Hagel: The Political Solution the Only Solution to Iraq Success

Nebraska Republican Senator Chuck Hagel, dissenting from the general take by his party, stated at a Capitol Hill briefing Wednesday that the United States needs to realize that it probably cannot win the war in Iraq through military means and should engage in diplomacy to negotiate a peaceful exit strategy.

Hagel's supporters among both parties and independent critics of the war say that the cost of American lives in Iraq is not an acceptable price to pay for a failed military strategy. They cite growing domestic violence carried out by ever more hostile suicide bombers and insurgent gunmen and call American's presence in Iraq the "occupation".

There is also concern among those who want the U.S. to exit Iraq, and sooner rather than later, that Iraq is going to descend into a state of civil war; some consider it to already be in such a state, although that view has many critics.

Leaders and critics like Hagel say that the American presence in the Middle East is only fomenting fundamentalist Moslem hatred toward the U.S. and making other Islamic nations like Iran view Iraq as turning into a mere puppet state of the United States and the secular values of the West. This makes Iraq and Iraqi citizens, who are dying at a rate of approximately 120 people a day mostly through terrorist tactics of violence, a prime target for outside nations.

Critics of the war also insist that the United States will not be able to rebuild Iraq, lacking the resources. The oil revenues of that nation that were going to be used for the rebuilding cannot be secured, they say.

Those who remain hawkish about the war say that recently the American troop surge of over 20,000 newly deployed soldiers, a new American war strategy entered into at the end of 2006, and the increasing strength and numbers of the new Iraqi military are beginning to show positive results and, given more time, will lead to a decisive Coalition victory and a new, Westernized government for the Iraqi people.

But Senator Hagel does not buy that.

"The surge has been going on with actual increased American troops since the first part of February and as you measure the results so far, they have not been good. And you take any measurement of that you want: casualties, incidents of violence, civilian deaths, humanitarian disaster, displaced Iraqis, refugees. If in fact we are locked in this vicious cycle of violence that we have been locked in for the past five years, then how do we break that? How do we get out of it? General Petraeus has said in open hearings and he is exactly right: There will be no military solution in Iraq, cannot be a military solution," said the Senator.

Hagel insists that the U.S. must enter into diplomatic talks with Iran as both part of the exit strategy and to curb that nation's outspoken hostility toward us.

Sources of information:

Cato Institute (PR Newswire), "Hagel Says There is Only a Political Solution to the Iraq Problem"