Posted on 09/23/2004 3:22:39 PM PDT by billorites
John Kerry is right to accuse President Bush of "colossal failures of judgment" in Iraq. These range from decisions taken in the early days of the occupation, such as the premature disbanding of Iraq's army, to more recent missteps, such as allowing Fallouja to become a terrorist sanctuary.
Reading the depressing headlines, one is tempted to ask: Has any president in U.S. history ever botched a war or its aftermath so badly?
Actually, yes. Most wartime presidents have made catastrophic blunders, from James Madison losing his capital to the British in 1814 to Harry Truman getting embroiled with China in 1950. Errors tend to shrink in retrospect if committed in a winning cause (Korea); they get magnified in a losing one (Vietnam).
Despite all that's gone wrong so far, Iraq could still go either way. (In one recent poll, 51% of Iraqis said their country was headed in "the right direction"; only 31% felt it was going the wrong way.)
Lest we be too hard on Bush, it's useful to recall the travails of the nation's two most successful commanders in chief, Abraham Lincoln and Franklin Roosevelt.
Lincoln is remembered, of course, for winning the Civil War and freeing the slaves. We tend to forget that along the way he lost more battles than any other president: First and Second Bull Run, Fredericksburg, Chancellorsville, Chickamauga…. The list of federal defeats was long and dispiriting. So was the list of federal victories (e.g., Antietam, Gettysburg) that could have been exploited to shorten the conflict, but weren't.
Opponents tarred Lincoln with invective that might make even Michael Moore blush. Harper's magazine called him a "despot, liar, thief, braggart, buffoon, usurper, monster, ignoramus." As late as the summer of 1864, Lincoln appeared likely to lose his bid for reelection.
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(Excerpt) Read more at latimes.com ...
He makes a valid general point, but the problem is we can't say for sure that Bush's supposed "blunders" in Iraq were actually blunders. For example, if we had gone into Fallujah, we might have lost hundreds of soldiers and killed hundreds of innocent civilians. Then THAT would have been called a "blunder." In wartime, there is no way to avoid what critics will call "blunders."
Our president faces a problem no other has had to endure to such an extreme degree. George Bush faces an opponent who attempts to undermine the president, undermine support for the war both here and abroad, undermine the interim leader of Iraq, and encourages the enemy to fight on.
Come to think of it, Richard Nixon faced the same problems at the hands of the same man.
Very good post, this article puts things in perspective. Rather amazing from the LA Times. I must say, they've given me a cookie as I got right through to the piece.
A cookie and perspective, now I have to think kindly of them for at least one day.
Max Boot also writes for the Wall Street Journal and The Weekly Standard. He's quite conservative.
I don't mind a cookie, but I hate lengthy registration processes and I detest spam.
If he didn't already own it, someone on FreeRepublic would have to invent the screen name.
War is a series of catastrophes that result in victory.
Right now you have apx 99.33% chance of coming home alive from Iraq. That is based on 150K deployed and 1000 KIA. Total mobilized is actually larger. Many have rotated out. So the number is actually better. But just for comparison its close enough.
I cant find a source with total mobilized thus far, anyone know out there?
Compare to other wars........
Vietnam was nearly a decade of fighting I might add. Killed in Iraq would have to increase by *50* times to approach Vietnam numbers.
Theater .... Mobilized .... Killed ... Percentage KIA
Iraq ... 150,000 ... 1000 ... .66%
WWI ... 4,734,991 ... 63,114 ... 1.33%
WWII ... 16,112,566 ... 404,997 ... 2.5%
Korea ... 5,720,000 ... 54,246 ... .94%
Vietnam ...8,744,000 ... 58,253 ... .66%
Gulf ... 540,000 ... 269 ... .05%
Most of your survivability in wartime numbers-running doesn't take into account the actual duties of the servicemen represented by those figures.
You show that a typical WWII soldier had a 2.5% chance of being killed -- but is that the same figure for the men of the 1st and 5th Marines, as well as some WAVE in Washington DC who sat behind a typewriter tapping out memos for an Admiral?
Marines patrolling Sadr City might be in slightly more danger than an USAF Airman First Class operating as a deejay on US Armed Forces Radio station out of Kuwait.
oh yes! I know it is very dependant on the job assigned.
But then it becomes quite impossible to do any kind of comparison.
Im not even entirely comfortable busting things down to numbers like this. These are Americas heroes afterall.
I guess my point is with all the numbers is that Iraq, I have not forgotten about Afghanistan (I couldnt find the numbers) That Iraq is really a very small amount killed considering what has been accomplished when looking at it in a historical perspective. Even one lost is too many, but that is the price unfortunatly, we have no choice. But at least I think the trend is much less loss of American lives then other wars. Were better at it now. Both for our soldiers and civilians.
your observation is a good one. The writer inserts his first premise - that Bush has blundered - and then in "nuanced" manner fashions the rest of his argument in what seems to be an objective approach by including victories from previous wars. To the casual reader, the argument would seem to be whether Bush is right or wrong. The writer believes that Bush has blundered; he measures this war not-against the true litmus of victory or defeat, but from it being a "blunder" in the first place.
This bait'n'switch tactic is sooo Hegelian: Critical Thinking... hypothesis, antithesis, synthesis which then postulates itself as a subsequent thesis, and the cycle begins anew...
It is also classic Leftist intellectual mantra; the ability of the speaker/writer to articulate his position cannot hide this.
CGVet58
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