I just received a response in the mail from John Edwards, who apparently signs his signature with a big black marker, about a January letter.

All that time for his staff to think about it didn’t really seem to help, in terms of addressing my actual concerns.  I mentioned the letter previously in an endorsement of Barack Obama [bookmarks],and it certainly wasn’t focused on Iraq [bookmarks,category] as the reply from the Edwards camp acted like.  In fact, in the letter that I wrote I was deriding the renewed bellicosity of John Edwards toward Iran [bookmarks,article] and arguing for less military adventures overseas.

This excerpt from the Edwards form letter I received just about sums up why he is not listening:

‘After withdrawal, we should keep sufficient forces in the region to contain the conflict and ensure that instability in Iraq does not spill over into other countries.’

First of all, the whole point of “withdrawal” is to get out.  “After withdrawal,” maybe it will be time to run our own country and leave this kind of violent aggression in the past?

Second of all, the whole point of the Iraq invasion according to some versions of the neoconservative master plan was that the “creative destruction” of Iraqi democracy would spread to the sullen dictatorships in the area and create a popular movement for change.  Instead it has uncorked the kind of madness that makes those stodgy old regimes look like a less bad solution than previously–including to their own people.  Indeed, governments in Syria and Jordan prize nothing higher than stability, and are worried about the American-caused instability spilling over onto their regimes.

Is it that Edwards and his campaign team just don’t get that, and are just stumbling along believing that something can be salvaged from the failed wars of the Bush administration [bookmarks]?  Or are they forgetting the lessons of Iraq and falling back into the war-loving, war-profiteering consensus that exists among most powerful members of the major political parties and the major media, popular will be damned?

I respect John Edwards and his wife and despise the nasty insults that vile popular conservative commentators have lobbed at them.  But Mr. Edwards certainly peaked politically four years ago and times have changed; it’s time to time to back Obama (unless he gets any squishier about Iraq, Iran and the so-called war on terror) against Hillary in the 2008 Democratic presidential primaries and election [bookmarks].