Posted on 07/05/2006 2:35:48 AM PDT by Oshkalaboomboom
Senate Democrats are an angry and frustrated bunch these days: While the American people are uncomfortable over the direction of the war in Iraq, they aren't exactly clamoring for arbitrary timetables for an American pullout. Senate Minority Leader Reid and senior Armed Services Committee members like Sens. Levin and Jack Reed have tried to be on the best behavior -- determined to convince the American people they're not 21st-century McGovernites looking to cut and run in the face of terrorism. So, instead of talking about troop withdrawals, the focus groups and strategists at think tanks like the Center for American Progress, headed by former Clinton Chief of Staff John Podesta, came up with an idea they call "redeployment" -- a plan for removing large numbers of American troops from Iraq to Kuwait or any other nearby country that would take them, ready to race back into Iraq whenever the situation threatened to become too calamitous to spin as another Democratic foreign-policy victory. Thus far, though, the new PR campaign hasn't spared the Democrats new embarrassment, as they have spent much of the past month feuding among themselves over the best way to leave the Iraqi people on their own to face the terrorists. For example, Sen. Kerry offered a proposal to require President Bush to pull remaining troops out by July 2007. As the Senate prepared to vote on the Kerry plan two weeks ago, the NY Times ran a front-page story, "On Iraq, Kerry Again Leaves Democrats Fuming," which explained, in essence, that many of Mr. Kerry's Senate Democrats are furious with his insistence that they vote on his pullout plan, which had no change of winning Senate passage. Democrats were already angry at Kerry for advancing another pullout proposal one week earlier, which lost on a 93-6 vote.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtontimes.com ...
"Senate Democrats are an angry and frustrated bunch these days"
Gee,,I thought they were like that every day. How is this any different?
Unbelievable.
The Democrats really think the American people are so stupid as to think their spin tank invented the word "redeployment?"
But it does play well into the triangulation strategy that she's going to pursue.
I've never served in the military, in congress, or at a think tank, but wouldn't leaving the area with the idea that you can "race back if necessary" mean the job isn't done, and that leaving will only allow the enemy to take that much of the battlefield you'd then have to re-take, with injured and dead troops sacrificing simply to take back something you already had?
Their plan of redeployment consists of moving troops completely out of the theater of operations (i.e., Okinawa), which is not the same as the "bring 'em home" mantra they've been screamin' ever since we liberated Iraq.
The Democrats lack consistency in regards to the goings on in Iraq. First they bitch and moan that there aren't enough troops in Iraq, then they say there's too many, and now they want to shuffle the deck.
The Democrats are just hellbent on regaining power, so that they can push their silly, idiotic agenda down everyone's throats.
The funny thing is, the DEMS can't even agree on what their agenda is.
I would join with you in saying that whatever the DEM agenda, it's idiotic.
Strategy is not for Congress to decide, anyway.
I like it. I like the Democrats strategy. Lets REDEPLOY our forces. That's what we need to do. Redeploy.
Lets redeploy them to Somolia.
That's because they're trying to play both sides of the war and politics. Problem there is, they can't have it both ways. This is what got Kerry in trouble in 2004, and it will spell Hillary's defeat in the future, if we happen to be "bogged down" (their term, not mine) in some future conflict elsewhere.
They don't even have an exit strategy for the War On Poverty, a war they got us involved in and we're still fighting that war 40 years later.
"Senate Democrats are an angry and frustrated bunch these days:"
Democrats: The PMS Party
"They don't even have an exit strategy for the War On Poverty, a war they got us involved in and we're still fighting that war 40 years later."
Excellent point. It's cost the US taxpayer 7 TRILLION dollars, but obviously it was for a worthy cause...to buy Democrat votes among blacks and Latinos.
What the democrats want is a term for pulling back in the face of the enemy while already engaged. That term is RETREAT. If the retreat is chaotic it is called ROUT.
The very notion of retreating to Kuwait and then waiting for everything to go the hell in a hand basket at which point we will reenter is terrible policy and cruel to soldiers and families alike.
Once you have won the ground in certain areas, why in the world would you want to pull back, allow the enemy to reconstitute, resupply, and reassert authority; and then return to reestablish what you had already established. Why would you tell soldiers and families who'd seen their friends, sons, daughters shed blood to gain control of an area that their blood has uselessly been spilled, and not some other American must again die to reassert authority over an area we already had controlled.
Ignorant.
A good analogy would be the Civil War battle of Antietam (Sharpsburg) in 1862. Enjoying overwhelming superiority in numbers, General George B. McClellan sent his several Army Corps piecemeal into battle against Robert E Lee and the Army of Northern Virginia over the course of the day (September 17th). McClellan was forced to a standstill by Lee although by all Southern Army reports the Army of Northern Virginia was on its last legs with its back to the Potomac. What did McClellan do? Nothing! He allowed Lee to escape to fight for two more years. This is why McClellan was replaced (although it took another 1 1/2 years for Lincoln to find the man who would fight the way Lincoln wanted - that, of course, was Ulysses S. Grant).
This is exactly what would happen should we pull out. The insurgents would be invigorated and Iraq would fall into civil war. Should we return the situation would be disasterous for us.
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