Posted on 11/17/2006 8:18:07 PM PST by Starman417
CAMBRIDGE, Massachusetts (Reuters) - The top U.S. general in the Middle East said on Friday that if the world does not find a way to stem the rise of Islamic militancy, it will face a third world war.
Army Gen. John Abizaid compared the rise of militant ideologies, such as the force driving al Qaeda, to the rise of fascism in Europe in the 1920s and 1930s that set the stage for World War Two.
"If we don't have guts enough to confront this ideology today, we'll go through World War Three tomorrow," Abizaid said in a speech titled "The Long War," at Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government in Cambridge, outside Boston.
If not stopped, Abizaid said extremists would be allowed to "gain an advantage, to gain a safe haven, to develop weapons of mass destruction, to develop a national place from which to operate. And I think that the dangers associated with that are just too great to comprehend."
Abizaid said the world faces three major hurdles in stabilizing the Middle East region: Easing Arab-Israeli tensions, stemming the spread of militant extremism, and dealing with Iran, which Washington has accused of seeking to develop nuclear bombs.
"Where these three problems come together happens to come in a place known as Iraq," said Abizaid, who earlier in the week warned Congress against seeking a timeline for withdrawing U.S. troops from the country that is wracked by insurgent and sectarian violence.
"The sacrifice that is necessary to stabilize Iraq, in my view, must be sustained in order for the region itself to become more resilient," Abizaid said.
A week after President George W. Bush's Republicans took a drubbing in congressional elections largely because of voter anger over the Iraq war, Abizaid said the United States had underestimated the challenge of preparing Iraq security forces to stabilize the violent country.
"We thought we could go from U.S.-led to Iraqi-led without having to pay the price of the transition, in terms of manpower and resources, etc.," Abizaid said. "Now we realize we have to invest heavily in this transition so you can bring them up faster."
In testimony to congressional committees on Wednesday, Abizaid rejected calls to either boost U.S. troop levels to quell the violence or to start a phased withdrawal from Iraq.
He said the level of violence there was "unacceptably high" and said the 140,000 U.S. forces currently deployed there should focus on training Iraqi units.
Lawmakers from both parties criticized Abizaid's comments as showing the Pentagon had not developed a new, effective plan for the Iraq situation.
Catch up, General. We're already there.
"Could"???? Does anyone other than
meatheaded lazy brained craven
DemoWussies, think that it can be
avoided??
We are already in it.
He forgot the 4th. Our leftist MSM and our Dhimmicrats.
Duh!!
At least he said it.
If we pull out of Iraq prematurely, we will go back there the third time.
YEah, when this thing goes hot it's not going to be troops dying by the tens of thousands in a meat grinder in Flanders' Fields. It's going to be hundreds of thousands or millions going up in a few milliseconds in the furnace of a nukular chain reaction.
Oh, that's an easy one to solve!
Either wipe out the Jews, or wipe out the rabtards.
I vote rub out the rabtards. They haven't EVER contributed anything positive to anyone EVER! (They claim a few things, but upon closer inspection, you find they actually "borrowed" it from another civilization!)
I agree. We will have another world war. It will be horrible and more killed than in any before. I hope we win but I am not sure. There will be nuclear war. Maybe we won't get hit but it may take the mushroom cloud to wake this country up. I think about 15 percent of citizens will flee to Canada and be traitors. It is going to be bad. Hold your children while you can and those yet to be born may very well be on the front line. I really do expect this.
Unless they can make this clear to the bliss ninnies, they'll continue to serve the jihadi cause.
--Duh!! At least he said it. --
Abizaid is retiring soon; he and others should keep this up. It's essential for military men to advocate the concept that this is a war to be won, not a "situation to be solved" like Namby-Pamby Pelosi says.
There's been enough brainwashing of U.S. college students by the Whored Churchills and Chomskys of the world.
I live up here in MA, and on the evening news they showed the demonstrators outside the forum.
Snotty-nosed 20-something liberals who know all that goes on in the world and feel qualified to open their pie-holes to let us all know what SHOULD be done.
Sometimes listening to high school and college students just plain pisses me off.
How can you have a World War when most of the World has already surrendered?
We're gonna have to call it something else this time.
Cut all this talk crap, Sir, and go out and kill the enemy before they kill us. Ps 144
bttt
Characteristically, Reuters failed to reproduce the key testimony of General Abazaid. When Senator McCain questioned him regarding a solution to our dilemma in Iraq often advocated by McCain, the insertion of more American troops, Abazaid responded as I heard him on CNN International, "we could put in another 20,000 troops but that would have only a temporary effect." The general elaborated later that the United States could not sustain an additional 20,000 troops in Iraq!
In other words, American military manpower is so attenuated they cannot sustain even 20,000 more troops in Iraq!
To those of you on these threads who grandiosely advocate the invasion of Iran or the invasion of Syria or the bombing of this or the bombing of that, take heed: the catastrophic misadventure in Iraq has brought America militarily to its knees in the area of conventional war. The frightening truth is that against the greatest threat to the existence of America since the fall of the wall, the acquisition by Iran of the bomb, we are out of conventional military options.
So poor, dear General Abazaid is left with the option of going before Congress and testifying that we cannot withdraw--because that would be catastrophic--and we cannot go the other way, that is to increase or force, because we just don't have the horses. In other words, everything is just exactly perfect the way it is.
The pity is the American people before the last election didn't have the opportunity to hear General Abazaid tell them just how we have it exactly right in Iraq.
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