Duckworth should demand US leave Iraq

Sen. Tammy Duckworth, in 'Why we should not leave Iraq' (Trib Commentary, May 24) spends the first nine of 22 paragraphs prefacing her support for America's endless Iraq war based on near death loss of her legs there fifteen years ago. That, alas, has become standard rhetorical fare Duckworth uses to promote continuation of America's now 17 year long war in Iraq that she participated in but refuses to disavow. As severe as Duckworth's loss was it pails to that of the Iraqi people who incurred hundreds thousands dead, millions injured or displaced, and a nation that will incur birth defects into the next century from our depleted uranium ordinance.

But Duckworth ignores this needlessly imposed horror to focus on "looking at photo after photo of men and women who’d stood in line for countless hours holding up their purple ink-stained fingers to prove they’d finally been allowed to make their voices heard." Those pictures may have filled her eyes with tears, but wouldn't tears for the unfortunate dead, wounded and displaced Iraqis be more appropriate and cause Duckworth to call out the Iraq war for what it is and was, a monstrous crime against the Iraqi people?

Duckworth finally gets to the current reasons for staying, all of which are preposterous.

It's none of our business to prevent Iraq from becoming dependent on Iranian oil.

It's none of our business to create jobs for 800,000 young Iraqis entering the work force annually.

It's none of our business to keep writing checks to prop up the ill equipped Iraqi military.

It's none of our business to spend hundreds of billions to ensure Iraq can withstand a potentially resurgent Islamic insurgency.

Tens, likely hundreds of thousands of Iraq war vets have come home knowing and speaking the truth they were led to fight a war made up of lies, propaganda and fear tactics that unleashed a massive war crime on Iraq. I wish the influential Senator Tammy Duckworth was one of them.