Posted on 10/01/2006 3:54:58 PM PDT by Mr. Brightside
Does no one in his trade ever retire?
Here's one of your fellow isolationist anti-Bush, anti-armed-forces ninnies, Neville.
Yep. Laura Ingraham was saying that Fox News took a 16% hit this last ratings period. In her opinion, it's because Fox has been taking a left turn and the viewers are getting sick of it. Fox's opinion section on their website is conservative (or at least more conservative than the others) but their news section is chock full of recycled AP/Reuters garbage. THAT bothers me.
The practice worked so well for Bubba. /sarc
Actually, on 9/11 we went to great lengths NOT to declare war on Islam. If we are eventually forced into doing it, it will not be by our choice.
Perhaps you two might explain why the bulk of the forces fighting and dying on our side currently are Muslims?
Right now the bulk of the fighting being done is Muslim vrs Muslim. Your dogma would turn all of them into foes. You would repeat the same mistake the Russians made in Afghanistan and the Nazis in Eastern Europe. It demonstrates a complete ignorance of how Counter Insurgency differers fundamentally from Total War. You would have us repeat every mistake made by every Great Power in history trying to respond to a Asymmetrical threat. As a military doctrine for the USA, it would be lunacy.
Ferguson wrote a PRO American article that some moron used in a quote which then Reeves quoted using both quotes and, thus, mangling the English language.
a Canadian named Robert Malcolmson, caught the most interesting part of Ferguson's arguments in a single paragraph, published as a letter to the editor in the magazine's current issue. This is what Malcolmson said:
"'No question, 9/11 was an act of war,' said Ferguson. Actually, 9/11 was mass murder, and it should have been treated as mainly a challenge for the police and intelligence services. Interpreting the 9/11 attacks as an act of war demanding military reprisal has only helped up the ante of violence throughout the world."
It was Malcolmson who wrote it was mass murder.
Yeah, that strategy worked so well in the 90's...
Comes a time when a man is old enough to stop publishing his nonsense.
Uh... I meant, who wrote the poem you posted?
Much better we just IGNORE threats, and when the next one happens, and the NEXT one happens, ignore those, too...
Just IMAGINE how many lives could have been saved if we'd just admitted we DESERVED Pearl Harbor, for chrrissakes!!!
(s)
The Time Mag piece is at:
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1531303,00.html
You're right. The War on Terror is a terrible misnomer. It's so vaguely defined that people make of it whatever they want it, or fear it, to be.
We call it a war, but run it, at best, like a police action. We sent in troops like a sherrif with a warrant looking for contraband and suspects. We certainly didn't mobilize like we felt it was a real war, and we treat terrorists like we do crime suspects. It's well on it's way to becoming the Lawsuit on Terror.
Facing attacks that look more like murderous crimes than anything else, and lacking a call to mobilization, Americans are concluding that this simply a law enforcement matter. That view is going to be more and more prevalant the longer it goes before another attack. People are starting to think of the War on Terror in terms of the War on Drugs. More of a turn of the phrase than anything else.
It's easy to understand, because from their point of view, there's little evidence, save 9/11, that anyone will be successful in hurting them. They see President Bush on TV saying "War on Terror, War on Terror", but they don't feel it anywhere.
Reeves can't get it right. We--meaning the West--have been at war with Islam since Arab armies came storming out of Arabia into the East Roman Empire after the death of Mohammed. One of the great works of Catholic theology, Summa Contra Gentiles, by Thomas Aquinas, was an effort to engage in dialogue with the Muslims on common ground, Aristotle's philosophy. One of the reasons for the success of the Reformation in Germany was the pre-occupation of the Emperor Charles V with the Trukish advance. The Turks made it as far as Vienna before they were turned back and when they made one last try, in 1685, the deefat of theis seige led to a rout and the beginning of a decline of the Sultan's empire which finally ended in 1919 ands the beginbning of the present situtation, which now see Islam on the resurgence.
I love the idea of a split screen ad with Al-Zawahiri on one side, and Murtha/Pelosi/Schumer/Dean/Kerry/etc etc on the other.
I don't think we have the stones to do it, but it would be schweet!
Reeves has the unmitigated gall to quote him at the end of his article.
Kipling would boxed Reeves about the head and face for quoting him.
One of the really infuriating things in modern politics is the level of disinformation, misinformation, demagoguery and out right lying going on about the mission in Iraq. Democrats have spent the last 3+ years lying about Iraq out of a political calculation. The assumption is that the natural isolationist mindset of the average American voter, linked to the inherent Anti Americanism (what is misnamed the "Anti War movement") of the more feverish Democrat activists (especially those running the US's National "News" media) would restore them to national political dominance. The truth is the Democrat Party Leadership has simply lacked the courage to speak truth to whiners. The truth is that even if Al Gore won the 2000 election and 09-11 still happened we would be doing the EXACT same things in Iraq we are doing now.
Based on the political situation in the region left over from the 1991 Gulf War plus the domestic political consensus built up in BOTH parties since 1991 as well as fundamental military strategic laws, there was NO viable strategic choice for the US but to take out Iraq after finishing the initial operations in Afghanistan.
To start with Saddam's Iraq was our most immediate threat. We could NOT commit significant military forces to another battle with Saddam hovering undefeated on our flank nor could we leave significant forces watching Saddam. The political containment of Iraq was breaking down. That what Oil for Food was all about. Oil for Food was an attempt by Iraq to break out of it's diplomatic isolation and slip the shackles the UN Sanctions put on it's military. Then there was the US Strategic position to consider.
The War on Islamic Fascism is different sort of war. in facing this Asymmetrical threat, we have a hidden foe, spread out across a geographically diverse area, with covert sources of supply. Since we cannot go everywhere they hide out, in fact often cannot even locate them until the engage us, we need to draw them out of hiding into a kill zone.
Iraq is that kill zone. That is the true brilliance of the Iraq strategy. We draw the terrorists out of their world wide hiding places onto a battlefield they have to fight on for political reasons (The "Holy" soil of the Arabian peninsula) where they have to pit their weakest ability (Conventional Military combat power) against our greatest strength (ability to call down unbelievable amounts of firepower) where they will primarily have to fight other forces (the Iraqi Security forces) in a battlefield that is mostly neutral in terms of guerrilla warfare. (Iraqi-mostly open terrain as opposed to guerrilla friendly areas like the mountains of Afghanistan or the jungles of SE Asia).
Did any of the critics of liberating Iraq ever look at a map? Iraq, for which we had the political, legal and moral justifications to attack, is the strategic high ground of the Middle East. It's the Central Position. A geographic barrier that severs ground communication between Iran and Syria as well as providing another front of attack in to either state or into Saudi Arabia if needed.
There were other reasons to do Iraq but here is the strategic military reason we are in Iraq. We have taken, an maintain the initiative from the Terrorists. They are playing OUR game on ground of OUR choosing.
Problem is Counter Insurgency is SLOW and painful. Often a case of 3 steps forward, two steps back. One has to wonder if the American people have either the emotional maturity, nor the intellect" to understand. It's so much easier to spew made for TV slogans like "No Blood for Oil" or "We support the Troops, bring them home" or dumbest of all "We are creating terrorists" then to actually THINK.
Westerners in general, and the US citizens in particular seem to have trouble grasping the fundamental fact of this foe. These Islamic Fascists have NO desire to co-exist with them. The extremists see all this PC posturing by the Hysteric Left as a sign that we are weak. Since they want us dead, weakness encourages them. There is simply no way to coexist with people who completely believe their "god" will reward them for killing us.
So we can covert to Islam, die or kill them. Iraq is about killing enough of them to make the rest of the Jihadists realize we are serious. They same way killing enough Germans, Italians and Japanese eliminated the ideologies of Nazism, Fascism and Bushido.
Americans need to understand how Bin Laden and his ilk view us. In the Arab world the USA is considered a big wimp. We have run away so many times. Lebanon, the Kurds, the Iraqis in 1991, the Iranians, Somalia, Clinton all thru the 1990s etc etc etc. The Jihadists think we will run again. In fact they are counting on it. That way they can run around screaming "We beat the American just like the Russians, come join us in Jihad" and recruit the next round of "holy warriors". Iraq is also a show place where we show the Muslim world that there are a lines they cannot cross. On 9-11-01 they crossed that line and we can, and will, destroy them for it
I sit corrected. Thanks.
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