New Iraq Risks: What the Elections Means

Rangel, Moron and Murtha will try something. One of Pelosi's challanges will be keeping those three from getting the next supplemental cut down in THe House.

Expect more and more military men and women to be charged with murder in a war zone. It's about all the 'RATS can do.

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Peters, as always, hits on the fatal flaw of preemptive war. When you go to war against a country before its hit you, you don't have the moral authority to utterly destroy your enemy...which is the only way wars are won

Nonsense: in our post-modern polity, you never have moral authority defending yourself; you only have that as a victim.

And Peters has plenty of blame for the politicians but curiously little for the commanders: it's not just DOD bureaucrats who think we have to 'persuade' the enemy to surrender by making nice-nice. Take a look at the new Army manual, it's full of PC platitudes.

There is a mean between the extremes of the PC wanking we're doing now and city busting, and that is the application of ruthless and pitiless force to the narrow segment of the Iraqi population that's causing the problems. Capture, interrogate (by any means), follow up on the intel, and hang the survivors when finished with that cell before moving on to the next. And if we don't have the stomach for it, then we should just quit now.

All the Rats have to do now is claim victory for the inevitable victory in Iraq without even lifting a finger. President Bush said it correctly, the only way we can lose is to leave before the job is done and that's why the Rats won't get us out they'll just claim the road of victory was based on their change in direction. The MSM will now start changing their tune about how Iraq is going and start reporting successes and in about a year will declare the victory for the military and Democrats alike thus assuring Clinton gets elected President while looking strong on national security.

After the recent elections in which one party with the willful participation of most of the media spent several years convincing Americans that defending themselves against unprovoked attack is immoral we have a democratic majority in both the House and Senate. We should take pause though and ask ourselves do our enemies, the extreme
Islamist really care that this change has occurred? Will it cause them to abandon their extreme ideology that calls for the death and destruction of any human who does not
conform to their extreme religious views? Do you believe that one of these extremist if he or she had the capability to take out a city block in New York or poison the water supply of an American city would turn and walk away now that America has elected democrats?
This was an election in which the American people voted for retreat. In the coming weeks you will see a “pragmatic study” of Iraq and then a gradual drawdown of troops. Where does this leave us? I believe that it leaves us in a state where our enemy is emboldened. They were banking on this. The democrats will spend the next two years
insuring that they keep control of both houses and also win the presidency.
While this is going on here at home what will the Hamas organization be doing in
Lebannon? What will the extreme Shia faction in Iran be doing? The stage has been set for the attack on Isreal. Isn’t it interesting that America most likely will have Hillary in the White House when a nuclear tipped missle hits Isreal. I realize that my view may be in the minority at this time. We should all remember Genesis 12:2 in which God tells Abram: “I will bless them that bless thee and I will curse him that curseth thee: And in thee shall all families of the earth be blessed.”

The killings in Iraq will now be called unfortunate incidents, the beheadings will be nuanced retaliations, and victory will be declared because the demonRATs are in power.

Hmm...Peters has started to irritate me a little although I still have a very great deal of respect for him. But here he calls for a plan to win without specifying what that plan might consist of, which is not too far off what he rightly accuses the Dems of doing.

I do not see that McCain's unquestionable military antecedents make him any better a strategic thinker than Bush, frankly. As for the Presidential nomination being his, color me skeptical. He has an awful lot of work to do with the national party machinery in the next year or so if he's going to pull that off.

More to the point, we are not "losing" in Iraq, we're stuck in a situation where nobody has described what "winning" looks like except for this ain't it. That's a little murky to go on and it's no surprise that nobody is happy with it but the nay-sayers. What will certainly result will not be any idealized plan on anyone's part; it's already too late for that and it was never likely in the first place.

What has been accomplished is the inception of an Iraqi government, however creaky, that is going to have to stand on its own at some point, and whose appearance will be extremely unlikely to conform to anyone's idea of utopia. Setting the bar there was an artifact of domestic politics and the Dems ought to be ashamed of it but are instead rewarded for it...at least to this point. But our object was not to force the Iraqi government into any mold nor would that have been either prudent or possible. If now it's starting to look different from expectation then it is the expectation that needs to be re-examined. We cannot force a partition of the country or an amendment to the Iraqi constitution or any of the other hair-brained ideas that have floated through Democrat pundits of late. Only the Iraqis can do that, and what we bled for was their right to do so. And they have it. That at least should partly describe victory and it is bitter indeed to have that marginalized or diminished by those with more of a stake in the appearance of failure than in the reality of success.

"What the elections means"?? Goodness NY Post, work on the grammar! Anyway, the election results have the Arabs cheering in the streets, so they can't mean anything good.

Yeah, I've always wondered what The NY Times would consider a win.

SUBMISSION ACCOMPLISHED.

Peters, as always, hits on the fatal flaw of preemptive war. When you go to war against a country before its hit you, you don't have the moral authority to utterly destroy your enemy...which is the only way wars are won

As always, someone has imagined a column that supports their views, since Peters at no time mentions "preemptive war," "utterly destroy," or "moral authority." So much for the view that we did not have moral authority when fighting Germany in WWII since it didn't hit us first. As a rule, there are no great lessons to be learned in Peters' rants against Rumsfeld.

Now onto other things Peters writes in the same column:

"McCain's in a much stronger position than he was a few days ago - the Republican nomination is now his. The midterm elections were a repudiation not only of the administration's non- strategy in Iraq, but of the small-but- vocal Taliban wing of the Republican Party - the anti-science, woman-fearing inquisitors. They hoped to block McCain's nomination. Now, from Pennsylvania to Missouri, they're the walking dead in the political landscape.

"But McCain, a heroic figure who genuinely seeks to do the right thing for our country, has to be careful. His sense of duty could lead him to support an ill-conceived administration effort to "pull it off at last" in Iraq....

"Advice to Sen. McCain: Ask the tough questions before either the administration or the Democrats on the Hill make a bad situation worse in Iraq. Our government needs adult supervision. You're it."

Comment: You be the judge as to whether Peters, as always, hits the nail on the head --after only six days ago throwing in the towel on Iraq and declaring the war unwinnable while urging readers to vote Democratic.

O'Reilly asked Shumer last night when things so wrong in Iraq do we blame the Dems now and Shumer said no it would still be the President's call on Iraq so would be to blame (didn't day blame part but I could read that into it!).

Isn't this amazing. After screaming for over a year about the "defeat" in Iraq, Peters now suddenly see the possibilities of victory because the Democrats have won back their power.

Guy is so bi-polar he is useless.

I'll agree that Peters is a Dem, but I still believe he has some validity here. The Dems have to man up on this. Schumer will not get away with weaseling. They now have to offer a better way to do it, if they want to improve their chances in 2008.

Try thinking instead of clinging to your Dinocon Do Nothing dogmas. Dogmas, clung to by the "realists" despite being the fundamental cause of the 09-11-01 attacks. The "Realists" all sat on their butts for two decades thinking if we just ignore the problem it would go away. The Realists kept kidding themselves What a blown up Embassy there, a few dead sailors here. Just ignore the trouble the locals will make sure it will not get out of hand. We got 09-11 thanks to them. How much more American blood needs to be put on the "Realists" peoples hands before they wake up to reality? Their dogma delays, does not fix the problem.

Read and learn rather then cling to your Know Nothing dogmas Iron

Why Iraq

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. There 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. A Geographic barrier that severs ground communication between Iran and Syria apart as well as providing another front of attack in 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

Bush is a hugely better stategic thinker they you or Peters are demonstating yourself to be here. Learn something instead of clining to your emotion based position on Iraq.