wrong reasons. This mistake has given Anti-US elements continued cause and additional reasons to construct an easy case for recruitment. Adding troops and not announcing a clear plan for dealing with the Iraq problem, does not solve the problem. The insurgency is not an army or a nation, it does not have a centralized strategy and is not simply trying to wait us out. It is a direct response to our occupation and will continue to grow and resist as long as we are there.

Statements like "Deadlines only serve to embolden the insurgency" OR "we fight Al Qaeda there so we do not have to fight them here" are pointless talking points now. These statements are rhetoric, not a strategies or plans. Our whole presence in Iraq is extremely politicized and therefore requires that we try to simplify the problem as much as possible. The only thing we can do to save face and make a workable solution in Iraq is to fix Iraq as best we can and then leave. If we really work on restoring (or rebuilding) the quality of life for the average Iraqi, the insurgency will have no ground to stand on and the Iraqi government will find that most Iraqis will support their efforts.

Idealism and dogma will not change the reality of our mistake of entering Iraq and destroying their country. Yes, it was not good before we entered, but that problem essentially was not our doing (unless you count how we supported Saddam in the early 80's - but that only serves to complicate the debate and nothing else) -- once we went into the country we owned the problem. We must make every effort to fix the country, not fight the insurgency. Good will and real efforts at reconstruction will begin to take the wind out of the insurgency and allow a local ground swell of Iraqi national pride to form and thereby add support for the Iraqi government to finish the job of removing the terrorist elements.

We all know we can't leave Iraq until it is better than it is now. Deadlines for the withdrawal of the troops, purely to set a withdrawal date are not a solution to the problem either – but a deadline for the reconstruction of Iraq could set us up for a real effort to do right by the Iraqi people. Whether or not it wins, it would be a quantifiable measure, aimed at repairing the damage for which we are responsible.

Critics would obviously say that we can not repair what we can't control. But using our force and might to such ends would almost immediately gain the attention and respect of the average Iraqi, the region and the rest of the world. A clear and unified focus on a concrete plan of reconstruction with details of roads, schools, power, water and other infrastructural areas, as well as, economic reconstruction for industries in Iraq -- this should be our *policy shift* and directly impact a strategic reuse of the troops on the ground there.

Of course, all major political forces in Iraq must be brought to the table and must clearly understand our new goal -- a goal of fixing what we broke and trying to give Iraq an honest chance to mend itself after our withdrawal.

Maybe some would say that this has already been attempted ... probably so, but the focus has to be made on the reconstruction and not fighting something called an insurgency. The insurgency is not and army or a nation, it is a collection of people that mostly have been taught to fight the US because of our misguided involvement (in the wrong ways and with the wrong means) in Iraq and the Middle East in general. Most of the *average* people that have been indoctrinated in to the cause would begin to question the fighting if they could see that their family and friends are starting to benefit from real US efforts to repair the damage done by mistakes that we made and admitted to.

This approach would certainly not be easy or quick, but anything else seems like simply beating our heads against a brick wall. At least this way we are doing something positive and immediately identifiable as a direct solution to an obvious problem that we helped to create.

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