Redstate

By Pejman Yousefzadeh Posted in Democrats — Comments (17) / Email this page » / Leave a comment »

The latest bizarre issue roiling the nation's capital has to do with a letter written by Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Eric Edelman to Senator Hillary Clinton in response to the latter's request for contingency plans regarding a troop pullout from Iraq. Edelman's letter can be found here. It is entirely banal, entirely anodyne and entirely uncontroversial rhetorically. Which is why it is such a mystery that the issuance of the letter has aroused such controversy.

The portion of the letter that appears to have sent Washington all a-twitter is as follows:

Although we share our commanders' belief in ours and the Iraqi Security Forces' ability to establish security in Baghdad, this is only a precondition for further political and economic progress, not a guarantee of it. Premature and public discussion of the withdrawal of U.S. forces from Iraq reinforces enemy propaganda that the United States will abandon its allies in Iraq, much as we are perceived to have done in Vietnam, Lebanon and Somalia. Such talk understandably unnerves the very same Iraqi allies we are asking to assume enormous personal risks in order to achieve compromises on national reconciliation, amending the Iraqi constitution, and other contentious issues. Fear of a precipitate U.S. withdrawal also exacerbates sectarian trends in Iraqi politics as sectarian factions become more concerned with achieving short-term tactical advantages rather than reaching the long-term agreements necessary for a stable and secure Iraq.

I assure you, however, that as with other plans, we are always evaluating and planning for possible contingencies. As you know, it is long-standing departmental policy that operational plans, including contingency plans, are not released outside of the department.

I appreciate your interest in our mission in Iraq and would be happy to answer any further questions.

Read on . . .

This language should surprise precisely no one who has paid any attention to the news for the past few years. It has been the Administration's consistent position that talk of withdrawal emboldens the enemy in Iraq.

But of course, people are exercised about the whole thing. Consider for example the commentary of Fred Kaplan, who loses any and all sense of perspective by condemning the White House for supposedly calling Hillary Clinton a "traitor" and for supposedly condescending to her as a woman.

Of course, no fair-minded reading of the Edelman letter reveals either condescension or accusations of treason. What it does reveal is that Edelman is prepared to argue what to many is obvious; that discussions of withdrawal in public cause the enemy to believe that we will indeed implement a precipitous withdrawal in Iraq, one that leaves the country in the lurch and allows for the existence of a power vacuum to be filled by groups that are hostile to American interests and to the existence of a stable Iraq. Groups like al Qaeda, for example. Edelman is not accusing Hillary Clinton of being treasonous. Nor is he telling her to shoo because she is a lady and because national security is supposedly a man's job. He is saying that she is wrong in her position regarding withdrawal and that the nature of the current debate regarding Iraq could cause the enemy to believe that we don't have the stomach to see the reconstruction process through.

Last I heard, it was okay to do this kind of thing. And by "this kind of thing" I mean "to advance a proposition through debate and colloquy." There is nothing whatsoever that is personal or insulting in Edelman's letter to Senator Clinton. There is merely the articulation of a different viewpoint.

Participation in the formulation of policies in a democratic republic such as ours necessarily means exposing oneself to the debates of the day. It also means having a thick skin and trying to understand that most people, in the course of making an argument, target principles and not personalities as the subjects of discussion. If Hillary Clinton doesn't understand this, perhaps she is not the best person to apply for a certain job that involves--among other things--residence at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington, DC.