Posted on 03/19/2006 8:18:36 AM PST by SmithL
When the U.S.-led coalition attacked Iraq three years ago, the Bush administration was brimming with confidence that this would be a war only in the sense that a lot of bombs would be dropped and the military would seize, temporarily, a foreign capital. It was going to be swift, high-tech, clean.
Six weeks later, President Bush spoke in the past tense about Operation Iraqi Freedom, thanking the Iraqis who welcomed the U.S. troops and promising that democratic change would sweep the region.
Now, with sectarian violence roaring and casualties rising, the White House increasingly is talking, in the present tense, about a long war, meaning the old-fashioned kind -- "the crucible with the blood and the dust and the gore," as Gen. Richard Myers, then the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said last fall.
Three years on, experts from the left and the right say, the costly Iraq war has barely begun, and if there are to be broad benefits, as the president still promises, they could be years away.
William Odom, a retired lieutenant general who ran Army intelligence and later the National Security Agency during the Reagan administration, has called the Iraqi adventure "the greatest strategic disaster in our history."
"What we've learned is that you cannot impose a Pax Americana solution," said Conrad Crane, a Middle East expert at the Army War College who is leading a crash rewriting of the military's counterinsurgency manual in response to the unanticipated tenacity of the resistance. "You are not going to have a Western-style democracy, and you're not going to have a market economy."
(Excerpt) Read more at sfgate.com ...
The terms are understandable and logical from that perspective. What I am steering to is the media still calling it a war, when it is not a war. It is fanatics killing their fellow citizens, and whenever possible, U.S. forces. The present state of affairs is like when the IRA carried out terrorist attacks in England. There is an established Government in Iraq, and it too, is being fought, but not by the U.S. My criticism is aimed at the Tokyo Rose Media.
So this is a policing action.
That's not a second guess. It's a lie. 43 NEVER said it would be easy or quick.
From Bush's Sept. 20, 2001 speech.
" Our war on terror begins with al Qaeda, but it does not end there. It will not end until every terrorist group of global reach has been found, stopped and defeated.....
This war will not be like the war against Iraq a decade ago, with a decisive liberation of territory and a swift conclusion. It will not look like the air war above Kosovo two years ago, where no ground troops were used and not a single American was lost in combat.
Our response involves far more than instant retaliation and isolated strikes. Americans should not expect one battle, but a lengthy campaign, unlike any other we have ever seen. It may include dramatic strikes, visible on TV, and covert operations, secret even in success. We will starve terrorists of funding, turn them one against another, drive them from place to place, until there is no refuge or no rest. And we will pursue nations that provide aid or safe haven to terrorism. Every nation, in every region, now has a decision to make. Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists. From this day forward, any nation that continues to harbor or support terrorism will be regarded by the United States as a hostile regime.......
I will not forget this wound to our country or those who inflicted it. I will not yield; I will not rest; I will not relent in waging this struggle for freedom and security for the American people.
The course of this conflict is not known, yet its outcome is certain. Freedom and fear, justice and cruelty, have always been at war, and we know that God is not neutral between them."
I was just FYI-ing. I found it somewhat amusing the first time I heard an Iraqi talking about the "first American war" and "the second American war." I said...
"....oh. We didn't call them that." He laughed heartily.
Iraqis have great senses of humor.
A few bombs, a few fanatical Islamists, big deal.
We could leave Iraq tomorrow and it would be 1,000 times better than with Saddam at the head.
In the past three years, every Islamic hothead in the Middle East has made his way to Iraq and promptly got his head shot off.
Al-qaeda is dead except for the remnants currently in Iraq who are promptly being taken out one-by-one.
This is the war on terror (and we have already won it.)
Don't be too hard on 'em, Allegra.
That daily commute in the time warp from 1968 gets real rugged......those characters never were very strong on either logic or hygiene.
...the Bush administration was brimming with confidence that this would be a war only in the sense that a lot of bombs would be dropped and the military would seize, temporarily, a foreign capital. It was going to be swift, high-tech, clean
I would be interested to see one unambiguous direct statement to that effect.
Just another MSM myth.
LOL. I can't believe Allawi said it was a civil war today. Of course, he said this from the U.K.
We figure since he didn't get enough votes in the election last December (I was actually pulling for him), he must be unemployed now and times are a little tough in Iraq these days. And CNN or someone must have offered him a big wad of cash to say "It's a civil war" on TV.
Only explanation I can think of...
Yes we probably can,let me give you two options.
1)We surrender and go home,leaving the Middle East to evolve in whatever way other external forces wish to push it.
2)We blow the whole place to hell,and have to deal with a world which the Chicoms or North Koreans are willing to supply the islamofascist world not located in the Mid East the weapons necessary to balance the scale.
Pick one or provide details on any other alternatives.
I agree, I was simply trying to clarify the original poster's standpoint.
Several of the new soldiers (and many vets) are worried about deployment for a cause they don't believe in to a situation they aren't fully aware of (yet.)
I remain optimistic and share that as much as I can with my fellow soldiers.
This war has a suprising safety record. Fewer casualties per foot than is normally seen.
Though I would also like to clarify my own standpoint at this time:
The "war in Iraq" is more comperable to a "policing action" (look at that as a long-term battle of strategic importance) meant to put us and our allies into a better position to finalize this war on Islamic terror.
Iraq is a chapter, not the book.
I think you guys are being unfair to CP. He says it is like Vietnam in that we aren't fighting hard enough. Not that we *shouldn't* be there, as your reaction seems to imply. Nowhere in his / her statement was a DU like statement made. The "Go Back to DU" crap is getting kind of old, don't you think?
Dubya seems to follow the advice in this poem pretty well:
Rudyard Kipling
If
If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you;
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or, being lied about, don't deal in lies,
Or, being hated, don't give way to hating,
And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise;
If you can dream - and not make dreams your master;
If you can think - and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with triumph and disaster
And treat those two imposters just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to broken,
And stoop and build 'em up with wornout tools;
If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breath a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: "Hold on";
If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with kings - nor lose the common touch;
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you;
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds' worth of distance run -
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
And - which is more - you'll be a Man my son!
And the Democrats' solution is what exactly?
Or he is trying to get into the news the best way he can.......by repeating the MSM religious beliefs.
Hey.....I have a Subway Baghdad t shirt that he brought me.......have you seen those? Evidence of your earlier post about imperialist takeover capitalist inroads......
No
Exactly right.
That's my opinion. I've got one; you've got one. Mine doesn't agree with yours.
Get over it.
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