Replies

"Perhaps the "Kill all the Muslims" crowd might want to try and explain why the bulk of the forces fighting on OUR side in the war now are Muslims?"

As in Afghanistan, they are not fighting on "OUR" side. They are fighting on THEIR side. We are merely allies of opportunity to them and they will turn on and discard us as soon as possible.

"Did any of usual hysteric Muslim haters with their "No Muslims are helping us" .........for the Know Nothings."

This has nothing to do with xenophobia or no-nothings. People who resent Islam have very valid reasons for doing so, just as people resented NAZIsm and Communism and other totalitarian ideologies. The Kurds are content with things as they are as they are no longer oppressed by Sunnis. That doesn't transform them into western democrats
(with a small "c"). As a matter of fact, the Kurds were the very people who helped the Ottomans exterminate the Christian Armenians at the beginning of the 20th century.
As sson as it becomes convenient to do so, when they no longer feel the threat of Sunni oppression, our "friends" the Kurds will turn on us like an angry rattlesnake.

"The President is right ............ Any successful Counter Insurgency effort needs local support for intelligence gathering, combat forces and longer term stability."

True. So what?

"WE cannot stay there forever. "

I hope not.

"Some day the locals are going to be running their own country."

So?

"This is about making sure those locals running their country are more in line with our values then our foes values."

You are a dreamer. The leader of Iraq just visited his friends the Ayatollahs in Iran and was conferring with them on improving relationships with Iraq. That doesn't sound good. For the Christian minority in Iraq - the Assyrian anChaldeans Christians, oppression is still the order of the day and perhaps even worse now than before.

If anybody thinks they can take a part of the world where totalitarianism, religious fanaticism, superstate's ignorance, intertribal hatred, and anti-western thought processes have been the norm for over 3,000 years and change it in a few years of occupation, they have a reality problem.

"Turn this into a Us Vrs Them and we lose all our local allies."

Islam is ALL ABOUT Us versus THEM - read the Koran and Haddiths.

"When 50% of us question why we are fighting at all, if we lose our local allies via this sort of heavy handed ignorance and bigotry then we will lose the war."

I thought we were fighting there to protect America and prevent the lunatics from the Middle East coming here and doing the same things in our streets. At any rate, that is what we should be doing there. That involves a lot of what you said about using the locals, trying to gain some of their "trust" to get our enemies. AND finishing up the business by destroying the Ayatollahs in Iran and the Baathists in Syrtia and their familiars like Hezbollah.
But that shouldn't blind us to certain realities:

1) They will never love us for the present or function as reliable long term allies

2) As long as Islam is practiced there in its current and historical form, their culture and ours are incompatible.

3) Islam is likely to remain a serious threat to us and our descendants for generations

4) we can't make them love us, but we can and should and better make them fear us.

"The people of the US have neither the will, nor the need, to wage a war of conquest in the Middle East."

There is no reason to fight a war of conquest in the Middle East and you are correct in your assessment of American character. Which makes me wonder why we are wasting so much time "nation-building" and hawking democracy to people who haven't the faintest idea what we are talking about. We should have gone on to destroy the Ayatollahs and Syria after we finished up with Iraq, then pulled out and left them to stew in their own juices with a promise to come back again and do a more thorough job if they got out of line again.

"We win this war by backing various groups of Muslims to slaughter the other group of Muslims."

It would definitely help - no arguments there. But we should never delude selves into thinking they are our friends or their is any chance of compatibility between Islam and western civilization in Islam's current and historical flavors.

"The Know Nothings with their wacko fantasies that this some how can be turned into a "Holy War" against all Islam need to come to grips with the political, and practical, limitation we operate under."

We are engaged in a "Holy War" with Islam whether you choose to recognize it or not. THEY do and understand fully the objectives of their struggle - to infiltrate, intimidate, cajole and otherwise maneuver to make Islam the dominant socio-theological system in the world. In this respect they differ not a bit from Communists. OUR objective should be to confine Islam to its historical boundaries, prevent them from infiltrating and threatening the west, and allow them to wither on the vine or perhaps in the distant, future, develop a more progressive and humane version of their "faith" - but that's up to them.