Biden responds to Bush: Troop surge in Iraq was a failure

Today, in his weekly radio address, George W. Bush again tried to put a positive spin on the Iraq disaster.

Bush spoke to us from Europe, where he's taking advantage of more photo ops. He talked about how "forces from Albania and Macedonia are ... serving in Iraq, where they're helping the Iraqi people build a society that rejects terror and lives in freedom."

Wow. If anything, it looks like the Iraqi people are rejecting the U.S. occupation (but I suppose that could be considered "terror"). And, given that there is virtually no personal security right now in Iraq, I can't see that anyone has been helping the Iraqi people to "build a society that lives in freedom". A day of purple fingers is meaningless if the rest of the year is a living hell.

Fortunately, we have Joe Biden (R-DE) in the Senate. Senator Biden has a lot of good foreign policy experience. And today he delivered the Democratic response to Bush's radio address. He astutely pointed out that the surge hasn't worked. He said:

The purpose of the surge was to bring violence in Iraq down so that its leaders could come together politically. Violence has come down, but the Iraqis have not come together. The country remains terribly divided among Sunni, Shi'a and Kurds. There is little evidence the Iraqis will settle their differences peacefully any time soon.

Bingo.

He explained that we're back to where we were before the surge started. And he enumerated the price we're paying:

* The continued loss of the lives and limbs of our soldiers – every day;

* The emotional and economic strain on our military families due to repeated, extended tours – lasting up to 15 months;

* The drain on our Treasury – $12 billion every month that we could be spending on housing, education or healthcare here at home;

* The impact on the readiness of our armed forces -– tying down so many troops that we don't have any leftover to deal with a new emergency;

* The inability to send enough troops to the border area between Afghanistan and Pakistan -– the real central front in the war on terror;

* And finally: the damage done to America's standing in the world.

Huge prices to pay, for sure. Too high a cost.

Biden concluded:

I believe the President has no strategy for success in Iraq. His plan is to muddle through -– and hand the problem off to his successor. Our troops and their families deserve better than that. We owe them a strategy worthy of their sacrifice.

We Democrats understand that this war must end so that America can regain the credibility to lead around the world and the flexibility to meet our challenges here at home. That's what the American people want – and it's what America’s security needs.

Indeed. And it will take a long time to regain that credibility, given all the damage done over the past 7+ years.

But it must be done.

And so the Democrats must defeat John McCain this November. Otherwise, we will just continue the downward spiral.