Democratic Congressional candidate Steven Herr blasted incumbent Paul Ryan for Ryan's statement Wednesday that withdrawing from Iraq would be a mistake.
"As any teacher would tell you, unless you set a deadline for an assignment, the task will never get done. The assignment for the Iraqis is to develop a government that can be supported by all, and to get their own forces ready to maintain order."
"The stay the course approach Paul Ryan and George Bush advocate is what we tried in Vietnam for too long." according to Herr. "I've seen that movie before and I know how it ends - or more appropriately, how it doesn't end."
Herr favors beginning a drawdown of forces immediately and setting a 24 month timeline for completing the program. However, he conditions that timeline on the Shi'ite majority forming a consensus government - if they do not, he would return our troops faster. "If the Shi'ites are essentially using our troops for front line security while oppressing the minorities, then it's time for us to leave."
"We have to recognize that it is essentially impossible to fight guerilla or insurgency wars without the support of the local citizenry. That's the lesson we should have learned from Vietnam, it's the lesson the Soviets should have learned from their Afghanistan invasion in the 1980's. The vast majority of Iraqis want us out, and there is very little rebuilding work we can do with the security situation as poor as it is." Herr said.
Just as important, he says, is what we do with our troops as we redeploy. The US should embed some of our troops in the Iraqi forces to ensure discipline and as a way to gain a first hand evaluation of their effectiveness for training adjustments.
"We can't do it all for the Iraqi's. At some point they are going to have to determine if they want democracy as badly as the insurgents want chaos. They're going to have to own their democracy - - if we just try to give it to them it won't work."
"Although I never thought we should have gone in the first place, we have done the Iraqis a favor by getting rid of Saddam Hussein." Herr says. "Now we should exit while we can salvage some goodwill from them, instead of becoming an occupying force that unifies the Iraqis and the Islamic world against us."
Steven Herr has been endorsed by Iraq expert Larry Diamond, who was called upon by Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice to assess the Iraq situation for the US government. Diamond is the author of Squandered Victory, a book from his experiences about how the United States missed its opportunity to create democracy in Iraq because of the mistakes that were made by the Bush Administration.
A small business owner in Kenosha, Herr is one of five candidates vying in the Democratic primary September 12th for the 1st Congressional District. The district includes the counties of Kenosha, Racine, Walworth (except Whitewater), the eastern portion of Rock County (including Janesville and Milton, but not Beloit) and the southern parts of Milwaukee and Waukesha Counties. Herr's campaign website is www.herrforcongress.org.
Steven Herr is a small business owner in Kenosha, a progressive with a spine, and someone who would make us proud as a congressman. The district gave Kerry 46% of the vote in 2004 (and no doubt alot of Bush's 53% regret it), so we can win here. Step 1 to winning is to fight for people's votes, and 2006 is the year to do it.
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