Annie pisses her pants in 3, 2....

Just out of curiosity...are you calling for a withdrawal from BOTH Iraq and Afghanistan? I can get behind the first, but not the latter, since that's where the Taliban and al-Qaeda still are. (Though I totally grant that Bush has fucked both of them up.)

Poor Brian Baird--you got to give him credit for actually having a point of view and being willing to stand up to a small portion of his constituency. I grew up in his district, and I can assure you, outside of Vancouver and portions of Thurston county, his district is very, very red. It would be a mistake to assume that his position supporting the surge would guarantee his defeat in the next election cycle, I think it quite likely that his change of heart actually earns him points with many of the religious hillbillies that make up a whole lot of SW Washington.

That's what I don't get. It will be a catastrophy?!?! WTF is it right now? As far as I can see, it is a castastrophy with American troops & resources.

WTF??? How many of our people and their innocent people have to fucking die before it becomes a catastrophy?? Holy Christ this shit is ridiculous.

My thoughts to their families :(

On the bright side, keeping the Iraq occupation/war going forever may prevent or at least delay the US from starting another war.

See, every cloud has a silver lining!

Ending the war in our lives? Yeah right! Exit Iraq via Iran!!!!

So nice to know we aren't a rattling ape-cage of mob rule, isn't it?

First, a post-9-11 rush to invade a country that had nothing to do with 9-11 (while the actual criminals escape); now a post-'surge'-mess rush to withdraw, both in ignorance of the very real strategic, long-term consquences that will soak the sand in blood, either now or later...

So the citizens of his district would prefer someone to Tell Them What They Want to Hear instead of what might actually be in the best interests of everyone, even reactionary fools safely sitting in the US?

Sad.

You actually think the problems are just going to end if we withdraw? I think you're being very short-sighted.

people are so upset that we didn't plan well enough going in... so they want to pull out without a plan?

we should study to be well-aware of the consequences of our actions. i want out, but i don't want some worse problem i didn't know about occurring because of a knee-jerk reaction.

you make up your mind, then you get a plan, and then you follow the plan.

Nice potshot, Dan... For someone who supported the war when so many of us here told you that your position was ridiculous and could lead to the predicament we're in, you're certainly happy to cut-and-run when things don't work out, eh?

Yes, this war is a tragedy, and no one should want to see more American soldiers die. On the other hand, American lives are NOT more valuable than Iraqi/Muslim ones. We broke it, and we have a responsibility to stay in there and help to fix it.

Do you really think that a majority of Americans now support withdrawal because they suddenly think this was a bad idea? (And where is the blame for the majority who supported Bush in going to war in the first place or the scorn for all of the Democratic Senators and Congressmen who voted yes?)

Americans want out because we're losing. Period. If the surge suddenly started to work, you'd see that majority support for withdrawal dissipate pretty rapidly. We like winning, and we like war games like in movies and on our computer screens. We don't like the real hardships that come with supporting American military might around the world and the consequences of our cowboy politics that get expressed by most folks over here.

I'm with Andy Niable on this one--and do bear in mind that I was one of those rabid, "unpatriotic" kooks who was against the invasion to begin with.

Certain people wanted this war, and now they've grown tired of it; they are the same people--the very same--who berated and dismissed anyone who voiced opposition or caution to their demands, and here we find them doing so once again. They say their minds are changed, but from my vantage point their reasoning remains as muddied and shallow as it ever was.

I do not have the answers. War without end is obviously not what anyone wants--but what, honestly, should the goal be for Iraq? What do we want for these people, and for ourselves? And so we have the faith and the mettle to achieve it?

As much as I hate the Iraq War, I fully support the Afghanistan War and think we should have poured every resource of Iraq into Kabul. I just hope that when we finally get the hell out of Iraq, we put 20k or so more troops into Afghanistan, to strike at the people who actually did attack us.

There was a window of time where our military could have done helpful things in Afghanistan (including capturing Osama before he left for Pakistan), but I think we're past that point now. As in Iraq, the real problems are political and extend throughout the region.

The real problem is Pakistan, which pretty much created the Taliban in the first place, along with some assistance from Saudi Arabia. The tribal areas in Pakistan are also where al-Qaeda's hiding out. They've got a secular dictator and Islamic radicals and nuclear weapons. Invading Pakistan, or getting Pakistan's military to act more aggressively in the tribal areas, would just make the political situation worse.

What's needed is a political situation within Pakistan that mainstreams the Islamists while keeping the government secular. Luckily, there's a framework for that under negotiation right now. President Musharraf is negotiating with former PM Bhutto to step down as military leader and bring her in as a political partner. That would stabilize Pakistan and provide room for other positive political changes. One of those changes has to be a shift by the US back to the non-proliferation treaty and general arms control path, from which our government can apply diplomatic pressure to Pakistan to stop arming the rest of the world.

We should also be funding a real reconstruction in Afghanistan, as we should have done from the beginning. But adding more US troops? It's not going to work.

Do the deaths of American troops even matter?

The bloviating Republicans couldn’t give a shit, most everyone else has conflicted “feelings” about the war, and we seem to have an endless supply of right-wing nationalists and gullible fools signing up to be Darth Cheney’s Imperial Stormtroopers. The Chinese can just keep on loaning us the money for the war until the whole house of cards implodes.

@15

They are merely pawns to President Bush.

I would think Dan's "US Out of Afghanistan Now" is at least as controversial as Baird's "Six More Months in Iraq".

From Westside:

"Poor Brian Baird--you got to give him credit for actually having a point of view and being willing to stand up to a small portion of his constituency. I grew up in his district, and I can assure you, outside of Vancouver and portions of Thurston county, his district is very, very red. It would be a mistake to assume that his position supporting the surge would guarantee his defeat in the next election cycle, I think it quite likely that his change of heart actually earns him points with many of the religious hillbillies that make up a whole lot of SW Washington."

NOT - a small portion of his constituency. We are the ones who got him elected, walked precincts, phone banked and answered phones. The audience at the townhall DID have peace activists in it, but many many more were regular old professionals, joe & jane citizens, old friends, campaigners.

If Baird gets re-elected perhaps it will be because he has become the darling of the hillbillies you reference. I guess that could mean many of us disenfranchised citizens will be free to disregard the stern warning of throwing away our votes. We have been liberated to vote for a challenger because the outlayers will elect him anyway!