Edwards on Foreign Policy

In addition to John Edwards' nice closing ad, he made some legitimate news yesterday with this excellent proposal from his "closing argument" tour through Iowa:

John Edwards says that if elected president he would withdraw the American troops who are training the Iraqi army and police as part of a broader plan to remove virtually all American forces within 10 months.

Mr. Edwards, the former senator from North Carolina who is waging a populist campaign for the Democratic nomination, said that extending the American training effort in Iraq into the next presidency would require the deployment of tens of thousands of troops to provide logistical support and protect the advisers.

“To me, that is a continuation of the occupation of Iraq,” he said in a 40-minute interview on Sunday aboard his campaign bus as it rumbled through western Iowa.

That is a real and significant break from both his past statements on Iraq, and from the other leading candidates. We dug our heels into the quagmire of Vietnam out of "training." The logistical people needed protection, and then those people needed protection, and then we needed attack forces to protect those vital interests. Right now we're training and arming the Sunni Awakening groups, which may be the very groups that attack the central government and its Shiite forces. Training will not get the Iraqis to resolve their ethnic differences.

Obviously, Edwards' populist streak is what's endearing him to many in Iowa and to progressives across the country. But on foreign policy issues, he's been the strongest of the major candidates in offering a way to end the continuing occupation of Iraq. He's spoken directly to Musharraf and encouraged Democratic reforms. He's the only one to fully reject the war on terror frame. So there are some moves against the foreign policy orthodoxy that has defined this country for too long and got us into the mess we're in abroad.

And with Joe Biden attacking him, he's obviously getting under the skin of the establishment.