President Bush made good on his veto promise today.
US President George W Bush has vetoed a Congressional bill that would have linked war funding to a timetable for withdrawal of US troops from Iraq.
Speaking in Washington after signing the veto, Mr Bush said setting a deadline for withdrawal would be "setting a date for failure" in Iraq.
He said the funding was needed to give time for the new strategy of a surge of reinforcements in Baghdad to succeed.
Mr Bush said he would seek a compromise with Congressional leaders.
It is only the second time since taking office that Mr Bush has used the presidential veto.
I am in agreement with the veto, because despite all the mismanagement and poor decision making that has gone on relating to the invasion and occupation of Iraq, we simply cannot abandon the elected government. We don’t put timetables on our own wars here at home.
Is there a timetable on the War on Drugs? When did Congress threaten to withdraw funding for that due to unhappiness with progress? How about the War on Poverty? Haven’t heard anything about withdrawing the funding there, and disbanding all the federal agencies prosecuting that particular "battle." Why should the War on Terror be any different?
Frankly, as I have said before, I don’t think any of the three wars I just mentioned is winnable. You cannot win a battle against a concept. You have to focus on actual human enemies to win battles.
We’re doing that in Iraq. I don’t care if we have to wipe out every Islamic fanatic in the world. As tragic and painful as the facts may be, the facts are that Iraq and Afghanistan are drawing misguided jihadists from around the world to those nations. No one argues that Afghanistan was a source of jihad prior to our invasion. Iraq may have been a secular dictatorship under Saddam’s rule, but it had started two wars in the region and it killed its own citizens in great numbers.
One could argue that the U.S. increased the regional instability by invading, and I wouldn’t disagree. I would however say that the challenge now is to stabilize Iraq at any cost. We cannot accomplish anything by leaving prematurely, as I have argued before. American lives will be lost in Iraq, or they will be lost elsewhere.
I would rather choose the place and time of battle. I am not content to wait for the next mass attack on American soil, or in a major European city.
Not one of the withdrawal proponents has explained how a timetable will work to the advantage of the United States in battling worldwide Islamic fundamentalism.