Obama is the right choice for president

I recently travelled to Iraq and left with two clear impressions. First, our troops are doing a magnificent job under difficult circumstances. Second, Barack Obama’s plan to responsibly redeploy our combat brigades is the best way to succeed in Iraq, and to secure America’s broader interests.

After more than five years of war in Iraq, Ohioans deserve a thoughtful and honest debate about how to move forward. Yet while Barack Obama has recently travelled to Iraq and detailed his plan to end the war, John McCain has chosen to launch negative attacks to support his call for open-ended war.

It’s important to understand the context for our current debate. Over five years into the war, the costs of our effort have been extraordinary. We have lost over 4,000 heroic young Americans. American taxpayers have spent nearly a trillion dollars. So much has been asked of our brave troops and their families, putting a significant strain on our military.

Sen. Obama and I both opposed the war. We thought it was a mistake to take our eye off of al-Qaida in Afghanistan to invade a country that had nothing to do with the 9/11 attacks. Over five years later, this point remains the same: Osama bin Laden is still at large, al-Qaida has grown stronger along the Pakistani border, and the situation in Afghanistan is deteriorating. Meanwhile, we continue to deploy nearly 150,000 troops in Iraq, while spending $10 billion per month.

Today, we are all united in support of our men and women in uniform, and our commitment to a stable outcome in Iraq. The question is how to move forward.

Witness to progress

When I was in Iraq, I saw the progress that has been made in the security situation. Our troops have successfully lowered the level of violence. Iraq’s Security Forces are increasingly capable, and Iraq’s Sunni tribes have taken the fight to al-Qaida. However, Iraq’s leaders still haven’t made the political progress that was the stated purpose of the surge, nor have they spent their billions of dollars in oil revenues to rebuild their own country.

True success in Iraq must be defined as an Iraqi government that takes responsibility for its own future – not an open-ended commitment from American troops and taxpayers to secure Iraq. That is why we must begin a responsible redeployment of our combat brigades on the 16-month timeline that Sen. Obama has proposed. Iraq’s Prime Minister, Nouri al-Maliki, has embraced that timeline, which would have all of our combat brigades out of Iraq in 2010 – over seven years after the war began.

It makes no sense to stay in Iraq longer than the Iraqis want us there, or longer than we have to stay there. A timeline is the best way to pressure Iraqis to take responsibility for their country, while freeing up the resources that we urgently need to finish the job in Afghanistan, restore our military, and invest in our struggling economy. After we remove our combat brigades, we can give our military commanders the resources they need to perform the limited missions that Senator Obama has outlined – protecting American diplomats, targeting al-Qaida, and training Iraqi Security Forces.

Separate camps

While Sen. Obama has focused on presenting the American people with this clear plan to get out of Iraq as carefully as we got in, Sen. McCain has ramped up his negative attacks. Instead of debating the merits, Sen. McCain has fallen back on a disgraceful and flatly untrue charge that Barack Obama wants to “lose” the war in Iraq. This kind of attack on Barack Obama’s motives and patriotism is precisely what has polarized our political debate under George Bush.

As if this wasn’t bad enough, Senator McCain has repeated – over and over again – the demonstrably false charge that Barack Obama did not visit troops in Landsthul, Germany because he couldn’t bring television cameras. Multiple independent news organizations have declared this charge false, but the McCain campaign keeps at it – using our troops for political purposes, and ignoring the fact that Sen. Obama has visited wounded troops, without any cameras, in Iraq and at Walter Reed.

Ohioans are tired of the failed policies and divisive politics of the last eight years. Whether it’s an unnecessary war in Iraq or our struggling economy, we want to move in a new direction – we don’t want to fight a war without end in Iraq, or be distracted by the brand of politics that Sen. McCain has embraced.

Barack Obama is the leader who will move us in that new direction — bringing security and stability to Iraq. That’s why he is the right candidate for the Mahoning Valley and for Ohio.

X Tim Ryan, a Democrat, represents Ohio’s 17th Congressional District.