Foreign Policy Debate - Lessons of Iraq: Much has been sa...

Описание: http://www.c-spanarchives.org/library...

SEN. MCCAIN: I think the lessons of Iraq are very clear, that
you cannot have a failed strategy that will then cause you to nearly
lose a conflict.
Our initial military success, we went into Baghdad and everybody
celebrating, and then the war was very badly mishandled. I went to
Iraq in 2003 and came back and said we've got to change the strategy.
This strategy requires additional troops, it requires a fundamental
change in strategy, and I fought for it. And finally we came up with
a great general and a strategy that has succeeded. This strategy has
succeeded, and we are winning in Iraq. And we will come home with
victory and with honor. And that withdrawal is the result of every
counterinsurgency that succeeds.
And I want to tell you that now that we will succeed and our
troops will come home, and not in defeat, that we will see a stable
ally in the region and a fledgling democracy. The consequences of
defeat would have been increased Iranian influence, it would have been
increasing sectarian violence, it would have been a -- a wider war,
which the United States of America might have had to come back. So
there was a lot at stake there. And thanks to this great general,
David Petraeus, and the troops who serve under him, they have
succeeded, and we are winning in Iraq, and we will come home -- and we
will come home as we have when we have won other wars and not in
defeat.





MR. LEHRER: Two minutes for how you see the lessons of Iraq,
Senator Obama.



SEN. OBAMA: Well, this is an area where Senator McCain and I
have a fundamental difference because, I think, the first qu