Politics

Pelosi: The More Violent Iraq Gets, The More Reason NOT To Send Troops [VIDEO]

Rachel Stoltzfoos Staff Reporter
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House Minority leader Nancy Pelosi said she would not vote for a return of troops on the ground in Iraq under any circumstances, because that would only exacerbate the violence.

“I don’t think the American people are up for it. I don’t know that it would even achieve success to send troops in,” she said in her weekly briefing Wednesday. “But whatever it is, I’m against [troops on the ground].”

A reporter asked what she would do if the president came to her and said troops are absolutely necessary.

“Well what would be the purpose?” she responded. “What is the purpose? Our purpose is not to engage in civil war in Syria and our purpose is not to continue the war in Iraq — our purpose is to stop ISIS from its brutality.”

She argued that troops on the ground would be counterproductive, because they would only feed the violence, and she paraphrased a quote from Hannah Arendt to make her point: “People think that one more act of violence is going to stop violence, but instead it’s like a flywheel that just keeps producing more violence.”

“The worse it gets there, the less reason I think we should send in troops,” she said, and then paused. “Just an endless flywheel.”

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