President Bush needs to beg the nations of the world for forgiveness if the United States is going to get out of the “mess” in Iraq.
That’s what Rep. Ed Towns (D–Fort Greene) told The Brooklyn Papers this week, in an exclusive interview.
“The president needs to go back to the United Nations and apologize for his behavior,” Towns said. “He was actually pretty arrogant when he went to the U.N. and indicated we’d go it alone if we had to.”
Only an abject apology, Towns said, would get the United Nations to now send peacekeepers to Iraq — allowing for a complete U.S. pullout.
“Number one, we’ll get [back] the $2 billion per week that we’re spending [in Iraq], which could go into education and health care and all these other things that we need to have money for,” said Towns, who voted against the use of force before the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq.
A Bush apology, Towns added, would “get the United Nations and these other nations to pay, like we did in Afghanistan.”
“He needs to go back and say, ‘Look, we want your involvement. We understand that this is a mess, I made a mistake, but we want your help.’ ”
A reporter reminded Towns that the president has actually been moving further away from such an apology.
In fact, as Towns was speaking to The Brooklyn Papers, the president was holding a press conference in Washington, sounding very unapologetic about the war.
“There are a lot of people in the Democrat Party who believe that the best course of action is to leave Iraq before the job is done, period,” Bush said. “And they’re wrong … We’re not going to leave Iraq before the job is done, and we’ll complete the mission in Iraq. I can’t tell you exactly when it’s going to be done.”
That, Towns said, is exactly the problem.
“Without him going back to the UN, we can’t fix the mess that’s there now,” said Towns, who was seeking The Papers’ endorsement in his Sept. 12 primary race against City Councilman Charles Barron (D–Canarsie) and Assemblyman Roger Green (D-Fort Greene).
“We need to reach out and get other countries to come in. They’ll respond. We’ve made a mess over there and we have to recognize that,” he said.
Towns said that the U.S. should not pull out until the blue helmets are in place.
But Barron, in his own endorsement interview with The Brooklyn Papers, went further, saying U.S. troops should be called back from Iraq before the United Nations takes over.
“They should bring the troops home immediately,” he said. “People say, ‘There’d be a civil war.’ There already is a civil war! You don’t stick with a mistake for ego reasons or political reasons.”
Nearly 3,000 American soldiers — including Capt. John McKenna IV, 30, of Kensington, who died on Aug. 16 in Anbar province — and anywhere from 40,000–100,000 Iraqis have died since the American invasion in March, 2003.
