Cutting Off Funds Would Ensure Victory For Our Enemies

Like all Americans, I want our troops to come home, and this new strategy is the best way to achieve victory. With my step-son and daughter-in-law having just returned from Iraq, and my daughter-in-law about to redeploy to Afghanistan, I know the anxiety many service families are enduring. I reject any suggestion – popular among some in Congress – that cutting off funds to our brave fighting men and women is an appropriate policy alternative to winning in Iraq.

As this process unfolds, we must always remember that it is not occurring in a cocoon. Those who are plotting our destruction in Iraq and around the world will be watching our debate on TV and drawing up their plans accordingly.

No credible person can doubt that, however we might try to disguise it, a withdrawal while Iraq is still in chaos would be regarded around the world as a victory by our enemies.  For we will have demonstrated that we will abandon allies, that we can in fact be forced to accept defeat and its consequences, however grave they may be. We may devise some fig leaf to hide our actions, but the world will not be fooled, our friends will not be fooled, and our enemies will not be fooled.

It is certain that large areas in Iraq would become secure bases for terrorists operating against us globally, and they would employ strategies and methods against us and our allies elsewhere that were devised and proven successful in Iraq.  No border would stop them. They would follow us wherever we go, wherever we are, even here at home. Because the battle is not just with the forces of instability in Iraq, but with those who will never stop in their effort to destroy us.