Posted on 08/16/2006 5:34:48 PM PDT by meandog
Newt Gingrich opines that the war so far in Iraq has been a "failure" by the Bush administration. He also says that the Israeli pullout of Lebanon was a "defeat for the United States and democracy". He laments that the Iraq situation is mired in a sectarian "debacle" between Shiite and Sunni factions and blames the Iraqi police force and the U.S. for not being able to control what is now occurring.
and others will say he is wrong, opinions we all have them
With President Bush, we got the New Tone. Whupp Arse
With Newt as President. we get the Newt Tone. Whupp Arse II ?
He talks tough. So does my wife.
He is right. But I still won't vote for him.
Newt was the Speaker of the House for a good deal of the time that islamofascists were killing Americans and Israeli's on a regular basis. He did squat. Screw him.
General Newt, please grace us with your wisdom each and every day. You are so much smarter then Rummy, Abizaid, Casey, and Bush. /s
Has to do with fighting a PC military target war instead of just hitting all involved hard.
I agree with both you and Newt. I have come to believe that a significant percentage of the "loss of support" for the war is due to conservative who think we're being entirely too PC in our efforts. We need only look to the events of the last two weeks to see that strategy in play in our dealings with Israel and Hezbollah. I think Newt is expressing that concern here. That said, I still wouldn't vote for him. Newt is a great idea man, but he falls down when it comes time to implement them.
And what is his proposed strategy?
Israel, especially, can not afford to fight nonsensical asymmetric, terrorist loving warfare.
Too late! Iraq’s a constitutional democracy now. It’s their call.
The world’s not going to let us overwhelmingly win. The most we’ll be "allowed" to do is train and assist the Iraqi security forces to defeat the death squads and stabilizing Baghdad through Basra one neighborhood at a time. Neither Europe nor Israel is politically capable of standing up to Iran, and we can’t take the fallout of going alone.
Our choices are limited. We’ll probably have to step back into a kind of cold war mode, with us letting the jihadists burn themselves out or make such threatening advances that the world unifies against them.
I think that America has seen its last large battle in the WOT 1. Whether it resolves like the cold war or erupts into a larger WOT 2 remains to be seen.
Everytime I find myself nodding at his comments, I must remind myself why I would not vote for him. He is a great layman's orator, and seems to always hit foreign policy issues on the button.
Whenever you have fallible humans making decisions you will have errors. When there is an enemy involved, reacting to those decisions, the decisions will sometimes turn out to be wrong -- or have the appearance of having been wrong, for who can say HOW an enemy will react?
Was disbanding the Iraqi military a mistake? Who can say for sure what would have happened had we not? We only know what did happen, not what even worse consequences might have resulted.
I'm beginning to wonder if we will ever again win a complete and devasting victory in any war given this proclivity to self-flagellate and hand-wring while the danger still exists!
Half correct, certainly smarter than Rumsfeld and Bush (but then, so are most pine trees), but Generals Casey and Abizaid have had their plans vetoed and their hands tied by president who just doesn't have the ''get 'er done'' to accompany his phony-baloney tough talk.
A load of crap. 2 conquered countries in less than five years, with elected parliaments, with historically low casualties. Yep Bush and Rummy are dolts. We have not conquered a country since WWII, though we've been in a number of conflicts. Batting 1000 so far. More to come.
Its fascinating to me that Carter, Reagan, Bush, and Clinton get 25 years to play realism games wherein they encourage shiites and sunnis to commit genocidal rages against each other. This is termed "success"
Bush gets 3 years to implement democracy in the Arab world-- conducts four successful elections liberating 50 million people -- and is told his policies are a mistake.
Amen!
Who the heck is out there that could deliver the goods?; like, for instance, another Harry Truman or Teddy Roosevelt. Rudy? George Allen? I sure as heck don't know.
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