I'm a member of a Democratic Town Committee in rural northeast Connecticut. (Yes, I know that sounds like the opening to a Penthouse Letter, but please bear with me.) By last month, we finally hit a point where even the most conservative Liebercrats among our members agreed to support a call to end the war. I was asked to present language that could be voted on, and wanted to get some input here.
There are a few things I was asked to keep in mind while developing language:
We want to maximize the impact this will create - so language that stirs other folks to action is preferable to voting on something that fades without a trace.
The resolution must express support for the troops while condemning the continuation of the war.
It doesn't need to address the actual mechanism for withdrawal - that's Congress's problem, not ours - just our strong opposition to continuing the war.
I've been reading over some other resolutions, but they haven't really moved me, so I wanted to open the floor a bit wider. What language have other folks used? What language have you seen that stirred you the most? What language stirred your Fox News watching neighbors to rethink the war?
This is sort of a starting point:
The Pomfret Democratic Town Committee strongly opposes the continuation of the war in Iraq.
We oppose sending troops without adequate equipment or training to fight a war with no defined goals or plan for victory.
We oppose sacrificing American soldiers by putting them in the middle of a civil war where their presence increases, rather than decreases the level of violence.
We oppose wasting more treasure in a war that has enriched politically connected profiteers and has badly damaged our military's infrastructure, and call for a full public accounting of waste, mismanagement, and fraud in the war's costs.
We oppose bogging down American military strength in Iraq at a time when America needs that strength to face many other dangers.
Since all of the initial Iraq War aims have been achieved (with the removal from power of Saddam Hussein and the acknowledgment that Iraq has no weapons of mass destruction that threaten us at this time), we call for the end of American combat involvement in Iraq, and a redoubled focus on combating Al Qaeda.