The dialogue Mark Kirk won't have...the district has started it without him

What an extraordinary afternoon! We had a real dialogue on the Iraq war in the Tenth District with a panel of remarkable speakers, Robert Gard, Ron Miller and David Cortright (from left to right). The only shame was that our current congressman, Mark Kirk refused to attend the meeting he should have hosted. He was probably too busy airing out his topcoat from the smell of fish or maybe he was comforting a troubled friend.

Nonetheless, his district valiantly went on without him completely filling the auditorium and a side room of the Northbrook Library and turning away at least 100 people to discuss where we go from here in the Iraq War. Moderator, Aaron Freeman made sure that the event was a practical discussion of how to proceed in the future with no time for handwringing on how we got there and made sure that the hard questions were asked. Is the president correct when he says we have to fight them over there so we don't have to fight them here? Isn't it best to stay in Iraq and create a stable, pro-American, pro-Israeli Iraq?

In this townhall format forum, the audience was alive with questions for the panel. Can we leave Iraq immediately? What will happen when we leave? What will happen if we stay? Can Iraq ever become a stable nation? What is the best strategy and what should be our goals?

Stay the course? No way per the panel. Retired General Robert Gard talked about the impossibility of success with the current war plan of going after each individually identified insurgent one by one with 500 pound bombs, leaving a trail of death along the route. A family of 12 died just yesterday and not one insurgent was indentified in the rubble. He also discussed the recently affirmed Iraqi constitution leaving the country as a loose confederation without the tools to form a stable economy. Ron Miller, chair of the Religion Department at Lake Forest College, talked about the absence of morality in our current strategy and how our own supra-moral fundamentalist beliefs are digging the region into a retaliatory stalemate. David Cortright, research fellow at the Joan B. Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies at the University of Notre Dame, pointed out that the current strategy is a political disaster as the largest recruitment factor for the insurgency.

What should we do now? Cortright answered that we should concentrate on the 2006 elections as a means to bring forth a better Iraq strategy through better leadership. Gard believes that we need to leave Iraq and Miller feels that we need to work more in developing our goals and strategy in Iraq and look deeply into ourselves to determine how we can change to make the situation better rather than looking to Iraqis to become us.

Kirk didn't think the discussion was important enough to show up even for a short while. However, the press did and you may see more of our event on our local CBS affiliate tonight. The event certainly left the district with food for thought which will be discussed and analyzed by our concerned citizens while Mark, running for a congress of mayors, will probably be measuring how many feet between stoplights in Wheeling. Oh by the way, there are two people who really want to tackle the tough national issues like Iraq. They are Dan Seals and Zane Smith.