Fallujah Surrender Thread

4-30-04 | Nicollo

[nicollo]

Sign up here to register your fright. Acceptable forms of surrender include:

- Arm chair trade-ins
- Suicide notes
- French passports
- Democratic Party registrations
- Photos of nukes

[nicollo]

Good for you! Didn't mean to include you in the foot-shooters. I'm trying to reinforce good thoughts as much as defeat the bad. Thanks.

[Ditter]

WOW! nicollo, you gave me goosebumps! You are a HUNK! %;9}

[reagan_fanatic]

Well put.

[McGavin999]

Thank you nicollo.

[BunnySlippers]

Nice photos of statutes in Washington DC. Feel free to post more ...

[Peach]

Nicolo - a most excellent rant. Wow. You rock.

Go tell 'em. Will look in on thread tomorrow and see what damage has been done by the naysayers. Hah!

[nicollo]

Lol! Sorry, you and I both forgot the /sarcasm tags... You're the best, Ditter!

[ancient_geezer]

What can I add, you've hit it on the nose.

Too many nay-sayers running around like chicken little.

It is amazing to me, conservatives ever get anything at all done for all their bellyach'n about can't do this or that and the ephemeral and omnipresent "they" control everything.

Bullpuppy, and bovine odoriferous fertilizer patties.

[TomasUSMC]

And remember: WE ROCK.

No we don't. We had 4 Americans, killed, burned, decapitated, hung from a bridge in Fallujah and we STILL haven't taken Fallujah.

We still have not retaken Najaf. Our troops were supposed to be home now but were extended - FOR WHAT?

Take Fallujah and Najaf, then we can start back on the right path.

Freedom and Liberty and Independence were never won by Yes-men and appeasers, but by FIGHTERS and ATTACKERS.

[kayak]

My response ...

. . . . .


And to those whose reactions are in the first list, I say ...

[nicollo]

No-men and white-flag waivers never won jack. Believe for a change.

You should read the newspapers during any -- go back to Jesus if you will -- during any moment in history. It's far easier to say no than yes.

Good luck to you. I'm not counting on luck. I'm counting on being right.

[nicollo]

You're the one who has and is doing God's work McG. Heh, did I mention how stupidly quiet things are in Syria and Iran?

Ronald Reagan shook the world upside out. Sickingly, sadly, Clintoon dropped every advantage Ronbo and HWB set in place to fill the power vacuum that was sucked dry by the fall of the Berlin Wall. The Islamfascists filled a part of it, and we're sucking their air. Sure, they'll get a hit or two to follow, but they're gone already.

I love history because only in history can we know what follows people's present-tense thoughts, hopes, fears, and acts. The present tense is impossible. That's what prayer is for.

For my last book, I read the newspapers every day for seven years to know what it was like living in the early 1900s. I was a god, for I knew -- unlike the reporters and the editors whose desperate, present-tense thinking I was reading -- I knew what would happen next. They hadn't a clue.

The present tense is mostly defined by fear. Sadly, demagogues and the frightful take advantage of it. What's so towering about Reagan and GW Bush is their optimism in the face of trembling contemporaries.

[swheats]

I like that. Whenever you want to RANT ping me ok?

[nicollo]

the ephemeral and omnipresent "they" control everything.

It's hard to think of things from the other side. We get all wrapped up in our fears, we can't imagine what the other guy is thinking. The beauty of track or other predictive betting is that odds are regulated by the balance of fear and hope. What, say you, are the odds of OUR success in Iraq?

Or, what are our odds on the WOT? I wouldn't pay out jack -- I'd take money all day long that we've already won. Sure, there are battles to be fought, but we've won.

After liberating Cuba from Spain, and setting a free Cuba, we had to send in the Marines less than ten years later to sort it out. And then we lost Cuba to a washed-up baseball player. Still, who'd say we lost the Spanish-American War? Folks can't tell the difference between battles and wars.

Any bets?

[Billthedrill]

Great rant. Made me feel a lot better and put a little perspective on the overall geopolitical realignment.

That said, I am more than a little irritated by how the folks who are supposed to be politically astute have allowed the propaganda to flow unabated, unchallenged. Our military people are unsurpassed professionals. I cannot say the same about their civilian counterparts.

FWIW, here's how I see this. The Iraqis basically told Bremer and the staff that this thing was too hot and that it would be better for all concerned - especially and specifically the nascent Iraqi coalition government - for them to assert themselves over the three most obvious elements likely to attempt to destabilize it after 30 June, the Baath Sunnis, their international Islamist allies, and the fever-eyed Shi'ites. If the place isn't to become Lebanon they're going to have to put all of those folks on a short leash.

And unless I miss my guess entirely the U.S. side, or at least the military portion of it, said "OK, sweetcakes, you want the problem, you got it - make it go away or we will." That would have been my position. 30 days or we reconsider our options.

Except for the lives of our servicepeople, the propaganda victory we just gave the enemy is perhaps the most precious contribution we've made to empowering a decent government in Iraq. We did not owe that to them. It could cost Bush his office. It certainly cost us bragging rights. It's a high-stakes gamble but it may be an incredible opportunity for the new Iraqi government, perhaps their one big chance to stand up and keep this thing from turning into a simple and long-term occupation of a formless chaos. That was what Lebanon would have been had Reagan not pulled the plug there, and he has been criticized for it for 20 years.

I suppose the calculation was that the propaganda victory we gave the enemy this way was potentially less significant than the one we would have handed them by flattening Fallujah, a course of action which I still find has its attractions emotionally. But there is a real cost in morale, and Bush and the boys had by God better be seeing to it, because he just pissed off every Vietnam vet who has seen this kind of crap before, and every currently-serving Marine who wanted nothing more than to crush these a-holes. I say again, I am not pleased by how the politicos have handled the communications on this thing.

[nicollo]

On the list. It's a LOW-frequency, HIGH-volume ping... I'm glad you concur. Thanks!

[kayak]

One thing I have observed about this President is that he doesn't care about getting kudos for himself ... he doesn't care who gets the credit for results as long as he gets the results. I'm trusting that he knows a great deal more about the situation than any of us do and that his decision is based on what is best in the long run rather than what will provide the quick and easy sound-bites.

[nicollo]

There is no end to valid criticism, as you have most eloquently made it, of any given decision. Imagine the criticism had we flattened Fallujah! What I'm trying to remind folks is that any given moment is but that. What matters is end-result. Do even the worst naysayers believe that we as a nation will lose, even accepting the worst possible events? What if they nuke DC? Do we lose then? Hell no. So why do we stick our heads up our butts over Fallujah?

The lesson in Vietnam is 1975, not 1968. The lesson of the Cold War is not 1979, it is 1989.

Forget the politics. It's all politics, be it by war or diplomacy. The only way to satisfy those I call the foot-shooters is annihilation. Not only is it not gonna happen, it's not a solution. The key to history is TIME. Meanwhile, the meanwhile sucks, as you have well described.

Thanks for your thoughtful post.

[nopardons]

That's okay,I just wanted to make cesrtain that you knew that I'm not one of the whinging doom&gllomers here.:-)

Just keep giving them hell and the facts!

[nicollo]

Thanks for checking it.

Here's a cartoon from an old ATRW thread that says it all: