Edwards On Iraq
EDWARDS ON IRAQ....Here's an excerpt from Wednesday's Democratic debate. It came after John Edwards said firmly that he would pull all combat troops out of Iraq and wouldn't continue combat missions there. "I believe this war needs to be brought to an end," he said. Then this:
MR. RUSSERT: Would you send combat troops back in if there was genocide?An emailer wrote to suggest that Edwards is saying, yes, he'd send troops back in. I take the opposite view. The odds of getting the "international community" to send troops into Iraq to break up a Shia-Sunni war is exactly zero, and Edwards knows it perfectly well. By saying "It's not something we should do alone," he's effectively closing off the prospect of sending U.S. troops back into Iraq under any circumstances, but without quite saying so directly.MR. EDWARDS: I believe that America along with the rest of the world would have a responsibility to respond to genocide. It's not something we should do alone. In fact, if we do it alone, it could be counterproductive.
In fact, if I can go one step further beyond what you just asked, I think the president of the United States — and I as president — would have a responsibility, as we begin to bring our combat troops out of Iraq, to prepare for two possibilities. One is the possibility that — the worst possibility, which is that genocide breaks out, Shi'a try to systematically eliminate the Sunni. I think we need to be preparing for that with the international community now, not wait. And second, the possibility that this war starts to spill outside the borders of Iraq. And that's a very difficult thing to contain, because we know historically that it's difficult to contain a civil war.
Comments? Which interpretation sounds most plausible to you?