Posted on 10/29/2003 6:45:09 AM PST by NYC Republican
If you think U.S. troops are outnumbered in Iraq, you should have seen President Bush fending off the White House press corps Tuesday morning. "You just spoke about the suicide bombers in Iraq as being desperate. But as yesterday's attack show[s], they're also increasingly successful," one reporter told Bush. "There's been a much more somber assessment [of the U.S. predicament] in private," noted another. "Senior U.S. intelligence officials on the ground in Iraq have estimated that we have, at most, six months to restore order there and quell the violence, or else we risk losing the support of the Iraqi populace," said a third. "Do you feel that the attacks that have happened recently will discourage some countries to contribute troops or manpower?" asked a fourth. "Isn't there a limit to American patience, particularly in an election year?" asked a fifth.
Bush did his best to puncture the pessimism. "The foreign terrorists are trying to create conditions of fear and retreat," he argued. "[They] believe that we're soft, that the will of the United States can be shaken. … They want countries to say, 'Oh, gosh, well, we better not send anybody there, because somebody might get hurt.' That's precisely what they're trying to do. And that's why it's important for this nation and our other coalition partners to stand our ground." To questions on every aspect of the postwar conflict—U.S. troops, Bush's $87 billion appropriation request, donations and reinforcements from other countries—Bush responded with the language of intimidation, defiance, and will.
I've seen this struggle for the psychology of a nation at war before. Four years ago, NATO's military commander, Gen. Wesley Clark, faced a similar barrage of pessimism from the press and from members of Congress hostile to President Clinton's war in Kosovo. The skeptics argued that our adversary, Serbian dictator Slobodan Milosevic, had proven to be too mentally strong for us and that we should back off. Clark turned that argument on its head: By refusing to let Milosevic break our will, we would break his. Milosevic "may have thought that some countries would be afraid of his bluster and intimidation," said Clark. "He was wrong. … He thought that taking prisoners and mistreating them and humiliating them publicly would weaken our resolve. Wrong again. … We're winning, Milosevic is losing, and he knows it." I never believed Bush's claim that overthrowing Saddam Hussein was essential to the war on terror. I'm angry that Bush continues to invoke that bogus rationale for the invasion. But the assassinations and indiscriminate bombings we're witnessing in post-Saddam Iraq really are part of the war on terror. We can't crumple under this pressure any more than we could have crumpled four years ago in the showdown with Milosevic. Bush is right, just as Clark was right: War is a contest of wills.
That's why it's so troubling today to see Clark join in the same self-fulfilling wave of determined pessimism and obstruction he battled four years ago. "This president didn't know how he wanted [the Iraq war] to end. He doesn't know what he's doing today," Clark charged in Sunday's Democratic presidential debate. "I would not have voted [for the] $87 billion. … The best form of welfare for the troops is a winning strategy. And I think we ought to call on our commander in chief to produce it. And I think he ought to produce it before he gets one additional penny for that war."
I don't know whether we'll win the postwar if Congress approves the money Bush asked for. But I know we'll lose it if Congress doesn't. That's what happens when a nation at war starts to think like the Wes Clark of 2003. Just ask the Wes Clark of 1999.
Exactly! Amazing, huh?
Do you really believe your tag-line?
I thought so... For a moment, I thought you'd gone over to the dark side. Thanks for clarifying!
Carnage in Kosovo? Seem like as much carnage has happened after the war as before the war. One third of all those killed in Kosovo were Yugoslav police. They were being killed for going after the seperatist who wanted an independent country.
More than 200,000 Serbs have fled the province since the "end of major hostilities" because of constant attacks like this one. "An elderly Serb couple and their son were axed to death and their house was set on fire in one of the worst incidents of violence in Kosovo in recent months", said a United Nations official. The flow of refugees continues as they are run out their homes or forced to sell them for next to nothing or suffer the consequences. Since the deployment of KFOR and UNMIK in Kosovo and Metohija on June 10, 1999 to August 9 of this year 6,535 attacks have been reported. In those attacks 1,201 people have died, 1,328 have been injured and 1,146 people have just "disappeared". Most of the victims have been Serbs and Montenegrins and these attacks have gone on right under the noses of U.N. 'Peacekeepers'. They continue on a daily basis.
800,000 is established number of Rwanda Genocide. Following the logic that there is nothing wrong with expressing 800,000 number as "over 500,000" one may use the same rationale and claim that Holocaust loss was over 2,000,000. "6,000,000 is over 2,000,000 so How is saying over 2M deaths wrong?
See?
Anyway, back to Gen. Wesley Clark. Look up what position Gen. Clark held in Pentagon at the time Rwanda Genocide took place in 1994.
Stop rewriting history and we will no longer feel the need to "re-write" your statements, missy.
Your hate for others is DISGRACEFUL.
PURE LIES and PROPOGANDA, Milosevic-style.
You're a moron.
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