(H/t Reverent & Free), Leo Morris at Opening Arguments writes:
[I]t does little good to keep going back and playing the “what if” game about Iraq. We are where we are, and it’s easy to see who in the debate has America’s national security in mind and who is mostly interested in something else.
Hogwash. The notion that “we are where we are” (and never mind how we got here) has the potential to do a great deal of harm in the long term. We need to determine exactly what went wrong and why and who is responsible so that false mythologies don’t grow that allow us to get into this mess again. It seems to me that part of the reason we got into Iraq was because people were able to harbor “stabbed in the back” theories of why we lost Viet Nam without getting laughed out of the room. Had we learned, instead, that “if you get in the middle of a civil war, you lose” perhaps we wouldn’t have been so quick to get the middle of a Sunni/Shiite conflict contained only by the brutality of Saddam Hussein. Another lesson would be the seemingly simple lesson of holes: If you find yourself in one, stop digging.
Aptly put Doug. We finally got to the Kentucky primary yesterday, with 6 Democrats (Jonathan Miller withdrew a couple of weeks ago), and 3 Republicans. It’s unfortunate that Kentucky (like Indiana) requires party afffiliation to vote in the primary. Since I’m a registered Republican, I only had 3 choices, no way was I going to vote for our incumbent governor, Ernie Fletcher, and I do agree with some positions Anne Northup had and voted for her yesterday even though I voted for John Yarmuth last November in the 3rd Congressional District in Kentucky. It seems like the consensus here was that Anne Northup was too tied in with George W. on the Iraq war. Kentucky narrowly avoided a runoff here yesterday since on the Democrat side, Steve Beshear captured about 40.9% of the vote, with about 99% of the precincts reporting, and at least one candidate had to exceed 40% of the vote to avoid a runoff election on June 26. It has been said many times here in the Louisville Courier-Journal and the Lexington Herald-Leader that John Yarmuth didn’t defeat Anne Northup, but George W. did. Steve Beshear’s running mate Daniel Mongiardo almost unseated Jim Bunning in the 2004 election. I’m almost embarrassed that Jim Bunning is still in the Senate, and Anne’s defeat yesterday doesn’t bode well for a Republican victory in November. I will be voting for Steve Beshear, the Democratic candidate. The Kentucky Attorney General’s race should be interesting also. On the Republican side, Stan Lee, a state legislator from Lexington, who is a social conservative, won the nomination, and on the Democratic side Jack Conway won the nomination, Jack Conway nearly unseated Anne Northup in Ky’s 3rd in the 2002 congressional election. At Anne’s concession speech last night, she congratulated Governor Fletcher, but it was a tepid congratulations, and no one in the room applauded. There is talk here that during the ’08 Kentucky General Assembly an effort may be made to repeal the Kentucky runoff provision (enacted in 1992). I heard several references made last night about runoff provisions having had their genesis in the Deep South? Does anyone know anything about how runoff elections came to be?
So Doug, by your “stop digging” analogy, I’m assuming you’re taking the defeatist stance of cutting and running. Disappointing, but not exactly shocking as your liberal bona fides are well established.
So, are you advocating an immediate withdrawal, thus creating a complete vacuum that would ensure Iraq is the terror H.Q. for generations? Do you think that running away (like Clinton did in Somalia after getting a nosebleed) will either:
1) Convince terrorists that we are a major force to be reckoned with, therefore they’ll likely cease all hostilities at once?
2) Embolden them, since we have shown weakness in the face of adversity yet again, thanks yet again to the liberal policy of running from fights?
3) Decide that since we are suddenly being nice to them, they should now be nice to us as well?
Which one is it?
“Defeatist” depends on how you define our mission. That mission has been redefined several times already by my count. We got rid of the (nonexistent) Weapons of Mass Destruction and killed Saddam Hussein. Mission Accomplished.
What’s your solution? Stay, continue hemorraghing our grandchildren’s money, and let Iraqis use our soldiers for target practice? Sounds like we’d still be in Vietnam if you were running the show back then. Sure was terrible how all those communist dominos fell when we left. Maybe George Washington shouldn’t have retreated to Valley Forge — should’ve been a man and fought to the death in New York. His defeatist attitude let the British capture Philadelphia. Hell, he even relied on the goddamn French for assistance. Liberal pansy.
Maybe we should’ve thought about the terrorists before we decided to destabilize Iraq and let them in. The Bush administration has put us in a situation where the only options are bad, and there is nothing to be gained by continued occupation.
Seriously – walk me through a plausible scenario where we “win.” Because from where I’m sitting, it reminds me of the business plan of the South Park underpants gnomes:
1. Collect underpants
2. ???
3. Profit!
Only with the Bush administration it’s more like:
1. Stay in Iraq
2. ???
3. Victory!
Oh, and this plausible plan has to be done with no draft to provide more soldiers and no tax increase to pay for the ongoing war; because the Bush adminstration has declared its opposition to both.
Pssst… Doug, don’t tell anyone but enough material to kill tens of thousands of people have been found in Iraq. I also know that you’re certainly aware that every credible intelligence agency in the known world knew for sure those materials existed, as did both Clintons, your boy John Kerry, Al Gore, etc.
Also, Slick Willy made it official government policy to have regime change in Iraq, as usual, he didn’t have the stones to follow through.
Now, your Vietnam analogy was rather absurd, especially considering you made some major assumptions about me and my personal viewpoints on that matter and others.
To clarify things, I proudly wore the uniform, and my Marine Corps unit is currently In Country in Iraq at this very moment. I’m no chickenhawk, my friend.
Your Vietnam analogy is apt, but for a different reason than you likely intended. You see, my father was a highly decorated Vietnam veteran (three REAL Purple Hearts, Navy Cross, Bronze Star with Oak Leaf Clusters, to name a few). He was staunchly opposed to that war (as I am, with 35+ years of hindsight). I used to tell him I likely would have gone to Canada, his response was that he would’ve bought the ticket for me.
Your comparison is apt as I see the aftershocks of what cutting and running in that conflict has done to an entire generation of men in this country. Men who believed in their mission, who have had their lives shattered by the experience of seeing us quit, and then by their treatment by liberals as they returned home to be spit on and called “babykillers”.
So you would condemn another generation of men (and women too, thanks to Slick Willy’s P.C. restructuring of our armed forces) of a lifetime of frustration, anger, and bitterness because so many in this country lack the willpower to see this mission through.
Besides the fact, destroying terrorists in their overseas bases (where they existed long before our arrival) is a rather worthy cause.
Terrorism is a difficult problem to be sure, (like other problems our elected officials have to contend with, be they Democrat or Republican). It seems like the problem Republicans are having is that they didn’t do their homework before announcing “mission accomplished”, George W. I am sure in his private moments rues the day he made that statement. A major problem I am having with the Republican party now is that our incumbent governor, Ernie Fletcher, enacted a law here in Kentucky that under current law, forces companies that are losing money to pay taxes (although there was an amendment enacted last year, during a special session of the Kentucky General Assembly, to completely exempt Ky corps and pass-thru entities from Ky’s “AMC” tax), if their gross receipts were less than $3 million, and a partial exemption if their gross receipts were $3-6 million, and no exemption for gross receipts in excess of $6 million. I am a CPA and act in an advisory capacity for my clients, and there is a lot of outrage here. It seems one of the cruxes of the problem is that Republicans don’t do their homework first. (I’m sure many Democracts don’t always do their homework first before legislation is enacted, nevertheless Democrats didn’t make the statement “mission accomplished”, when obviously it wasn’t.) I have a problem with the Republican party intruding into people’s private lives also. It seems an anomoly that the Republican party, who favors less government, conveniently chooses to intrude when it suits.
I’ll bet you could’ve found enough botulinum in my college apartment to kill millions of people. The delivery system would’ve been problematic, but maybe we could’ve put it on one of those balsa wood drones we were supposed to be so afraid of before the war.
So Clinton wasn’t man enough to get us into a clusterfuck in Iraq. Pansy ass liberal.
Thank you and your Dad for serving. Not really relevant to the issue at hand, however.
Any documentation of how much spitting actually took place? I’ve heard the stories repeated, but I’ve also heard the veracity of such stories questioned. Don’t know if this is actually true or more like the Yellowcake in Nigeria or the babies thrown off incubators in Iraq — useful myths. In any case, I don’t see how throwing in the towel 10 years from now instead of next year will save the psyches of the military men and women who don’t happen to die in the interim. And, while I value their service and even if your hypothesis is true, I don’t see that sparing their feelings is reason enough to stay. Sparing their lives might, however, be reason enough to leave.
But why bring Afghanistan into this?
I thought Dick Cheney was the only one clinging to the myth that al-Qaeda was running around in Iraq prior to our invasion.
If there was a plausible plan that lead to victory without raising taxes or implementing a draft (because those options are apparently off the table), the equation would be different. Over the past 4 years, the situation has steadily deteriorated. There is no indication that we should expect anything different from more of the same.
Whoa, sorry, with all due respect who is labeling soldiers “babykillers” & spitting on them this time around? I think the vast majority of those opposed to the Iraq war are not resorting to those kind of things, unlike what happened with Vietnam. So we can never ever seek to end a pointless war, where American soliders are being killed & hideously wounded, because it would be bad for the soliders?
Second, there were terrorist bases in Iraq before we invaded? Surely there were in Afghanistan, which we had every right to invade, & we should have devoted every possible resource to that campaign & rebuliding that country rather than diverting anything to Iraq. Now the Taliban is resurgent there.
Third, please provide a link to the evidence of viable WMD in Iraq, if that’s what you are insinuating. Besides, even if they were there, my “boys” Clinton & Gore didn’t think it justified invading the country. UN weapons inspections were working. Thank god George W. wasn’t president in 1948, or he might have decided to start a “pre-emptive” war with Stalin before he got the bomb…and don’t tell me that would have been a good thing…
Fourth, please tell me how in the world we will know when we’ve “won” this war? When there have been no major bombings for a month? Six months? If only civilians and not US troops are being killed, or vice versa? If Moqtada Al-Sadr decides to give the Prime Minister a big, public hug? And can we give some serious thought to partioning Iraq into Kurd, Sunni, & Shiite sections (with an oil revenue sharing plan) without it being portrayed as “defeatist”? Iraq was thrown together by Churchill & others at the end of WWI without any ethnic concerns, & now we’re paying the price…
That seems to be a problem, not enough homework done, before announcing a verdict.
And, all of this is a little beside the original point of the post — the value of figuring out how we got into this mess and who is responsible. Even if the best policy was to stay in Iraq forever, we’d still want to avoid doing it again.
Look, I agree that this whole thing was likely screwed up from the start. Rumsfeld was borderline incompetent, at best. I’m not defending any of them in the slightest (and boy I’d love to string up the fool who told “W” to give the “Mission Accomplished” speech).
The point is the egg is broken. The reasons are mixed in a flurry of poor intelligence and ego. But we are there, and so is Al-Qaeda (with ample evidence that they’ve been there for quite some time).
Not only do we need to look at why we got into this, but also how to accomplish the task, which can be done. Heck, even Time is trumpeting some good news, and they’re not exactly NewsMax.
Doug, sorry but as much as you’d love to absolve your fellow liberals from their horrid actions back then, my father was spit on in the Oakland Airport in 1971, and in my work with the VA and USO I’ve met enough other veterans who were spit on to know for a fact that it likely happened more than you think.
Bottom line is that liberals aren’t exactly big fans of military conflict in general, and even less of staying the course. I’m not going to change your mind, even if I cared to. But I’m also not going to stand for more Jane Fonda type activity like lefties are pushing for again.
Scribe, who the hell cares what Clinton had said about regime change when we had inspectors on the ground up until March 2003 saying that all of our intelligence was wrong? Why rely on revelation concerning the weapons (from Iraqi defectors, drunkards, and liars we later discovered), rather than evidence from scientists ON THE GROUND at the purported sites? Why would we do that? Because faith beats evidence in this administration’s case. Clinton didn’t go in. Bush did. Ergo whatever Clinton said doesn’t really have any bearing on our war *in* Iraq now, does it?
Liberals spit on returning vets? Really? There are simply no firsthand accounts of this happening. I know, you heard that someone told someone else that it happened. It’s always second or third hand. Researchers have been looking for these victims of spitting for years, and here we have an anonymous internet poster whose dad was spit on. What luck. Now ask yourself why an American fighting man (usually forelornly sitting at the airport, as the story goes) would just sit and take it when some liberal kook came up and spit in his face? Having spent my time in the Infantry, I can attest to the fact that most of us were in impeccable physical condition and usually itching for a fight. But remind me–the story goes that the strapping fighting man, fresh from hand-to-hand combat in the jungles of Vietnam, just left the loogie on his face, weeping in the face of mistreatment at the hands of a hippie? Are you for real? No, the first hippie would have been bloodied, and the second would have been dead. You claim this happened to your father. And he took it? Why? Oh, and he should google and find the writers over the years who have looked for *any* evidence this ever happened. They would like to hear from him. It’s funny that usually the only evidence (from police reports, newspaper accounts, etc.) they can find of any violence was directed *at* protesters. Maybe your father was spit on. Maybe a few others were. But I just don’t buy that it was a widespread problem, yet no violence, arrests, or other evidence of the encounter ever happened.
Yeah, I read all the deadly stuff they’ve found there. Newsmax is a hell of a news organization. If the government would just tell us of all these discoveries, then the support for the war would increase again. Why don’t they? And of course old mustard gas shells from the Iran-Iraq war don’t count.
The Republicans were the ones running from Somalia. Go read what many prominent Republicans (many still there) were saying from the floor of the House. Clinton kept us there another six months to allow orderly withdrawal.
What’s a REAL purple heart, anyway? Tell your dad to run for high office as a Democrat, and by the time it’s done, some jerk like YOU somewhere will be saying his purple hearts were fake, too.
Perhaps these “researchers” should take a trip down to Roudebush some time. I’d be glad to supply some names for them to talk to.
Oh, and I never claimed my father just sat there and took it, you did. I also guess it wouldn’t occur to you that after the kid woke up, he either didn’t press charges (from not knowing where the truck came from that hit him, or not wanting to admit to his buddies that some pansy baby killer just waylaid him) or that local law enforcement may have laughed him out of the station.
Frankly, I’ve talked to enough people who were treated in such a manner (and who also didn’t always sit and take it) to believe it happened, and happened often. You must enjoy being on the same side of, and defending people who participated and condoned such behavior. Real proud of your Jane Fonda affiliation? Did you get a signed picture of her sitting on the AA gun that killed American pilots? Still have a Vietnamese flag on your wall? Have you placed a picture of Bin-Laden next to it?
Real Purple Hearts happen when one doesn’t go overseas in order to inflate one’s record so one can later run for office. I’ve known enough men who refused treatment in order to not be given one, and be sent home. Your boy sure didn’t take that route, jumped at the first opportunity to run and join Hanoi Jane.
BTW, it isn’t just me saying they were fake. So were the witnesses there and the doctors who treated him, but what does it matter?
Oh and I’d love to sit down and have a chat with my father, share with him the hysteric rants of an anonymous internet poster (do you take blood pressure medication?) who is calling him a liar, but seeing as he’s been dead for quite some time, that might be hard to do.
Sure he did. Enjoy your Kool-Aid, and keep using DailyKos as your news source. That will get you real far.
*Whose* blood pressure? Mine’s consistently under 100/70. Facts are stubborn things.
OK, so I called “bullshit” on the Vietnam spitting story. Ergo (using patented “Scribe-logic”) I idolize the North Vietnamese and Bin Laden. What a leap. You’re a certified case shit-for-brains.
Anecdotes about the spit-upon veterans were virtually non-existent before 1980. Why the silence? I guess I have to accept that your dad was spit upon and kicked the guy’s ass, since there are no living witnesses. It simply can’t be disproven. Or proven, for that matter.
“Real” purple hearts happen when a soldier is injured in combat with the enemy. It is without regard for why the soldier went to war, and often without regard to the severity of the wound, within reason. Hit by shrapnel when engaging the enemy = purple heart. Are you really an ex-serviceman. Because you allege that the motivation for service has an impact on whether the purple heart is awarded for injuries in combat. Wherever you got that notion from, I can only guess. But it wasn’t from being in the military.
Glad we got that settled…
I think “The Scribe” is either Sean Hannity or Glen Beck. I haven’t decided which one yet.
Neither Beck nor Hannity has military service, as far as I remember. That’s a big distinction. But the talking points sure are familiar.
Look, there are reasons these things keep coming up. We are in an unpopular war that was poorly conceived, poorly rationalized, shouldn’t have happened, and has been mismanaged probably resulting in more death than was necessary. And that’s just considering U.S. casualties. The financial burden will be felt for years. The political price is the region is grave.
The only role of the left, or the dirty hippies, or intellectuals, etc., was to try our asses off to stop the war before it started. We failed. Our role since has been to pay our taxes, support troops in our contacts with them and advocate for better armor, healthcare benefits, pay, etc., and also (and this is where we piss people off) to point at obvious governmental misdeeds or screwups and say, “Stop these misdeeds and screwups!” That’s it. No treason, no sedition. My people call it “patriotism”. It’s not blind, not in lockstep with directives from the government. We don’t feel the need to check our brains at the door.
But the right, or the warbackers, are starting to introduce the narrative that we’re a bunch of backstabbers and traitors. It’s not very loud at this point. But it wasn’t at the end of the Vietnam war, either. At the end of that war, the blame was pretty much assigned to it being an inappropriate mission, the enemy really not wanting us there and being prepared to fight forever without regard to their losses, and the U.S. public losing interest in continued loss of life for elusive goals that didn’t seem to justify all the bother. But within a few years, the antiwar left began to be assigned greater and greater blame. We’re starting to see that here now.
On the right, it’s common to say that words such as mine endanger the troops. My words betray no U.S. soldier positions (unlike at least one presidential news conference). My words don’t deprive our troops of armor, or an adequate rotation plan to allow rest and recuperation. My words don’t make the enemy shoot straighter, or run faster, or hate his sectarian counterparts any more or less. It’s just silly fantasy that the left endangers the troops or will be the cause of failure in Iraq. Most of the people who push such a fantasy have no military experience, and in fact many leveraged all the family contacts they could to avoid such experience. Those who have military experience and still push such a line should know better.
Regarding Scribe’s dad’s purported spitting–I wasn’t there. It’s amazing to me that the same type of protestor–who could be gunned down at Kent State and beaten to a pulp in Chicago at the convention–could line up in Ronald Reagan’s California airports day after day (bags of urine, feces, and rotten eggs in tow) to spit on soldiers, without recourse. But again, I wasn’t there. But I am here now. And you are too. In ten years, if we hear hundreds and hundreds of stories of Iraq War vets being spit on, we’ll know better.
Oooh, that’s original. Next thing I know, you’ll be calling me a poopyhead. Oh wait, that’s essentially what “T” called me.
Call me what you want, really couldn’t care less. Insinuate that my father, and about 5 or 6 men I know are liars, doesn’t bother me in the slightest. I think “T” is so staunch in his denials because he was part of that crowd, and that sickens me. But I also gladly support his right to take that stance, and wouldn’t begin to dream of denying him that.
Since creative types like Craig don’t seem to want to read anything else I wrote, let me clarify:
1) Didn’t vote for Bush either time, so I’m not a Bushie or a “28%er”.
2) Not a Republican
3) Don’t listen to talk radio
4) Think Vietnam was a horrible, tragic mistake, but one that could have been successful if the liberals who got us there hadn’t decided they should command the field units.
5) Think the Iraq war couldn’t possibly have been more poorly handled if LBJ were president. I think the mission was genuine based on the intel at the time, but Rumsfeld was criminally incompetent.
6) Believe that Iraq is a front on the war against Islamofacists, and there’s ample evidence that Al-Qeada was in Iraq long before we were, and that Hussein would’ve loved nothing more than to give weapons, training and support to them to fight us.
7) Believe that the cut-and-run crowd is horrendously naive in thinking that just walking away from this will do anything more than embolden these terrorists even further.
Quitting isn’t a solution, so do any 72%er’s have any real solutions, or is it all just based around quitting?
Reminds me of a guy in a bar who once told me, “My Dad’s an alcoholic. He quit drinking a year ago. Loser. Quitters never win.”
Funny, but not real substantive.
There’s some substance there, you just have to unpack it. Sometimes quitting is winning. In the case of alcoholism, it certainly is — even if folks can chide you for being “a quitter.” Like alcoholism, the Iraq War is making us poor and alienating us from our friends. There always seems to be an excuse for taking another drink. But, in the long run, maybe we’d be better off admitting that we lack control, surrendering to a higher power, and apologizing to those we have wronged.
Not that I ever went in much for the 12 step philosophy, but the similarities are there.
And the long-term ramifications are?
If you leave the bar, the beer will follow you home.
To clarify my biography–I was spitting on a bib during Vietnam, not on veterans. I was also crapping my pants, but not because of the war. Although I was old enough to spit on Grenada and Panama vets, I didn’t do it then, either. I was an infantry instructor at Ft. Benning during the first Gulf War. I’m proud of my service in the Infantry. That doesn’t automatically make me an ok guy–Tim McVeigh got his training at Benning at about the same time. But I love my country and got the parental signature at seventeen so I could serve it.
Sometimes I think the Vietnam spitting subject is an attempt to distract from how many Vietnam veterans joined the anti-war movement when they returned. For those who were pro-war, that had to be disappointing. Rather than focus on that (or even mention it), the antiwar movement is portrayed as spitting hippies.
Saddam wasn’t in control of the areas of Iraq that had terrorist activity. If there’s evidence that he was supporting Al Qaeda, then the government should tell us and reap the rewards in higher approval ratings.
Was the Vietnam war already lost in 1968? Isn’t that when Republicans started running the war? One would presume all liberal micromanaging of the war stopped at that point.
I think if we leave now, they’ll fight each other, get tired, and figure it out. Maybe Turkey and Iran will get involved. What can we do about it? I mean, we eliminated the government that was serving as a buffer against Iran’s ambitions and installed in its wake a pro-Iranian government. It was like capping the fire hydrant, dousing the living room with gasoline, striking the match, and then commencing to bitch about the house burning down.
Presumably we’ll still have intelligence in the region, satellites, a national defense, etc. to try to prevent them from coming here. We might even be able to figure out their plans, if we can just translate radio intercepts and similar intelligence. If we could just find enough Arabic translators to help us with that, we might be in ok shape. But alas a shockingly high percentage of our Arabic translators are homosexual, and therefore apparently completely useless to us.
Plus can we all just remember that the terrorists attacked us using razor-sharp knives on jumbo jets. Our response was to appropriately go after the organization in Afghanistan that actually attacked us, then… go kill a bunch of people in an unrelated country that had nothing to do with it. Instead of the $100 billion + $100,000 solution (the first amount for a comprehensive war in Afghanistan that could have led to the apprehension of Bin Laden, virtual elimination of Al Qaeda, etc., the second amount for the FAA to tell screeners to not let people have razor-sharp knives on airplanes), we opted for the $1 trillion solution that made everything worse. I think it’s useful to reflect–since Iraq is an Al Qaeda haven now, apparently–where they would have gone had we not cleared out the brush (Saddam), and tilled the goddamn soil for them to grow and prosper in?
This is actually difficult for me to type, and will likely be even tougher for “T” to read:
I….agree….with….much….of….what….you….wrote…
My fingers are cramping…
No denying there was a significant anti-war segment of returning Vietnam vets, my father could probably have been classified as such, however he never felt the need to stab his fellow Marines in the back by doing anything to undermine their mission, right or wrong.
Same thing today, no question there’s a significant anti-war segment of the military, though I often wonder how many of them have always held that view, but that’s an entirely different topic.
Look, we screwed up Iraq in every way possible. We had no plan, mis-read intelligence, mis-identified the mission, even poorly equipped our troops. I am not an apologist for this administration by any means. I think Rumsfeld should join McNamara as two of the greatest war criminals in modern American history.
But, does that change the fact that we’ve already broken the egg, and we can’t glue it back together. Cutting and running does nothing but embolden them even further, encourage them to take it to us even more, just like our retreat from Somalia did.
We have a responsibility to the people of Iraq for royally screwing things up, and we have a responsibility to the men and women who have died that it wasn’t entirely in vain, as the 55,000 who paid the price for LBJ’s war did.
What about NOT cutting and running, but also not fighting?
I just heard a report the other day about how we are trying to double the size of the Iraqi army and other BS, but the reporter said “while the Iraqi army will help with this mission, the US forces will take the front lines in the more risky areas” WHAT?
Let’s be the reserves and the teachers. Build our bases scattered in the coutryside. Within quick deployment to anywhere but not actually part of any town. Defend the fixed points. My guess is that we can do that for years without getting our own guys killed, and we probally won’t be killing too many innocents that way either. We can fly our supplies in and out of our bases (no more trucks = no more IEDs)
If the Iraqi army gets involved with an actual BATTLE and needs backup, BOOM, we’re there. Send in air support with minutes, C-130’s within hours.
However, let the Iraqi army bust into houses where God knows what is going to happen. They should be more effective, it is their culture and their people. Most of what is going on these days seems more like a job that we would have our FBI and local police doing, how can we expect our troops to pull this off? It reminds me of one of my favorite lines from “The Siege”: “The Army is a broadsword, not a scalpel”. (Side note: If you have not watched that movie lately, check it out again. It amazes me that it was done before 9/11)
Would the above not solve both the bleeding hearts and the warhawks? We don’t even have to cut the number of troops. No one has to see it as us standing down or running away. We can be close to the action, gather intel, and make sure that another Saddam doesn’t come in, and we can do it without losing more troops.
What’s the fault in that?
Jason, when do you announce your run for president?
Scribe,
I usually agree with you more than others here, but I’m a bit confused by this:
With your views, who DID you vote for? Just curious, I don’t see you as a Kerry guy…
If you didn’t vote, then you did vote for Bush. Not voting is the same as voting for whoever won.
I voted for against Kerry and Gore, unfortuantely I had to vote for Bush to do that.
Also, about this:
I don’t know about Rumsfeld. I honestly don’t know how much he screwed up, how much Bush screwed up, and how much the CIA screwed up. I think at least one of them are getting undue blame, but I don’t know who. Back to Doug’s point, I don’t think we can assign blame right now because there is no way we’re really gone to get the truth right now.
As for McNamara, I didn’t know much about him until I saw this film:
http://www.sonyclassics.com/fogofwar/
It is REALLY worth a view. If what he says in his own words are a lie, then it totally fooled me.
Jason, do me a favor and shoot me an email when you get a chance, please.
In 2000, I voted for Harry Browne, I man I was privileged to know a little and for whom I did some consulting work on that campaign. Harry was one of the classiest people I’ve ever known, full of grace, charm and wit. I was proud to know him on the limited level I did.
In 2004, I plugged my nose and voted for Michael Badnarik (sp?), despite the fact that the LP had lost whatever possible credibility it had with me, and I wasn’t a huge Badnarik fan. That was a tough vote for me, and I remain a bit conflicted about it to this day.
I’m fairly confident in stating that I’ll never cast a single vote for a Libertarian candidate, regardless of office, ever again.
I’ve never been a big Bush fan, wasn’t when he bought the nomination in 2000, and wasn’t really one in 2004. I think he has a chance to join Jimmah, Harding and Kennedy as the most incompetent presidents in modern history. I thought his alleged “conservatism” was a ruse to win voters, and that his crony ism would bury him.
You must be the 4,321st person to recommend “Fog of War” to me. I keep saying I’ll watch it, but since I know my wife would never go for it, I have only limited time to watch it myself. I’ve just always felt that his over management of the Vietnam war, while under the direction of two liberals, was criminal and likely cost us that war (as misguided as it was to begin with), along with 55,000 lives (just on our side, of course).
Couldn’t find your email address, mine is my first name, followed by mtracy at google d0t c0m
Trying to avoid the SPAM bots. :)
It keeps getting bounced back to me for some reason. Shoot one to circlecitypundit(AT)earthlink.net