"Come Home, America," Says George McGovern to Barack Obama

"For our sake and God's sake, let's get out of there and begin healing our own bankrupted land," pleads the 1972 peace candidate — Bring Our Troops Home from Mideast This Year. Noting that the president "has adopted most of the previous administration's formula for dragging out the withdrawal of our troops from the mistaken war in Iraq for nearly three more years," he asks some important questions:

Has either the great God above or his creatures here below designated us to run the Middle East? What do we say to the Iraqi people, who have indicated overwhelmingly in several polls that they want U.S. troops out of their country now? Why would we not understand this sentiment considering that our military equipment has smashed Iraqi homes, public buildings and infrastructure, including electricity and running water?

About the plan to "leave 50,000 troops in Iraq to 'police' that troubled country through 2011," he reminds us of history:

In June 1950, President Harry S. Truman ordered our troops into Korea, stating it would be only a brief police action that did not require a declaration of war. Three years later and after 38,000 American soldiers had been killed, the new American president, Dwight D. Eisenhower, the commander of Allied forces in World War II, promptly ended our involvement in the Korean War, to the relief of our combat soldiers and the American public.

Unfortunately, we left 40,000 American soldiers behind to police the 38th Parallel -- for a brief time. Yet, more than 50 years later, nearly 30,000 American troops are still in South Korea. So much for brief police actions.

The American Conservative has in recent years printed two pieces on the man; Bill Kauffman's appreciation of the "liberal with a sympathetic understanding of conservative rural America" — Come Home, America — and Daniel McCarthy's of the man he calls "a temperamental conservative, an anti-militarist, and a committed decentralist" — McGovern Beats Nixon.