The War in Iraq
It's March 2008, are we still at war? Were we ever really at "war" for that matter? Congress never authorized a war as the constitution requires and I haven't seen "news" in the paper, or on TV about the war lately despite the recent deaths of many of our soldiers, and I do recall President Bush standing on an aircraft carrier declaring an end to "major combat" (note that he didn't say war), so what are our soldier's still doing over in Iraq? It's time to bring our men and woman, along with our equipment and money, home. In a game of cards, Iraq was bluffing, the US called their bluff, won the hand, and rather than walk away the big winner, we are now tossing cash into a losing pot over and over again. The "objective" was to remove Saddam from power. The "objective" was achieved, and yet we continue to spend money and lose our soldiers in an unconstitutional war that has no clear end in sight, nor any clear objective.

In addition, Saddam was found (and hung) in Iraq, a county of 437,072 sq km rather quickly. However, the real enemy of the United States, according to our government, is bin Laden. Yet 7 years later, many more total years than it took to find Saddam, he has yet to be found in a county of 647,500 sq km which in perspective isn't really that much bigger. Moreover, we have less troops looking for our enemy in Afghanistan that we do acting as a police force in Iraq. We, the US taxpayers, can't afford to pay for an empire. We can't afford to fix the world's problems. At the rate we're spending money on other countries, we can't even afford to fix our own problems, an aging transportation infrastructure, an aging communications infrastructure, etc. This of course all in addition to the fact that we were sold a "war" because Iraq "had Weapons of Mess Destruction" and our military seems to have determined that such weapons don't exist there, job well done - we got the bad guy and we determined he doesn't posses the weapions, or factories, to even make such weapons, objectives complete, let's come home.

Withdraw the troops responsibly
It's not a "politician's response". I'm not an Army general. I don't know war exit strategy and I don't know how to actually get our troops and equipment back home. I suspect that we have well educated, intelligent, experienced generals, and privates for that matter, who know exactly how to get our men and woman home without suffering casualties on the way out, or leaving ammunition and equipment in place that can be used against us. As with most other "problems", if we want to get out of Iraq responsibly, the best way to do it would be for the US government to stop interfering with the operations of the US Armed Forces. Tell them to get out, alive and well, and I have the utmost faith in our force's ability to do so in a safe and timely manner.

But what about the people of Iraq?
What about them? Did they recently become US citizens when I wasn't paying attention? Did the Congressman from NJ recently get elected to represent the people of Iraq? I certainly do recall seeing in the "news" that the people of Iraq (women included) participated in a voting process and elected some government of their own. We the US government now need to step aside and let the elected government of Iraq run their own country. When the early states first became independent from the British Empire, our first few attempts at government were far from perfect and the Articles of Confederation only lasted a short while, but we didn't win independence from one empire in order to be governed by another. The people in Iraq are likely happy to have Saddam gone, it doesn't mean that they want us to govern them instead. They have elected officials, let the elected officials in Iraq govern their own country. As a Congressman elected to represent the people of NJ, the needs of the people of Iraq just aren't my concern, it is the people of NJ and the people of America who I need to represent, not the people in a foreign country. I don't support empire building and I don't want to be responsible for maintaining an empire.