Posted on 09/07/2006 5:53:39 AM PDT by RKV
Five years have passed since the horrific attack on our American homeland, and, still, there is one serious, undeniable fact we have yet to confront: We are, today, not where we wanted to be and nowhere near where we need to be. ...
The first and greatest lesson of the last five years parallels what Lincoln came to understand. The dangers are greater, the enemy is more determined, and victory will be substantially harder than we had expected in the early days after the initial attack. Despite how painful it would prove to be, Lincoln chose the road to victory. President Bush today finds himself in precisely the same dilemma Lincoln faced 144 years ago. With American survival at stake, he also must choose. His strategies are not wrong, but they are failing. And they are failing for three reasons.
(1) They do not define the scale of the emerging World War III, between the West and the forces of militant Islam, and so they do not outline how difficult the challenge is and how big the effort will have to be. (2) They do not define victory in this larger war as our goal, and so the energy, resources and intensity needed to win cannot be mobilized. (3) They do not establish clear metrics of achievement and then replace leaders, bureaucrats and bureaucracies as needed to achieve those goals.
(Excerpt) Read more at opinionjournal.com ...
Hate to say it but Newt should retire his efforts to have this called "World War III". No one's picking it up and he will soon look like a loon prattling on in the wilderness. He's a smart guy and his input is needed, so he shouldn't marginalize himself with this effort to brand-name the conflict.
The mistake W made was not planning for the worst in Iraq. There should have been an overwhelming US led presence after Saddam was deposed and the Iraqi Army should not have been disbanded.
---nobody paid much attention to a chap named "Churchill" -Winston, I think it was, until about 1940--
World War IV would be more correct in any case. NATO's defeat of the Russian Hegemony is World War III.
"...They do not establish clear metrics of achievement and then replace leaders, bureaucrats and bureaucracies as needed to achieve those goals."
From personal experience, anytime someone uses "metrics," and wants to replace vice remove leaders, bureaucrats, and bureaucracies.....
smells like.....
USED CAR SALESMAN!
Lincoln had to.......oops, not here, not now, not today.
Cheers
The (unanswered) question is why?
I think the reason why is that the President and most of his senior advisers believe things about the enemy which are false.
You can fix mistakes. Fixing your worldview is much harder.
Newt understands the value of labels. The Contract with America was picked up and did stick. However you are correct in that renaming the GWOT to WWIII has not been picked up. It also didn't help that some instead wanted to rename it WWIV in order to give the "Cold War" credit for being WWIII. Newt is also pitching "The American Eleven" as a "values-led plan for Victory".
http://www.humanevents.com/winningthefuture.php?id=16863
No one paid much attention to the guy who created New Coke, either, which is a better comparison. Newt isn't saying anything revolutionary; he's just attempting to NAME the conflict his way, and doesn't seem to understand that no one's biting.
Yeah, I saw that, too. His lust for recognition as someone on the Tom Wolfe level of phrase-coinage is annoying. And frankly, while we all know his "Contract With America," not much of it ended up being made law. It was a cute brand name, but I'm more interested in the fact that Newt himself was revealed as a total hypocrit during the Clinton impeachment--that seems to be what he's running away from in his efforts to be seen as The Labeller.
I don't believe it waa ever Coke's intention to run with the "new coke." They had to change the recipe (don't kniow the reason) and rather than just start sneaking out with an altered product, they did "new coke" with the plan of "giving in to the great demand" and going back to the "old coke" which of course was not quite what it used to be.
Call it what it is, and it ain't WWIII.
Considering the number of terrorist attacks we've had since 9/11, the dismemberment of Al Qaeda, the drying up of funds, and the lack of success of terrorists to hit the west outside of several notable incidents, I don't buy into the "We're not doing it!" hysteria about the WOT.
Did he lie under oath? Did he use the power of his office to obstruct justice? Oh maybe you're talking about the adultry thing - well if it was "just about sex" as the Democrats contended, then yeah, Newt was a hipocrite. Personlly I contend that Clinton's impeachment was more than just sex.
What do you call it?
While your critism of Newt is warranted, he is one of the only public figures who has sense enough to label this as a war and a war a world wide scale. I'm not sure the Jorge and the rest of our "leaders" will ever reach this point, no matter how many people are killed.
Having read the entire piece, I think Newt is right, though I think Bush is doing a lot of what Newt proposes...Bush is doing it "under the radar", though--thus the skirmishes with the 'rats.
Newt does NOT take into account, I think, the utter treasonous efforts of the 'rats and their media co-horts...how they've been able to create the lie of a "lost war" among the public over the past three years.
He mentions the Pelosi punks, but shuffles them off as a mere "faction". That faction needs to be crushed in the political arena as much as the terrorists need to be crushed in the military arena.
WWIII: cold war.
WWIV: WoT.
You are as big a jackass as Newt was when he pushed for Clinton's impeachment while he himself was screwing around. I'm so glad neither of you have any power.
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.