Posted on 08/16/2005 7:13:40 AM PDT by Brigadier
It would show how important the father thinks it is that He encouraged HIS daughters for such a worthy cause .
I have a feeling if Clinton was still in office you would agree with me that Chelsea should volunteer.
Have a beer and get back to me
You do remember what happened on 9-11-01 don't you?
And not one Iraqi on those planes not one. But there were ties to the Saudis that the administration secreted out of the country
But there are a lot of Iraqi pawprints on the first WTC bombing!
BTW, why was Zarkawi getting frequent medical care in Saddam's Iraq before the war?
>>Good idea, I have been calling for an investigation of the Senate Intell committee since 9/11,
Well, SOMEONE was responsible for excising those pages concerning the Saudis out of that report.
Along with FBI Agent Wright and his Saudi investigations.
Wish the govt would release the book he's written about the spike investigations.
My husband has been to Iraq twice with the Army, and almost been killed more than once, and has been to quite a few funerals, so take your foolish righteous indignation someplace else. Perhaps your adult children or children-in-law don't mind your still considering them as if they are still in grade school, but it is condescension nonetheless.
She was not thrilled to be there.
That's something that "she" needs to deal with within herself, seeing as it's a job for which she volunteered.
I was most likely a conservative before you were born.
No, they had the RULERS of their country, Saddam, his boys, and gangs of thugs doing this at will. We, at least, are trying to stop the terrorists without you and Cindy.
Of course you know he hasn't "encouraged" his daughters. Right? All of his "encouragements" are public, right? They are not free to make up their own minds?
I honestly did not believe it was possible, but you've gotten more demonic since I've posted to you last. This thread and the position you take is truly scary.
Anyone that is thrilled to go to war has a screw loose.
She came home unable to sleep and short tempered and edgy... all PTS symptoms .
Congrats to your husband I honor his service. But this war does not need to be "correct" to do that . his service and answer to his countries call is worthy in itself
Perhaps. What made you leave conservatism?
Just for the record, don't hold your breath waiting for applause.
"I was most likely a conservative before you were born."
Well isn't that cute.....nice try at deflection though. Your obtuse statements are still wrong....no matter WHO you are.
Why because I see a mishandling of this war and will say it?
I thought that was what democracy was ? Or am I confused ?
Why did you pick a NUT to be your screen name ... lets start there :)
She has my empathy. However, she still volunteered for the job. That the "new" military exposes women to combat situations for which womanhood may not be emotionally suited does not make our efforts in Iraq not worth pursuing. and there is no difference between support for the troops and support for their mission, regardless of however much you twist trying to rationalize that it is possible to make a distinction.
You know, for a "conservative," you sound awfully much like a moonbat.
You are confused. First, we live in a Republic--not a democracy. Second, that term refers to a type of government, not rights and priviliges of its citizens.
You are probably thinking of the First Amendment, which is a protected right. I have not said you shouldn't say it--I'm exercizing MY rights to say you couldn't be more wrong if you cut-and-pasted your comments from DU.
This neoconservative vision of setting up Iraq as a shining city on a hill is at best a simplistic, naive view of things. At worst, it is a cover for American expansionism.
What we have here is another example of blow-back in the Middle East. We fund Osama bin Laden against the Soviets, and he attacks us with the U.S.S. Cole and 9/11. We fund Saddam against the Iranians, and Saddam decides he wants Kuwait too. We topple Saddam, and install a new Government in Iraq - which apparently will decide to model itself after Iran. Just ducky.
pessimism? history is observation and analysis. hoping is guess work.
try an oldie but a goody. no "they" are not like us.
Get Saddam. Then Get Out.(July 16, 2003)
depe ^ | July 16, 2003 | by Sha'i ben-Tekoa
Posted on 12/22/2004 3:42:18 PM CST by dennisw
Get Saddam. Then Get Out. by Sha'i ben-Tekoa July 16, 2003
As an Israeli who remembers our country’s doleful occupation of southern Lebanon (1982-2000), some words of advice to our American friends: Get Saddam, then get out of Iraq as fast you can. Drop the idea of trying to build a new society there.
On Sunday on NBC, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld drew an analogy between America’s occupation of Iraq and those of Japan and Germany, as many have, but L. Paul Bremer III is not Douglas MacArthur, and the Arabs in old Mesopotamia are neither Japanese nor Germans, two peoples with long histories of social cohesion. If you think you can create the first Western-style liberal democracy in the Arab world, think again.
There are 147,000 GIs embedded in 25,000,000 Iraqis, with the latter now not only playing on their home court but “fighting” as they like to, which is not as conventional soldiers but street fighters and bush-whackers. The Iraqis as conventional soldiers were routed by the US in 1991, and again three months ago they less melted away than never got into battle formations.
But now they are much more in their element. What Arabs prefer is not the combat of conventional warfare between armies in uniform on battlefields, engaged in e.g. artillery duels, flanking actions or bayonet charges. They like firefights with small arms in urban locales.
Their preferred weapons systems are not modern tanks or mobile artillery pieces, which require teamwork; they favor hand-held weapons like RPG-capable assault rifles.
Arabs throughout history have rarely fielded large armies led by far-seeing generals; where is their Caesar, Napoleon, Wellington, Rommel or Patton famous for directing large formations of troopers? They have always preferred operating in small groups, or alone, with weapons no heavier than one man can carry and use unassisted.
In medieval Tunis, the Arabs’ greatest historian ibn Khaldun (1332-1406), author of the classic Al-Muqaddimah, the philosophical prolegomena to his 19-volume history of the world, explained this phenomenon of Arabs not being very good at fighting in large, coordinated, rank and file military organizations. What they lacked was unit cohesion and the discipline found in the armies of more civilized peoples. The Arabs gravitate to small unit ambushes, and not necessarily against only enemy soldiers on a battlefield but unsuspecting enemy civilians in villages and towns, a/k/a terrorism.
At this very moment in fact as you read these words there is a probability that somewhere in Algeria someone is having his throat slit, or a family being decapitated. These are routine occurrences in more than a decade of civil war there, where the fighting style is very different from Western conceptions. During the American Civil War (1861-65), the Blue army fought the Gray army; in the Spanish Civil War (1936-39), Loyalists fought Republicans, etc. while in Algeria, since 1992, more than 100,000 people have been basically murdered, the majority of them not soldiers in uniform on battlefields but unsuspecting civilians surprised in their daily routines by “terrorists.”
Lebanon’s civil war (1975-89) was much the same. We saw no television news footage of tanks maneuvering in clouds of dust, or commandos jumping out of trenches to storm an enemy fort; it was all young men in t-shirts, jeans and running shoes in the neighborhoods where they lived firing off bursts their treasured Kalatchnikovs.
The American expeditionary force is inside a country with no shortage of young men itching to test their mettle by bagging an infidel or two. The military posture of US forces there has also mutated from that of army on the offensive to static, constabulary force. American soldiers are not now being targeted as they advance in battle but stand in line to buy a soft drink.
Pres. Bush’s schoolyard dare, “Bring ‘em on” hit a sour note because while appropriate pre-war before the anticipated clash of armies in uniform, this is no longer a contest between soldiers on both sides, but soldiers not trained to be cops versus streetwise locals.
Israel’s experience in southern Lebanon (1982-2000) is a lesson worth learning. The political Left here likes to portray our bitter experience of our security zone there as the fault of the Likud, and especially Ariel Sharon, when in fact that zone was a creation of none other than Yitzhak Rabin and Shimon Peres in 1985, three years after Sharon left government. Those two future architects of the Oslo fiasco first dreamed up the Lebanese security zone fiasco when they witlessly ignored Israel’s great military strengths of maneuver and improvisation. What they built was a series of bases Gen. Maginot would have been proud of. Bunkering down in increasingly hardened forts, Israeli soldiers turned themselves into static targets. It was only a matter of time before they were driven out.
And the reasons for establishing that misconceived zone were not only defensive but to feed a lingering wish to influence and control events in Lebanon to Israel’s advantage. On the contrary, in 1982, after then Defense Minister Sharon did to the PLO in Lebanon what George Bush would do to the Baathists in Iraq, Israeli forces should have immediately made a mad dash for the international border, gone back home and let the locals pick up the pieces.
Instead, the fantasy continued of somehow alchemically changing that ethnic stew of a pseudo-nation into something more to Israel’s liking that it could not be.
This is the mistake the US is now making in Iraq. The projected “nation-building” there reflects a provincial inability to realize just how different Arab societies are. After World War I, the British created the modern state of “Iraq” and appropriated the name of what historically was never more than old Mesopotamia--the area between the Tigris and Euphrates--and annexed to it territories north and south that were home to a half-dozen sub-national groups that never had identified “nationally” with the Sunni “Iraq.”
Likewise the French cobbled together the state of “Lebanon” which historically had never been more than the name of a mountain. France annexed communities to the Christian core of the new state by including sub-national groups who did not ask for that union either.
The United States owes it to the people of Iraq and to itself to find and kill Saddam and sons, then get out and not worry too much about the next kind of regime.
It is always possible to return, if necessary. An “in-and-out” strategy might be more successful and cheaper in blood and money in the long term than an indefinite occupation taking casualties all the time. There are countless kinds of medical conditions that require more than one application of a treatment, and if there arises in Iraq another menacing dictatorship, then another invasion will be needed.
And maybe even a third or fourth until the locals find a way of governing themselves under a political system that no longer throws up tyrants like Saddam Hussein.
Predictably, Secretary Rumsfeld is now saying that he needs more troops and more soldiers. And when will that end? That never happened in Germany and Japan, two societies that accepted defeat and had the good sense to learn from their conquerors a better system of government that improved their lives and made them members in good standing of the free and democratic nations of the world.
To repeat: Arabs are not Germans or Japanese. Forget the grandiose nation-building. Do what has to be done, then go.
Not so... Sharia law and democracy are BOTH Mob Rule..
One is no better than the other.. Different kinds of mobsters are still mobsters.. An elite mob running an islamic country versus an elite mob running a democracy is six of one half dozen of another..
Democracy is the road to socialism. Karl Marx
Democracy is indispensable to socialism. The goal of socialism is communism. V.I. Lenin
The meaning of peace is the absence of opposition to socialism.- Karl Marx
As said by either Saddam or Baghdad Bob. If this is an example of your beliefs, you should not feel at home here.
You unappeasables should at least try to work in a FEW facts into your diatribes.
Nice post, Howlin. Facts can be a real b***h when they blow your premise to smithereens. You are absolutely correct: the UN mandate was to kick Saddam out of Kuwait, and that mission was accomplished.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.