Posted on 02/22/2015 7:05:35 AM PST by Leaning Right
“George Washington”
LOL ! Apparently KGB guys enjoy cheaper vodka :))
I see you are familiar with Zero Hedge! Zero Hedge runs a lot of interesting articles, but they certainly have a pro-Russian outlook there.
No, in both cases the enemy’s will to resist US was completely eliminated, and in one case we got a full surrender and in the other a negotiated end. I see no disparity.
You wrote that the will to resist AND the ability both had to be eliminated. Neither war did both.
After 1781, maybe, but they were in so much debt it is doubtful they could have funded another effort so soon.
Brilliant military strategy? Invading Iraq was the dumbest military move since Custer decided to pimp with some Indians. Saddam, bad as he was, was the glue that held that dump together and kept the Sunnis and Shia from fighting. Christians were pretty much left alone. Once he was removed, the ensuing chaos and civil war were completely predictable.
What do we have to show for this decade + war? Are we safer? Is the Middle East more stable? It was a giant screw up from the start, and I’m sick and tired of politicians sending our troops on fools’ errands. Paul Wolfowitz, among others, should be in jail.
See Chapter 2 from Financial Fiasco: How America’s Infatuation with Home Ownership and Easy Money Created the Economic Crisis by Johan Norberg
Excerpt:
“When Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac collapsed in 2008, the Bush administration quickly circulated the story of how it had seen the problems coming years ago and had tried to gain control over operations but how the Democrats in Congress blocked the attempt. White House officials even penned a talking-points memo entitled “GSEs-We Told You So”.It described a 2003 report from Armando Falcon Jr. at the Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight, whose job it was to keep an eye on Fannie and Freddie, where he warned that the two government-sponsored enterprises engaged in such irresponsible lending practices and risk management that they could become insolvent. According to Falcon, this could have a domino effect, causing liquidity shortages in the market.
There was just one small detail that Bush’s aides left out of the talking-points memo: The same day that Falcon published his report, he received a call from the White House personnel department informing him that he was fired.”
I’m sorry, but to say Bush offered a strategic solution to our involvement in the sandbox is just ludicrous. Bush was a decent man, and at least cared about those he sent into harms way, but he was no “strategerist.”
Military successes are regularly undermined by the very politicians who call for them. There are really only two forms of victory and one subset: annihilation or conversion (or submission to external rule). We have never chosen the first option—Both Germany and Japan converted and we don’t have the will or stamina to administer an empire.
Pretending anything else is foolishness and that’s been our course for the modern era. We haven’t had a victory since and it has nothing to do with our military who have fought and won almost every single engagement.
It is all about politics and the lack of discernment of modern leaders. It starts with moderation (Bush Senior up to GW) and ends with capitulation and treason.
He did just that if you take a moment to look at maps of where we were staged. Islam loving Obama knew what a stranglehold we had on islamic world, at the drop of a hat, if we ever chose to follow through. He had the US positioned to deal with any islam problem or slamic country from every angle in the Middle East, and if you goal is not to win, then he had control is the point, in a moments notice. You either understand and can see if we were still there, like we still have bases in Japan and Germany, what our positioning was for or you do not and then there is nothing I can say to you to make you understand what was accomplished and not my problem.
You need to remember what the second terrorist action against the US was and who had the largest supply of it in the world and who was training terrorist. It always surprised me how short people’s memories are and how easily propaganda changes people’s view of events even when they live through them.
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