Posted on 11/24/2006 6:46:08 PM PST by kristinn
I'm reading an astonishing number of comments on Free Republic these days by posters who have joined the ranks of the anti-American left in calling for an immediate withdrawal from Iraq. Some claim to have military experience, some claim to be patriotic Americans and some claim to be smarter than the rest.
These posters are joining the Murtha-Rangel-McDermott treason caucus. Oh, they say they love the troops, but their decision to abandon them in the field speaks otherwise.
Three years ago, the United States led an international coalition to rid the world of one of the worst regimes on the planet. Saddam Hussein was an international terrorist: He financed terrorism, he trained terrorists and he harbored terrorists. He waged war on Iran, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and Israel. He waged war on the people of Iraq, including genocidal campaigns against the Kurds in the north and the marsh Arabs in the south.
Saddam successfully subverted the Oil-for-Food program and was wearing down support for continuing the sanctions keeping him in check.
He had numerous contacts with al Qaeda over the years. He tried to assassinate a former U.S. president. He maintained research capabilities to implement nuclear, chemical and biological weapons as soon as the sanctions were lifted. There is evidence that some of these programs would have been operational within a year even with the sanctions in place.
The decision to remove Saddam and his regime as part of the Global War on Terror was correct.
Three-and-a-half years after Iraq and the world were liberated from Saddam and his terrorist regime, there are those on Free Republic who are clamoring to give up, surrender, cut and run, stab the troops in the back, betray the Iraqis, betray our allies in the GWOT, spit on the graves of our fallen heroes and join Cindy Sheehan, Medea Benjamin and Ramsey Clark in bringing about America's defeat in the GWOT.
It's only been three-and-a-half years--only six months since the freely elected government in Iraq was formed. In that time, what has been called a mini-Marshall Plan of construction and reconstruction has come to fruition. The Iraqis have held three national elections, they have held numerous local elections, fourteen out of eighteen Iraq provinces are relatively peaceful and stable.
Six months ago, when the Iraqi government was formed, the experts said the war would be taken to Baghdad because our enemies in the region could not abide the example of a free, democratic society in the Middle East. For once, the experts were right. The battle of Baghdad has been a prolonged Tet Offensive style operation of headline-grabbing attacks intended to sap the morale of Americans and Iraqis alike.
From what I've been reading on Free Republic lately, a lot of Freepers have fallen for the enemy's ploy and are howling like barking moonbats for our immediate withdrawal from Iraq. Some of that talk is couched in talk of 'we're fighting a PC war like Vietnam!' The soldiers I met in Iraq recently told Debra Argel Bastian to pass on a message to the Vietnam vets criticizing the war: With all due respect to your service, this is not Vietnam. It is not being fought like Vietnam. Please let us finish our mission.
But our enemy is playing the Vietnam ploy to great benefit. They know they can count on the American and world media to broadcast their propaganda. They work with leftist Americans to sabotage the war effort at home. They know these leftist Americans have allies in the Democratic party. They know they do not need a military victory--only political and psychological victories are needed to defeat America.
You guys are playing right in to their hands. Congratulations.
There are those who argue that murder and dictatorship is the mindset of the Middle East and that will not be changed by our actions. Funny how those who smugly denigrate the Arab peoples' capacity for freedom forget the wholesale slaughter of millions of Westerners by Westerners at the hands of Western dictatorships just a few generations past.
I hear complaints that the Iraqis aren't standing up. Yet, to use one common example, when police recruits are slaughtered in bombings, Iraqis line up the next day at the same recruiting center. The insurgency is small in number, but they are able to do enough damage on a daily basis to stretch out the time it will take to secure the whole of Iraq.
At this time of our testing, the American people are starting to go wobbly. Sadly, many Freepers are too. Our troops and their Commander-in-Chief are not, thank God. It's only been three-and-a-half years. The progress made has been phenomonal. Throw in the towel now, and you'll just have the terrorists follow us home. Everyone knows that, including you. I'm not willing to pay that price, not now, not ever, but you are.
Let me close by offering similar sentiments recently offered by two men 'in the know' on the situation in Iraq who are not giving up. First, Kurdish Regional Government Prime Minister Barzani: "When I was in the United States recently and read the negative news in the Washington Post, New York Times and in the network TV broadcasts, I even wondered if things had gotten so bad since I had left that I shouldn't return."
Next, Gen. Abizaid: "When I come to Washington, I feel despair. When I'm in Iraq with my commanders, when I talk to our soldiers, when I talk to the Iraqi leadership, they are not despairing."
On another thread
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1743438/posts
Shiites burn six Sunni worshippers alive
By QAIS AL-BASHIR ASSOCIATED PRESS WRITER
BAGHDAD, Iraq -- Shiite militiamen grabbed six Sunnis as they left Friday worship services, doused them with kerosene and burned them alive near Iraqi soldiers who did not intervene, police Capt. Jamil Hussein said.
The savage revenge attack for Thursday's slaying of 215 people in the Shiite Sadr City slum occurred as members of the Mahdi Army militia burned four mosques, and several homes while killing an unknown number of Sunni residents in the once-mixed Hurriyah neighborhood of Baghdad.
Gunmen loyal to radical anti-American Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr began taking over the neighborhood this summer and most of its Sunni residents already had fled.
Why have we gotten NATO into Afghanistan?
They are.
NATO in Afghanistan
NATO is a key component of the international community’s engagement in Afghanistan, assisting the Afghan authorities in providing security and stability, paving the way for reconstruction and effective governance.
http://www.nato.int/issues/afghanistan/index.html
HELLO!!!
Where? Show me a specific FR link that has a post of a FReeper clearly advocating for a cut-and-run. I've posted on dozens of Iraq threads and have not seen such a post.
You guys...look, I am sick and tired of some FReepers getting on some imaginary high horse and denigrating other FReepers, and you know who you are out there.
We've been falsely accused of staying home even after a million threads and posts telling us to GET OUT, GET OUT AND VOTE VOTE VOTE! Libertarian FReepers have been trashed. We've been called "purists," "single-issue" voters, etc. It's getting irritating, and a lot of FReepers are going to quit in disgust rather than waste their time engaging in circular arguments with those who blindly support the GOP.
Not true.
"Is reasonable discussion of the issue even an option for patriotic Americans, or is there only one acceptable path? Is everyone who questions it an enemy of America and the troops?"
The only option we have heard is cut and run. That answer will come back to haunt us. Not might, it will come back to haunt us.
If you have another plan, let's hear it, but please, first think about whether your plan, or someone else's plan will result in: terrorists taking over a nation with a lot of money from oil, other dictators taking over that will cooperate with terrorists and other thugs, or terrorist coming here because they think we are weak and will not fight them.
the blind-to-reality card?
A draft would not impact people who are not here "officially". They would not have to register for the draft, but they would vote--democrat--for the welfare dollars.
Rangel and his street punks are too stupid to be in today's military, they don't have, and can never acquire, the skills to be anything other than cannon fodder. Not a bad idea, now that I mention it.
Excellent!!!!!
"If we can't fight it the way he and McArthur would we should leave. Why let our soldiers die for "the PC cause." If the "PC" people ran football we'd have flag, co-sex and Saturday/Sunday afternoons would be ruined forever."
You can call it PC, but that does not mean we are not winning. We are winning. The conservative numbers of terrorist/insurgents killed by our forces is 35,000. We have captures tens of thousands more, we have brought relative peace to 14 or the 18 provinces, more and more operations and areas are being turned over to Iraqis to lead, and sometimes run without US/coalition troops involved.
Now I know I've entered some sort of alternative universe. Did some actually say they would vote for that souless *itch? I know a lot are saying they will vote third party, but sheesh... Hillary???? I'm glad I've managed to miss those and the cut-n-run posters.
kristinn--glad you are home safe and sound from your trip to Iraq.
I want to win this war in Iraq. We need to win this war. WE HAVE TO WIN THIS WAR.
I lived through the Vietnam War era and saw how the abandonment of our South Vietnamese allies in their time of need in 1975, by many of the same SOB Democrats that pollute Congress to this day, directly led to the deaths of 3 million Southeast Asians.
Plus it devalued the sacrifice of 58,000 Americans.
Starting Monday, we Freepers need to bombard Congress with phone calls that to hell with cut and run, to hell with playing kissy face with Iran and Syria, and to hell with defeatism.
We need to win this, or our children and grandchildren are going to be fighting for their lives, and cursing us for being lulled to sleep.
Thanks for writing this post. I could not put my finger on the negativity I was seeing here on FR, but you described it perfectly.
Good men and women have died to make Iraq a victory. We cannot let them down, and discard their sacrifice.
We must go forward, even if it means taking on Syria and Iran, because to go backward will invite disaster, both abroad and here at home.
God bless the best military force this country has ever fielded, and protect them from all harm.
BUMP!!
Agree 100%.
When will we become agressive? When will we hunt down Mookie Sadr and put a bullet between his eyes? And if we can't find him, level the places where he hangs out?
Why are we fighting with one hand tied behind our back? The terrorists sure as hell aren't!
Name one good thing it has done for us to have him gone -- and I mean for US, not for freedom or democracy or the Iraqi people or any of that BS. Iraq won't be free or a democracy anyway, what it needs is a new dictator and a return to the stability of earlier.
We have more Iraqis getting killed in the streets per day than we ever did under Hussein -- in fact, if this keeps up, we'll soon be able to start using an absolute-numbers comparison. The Iraqis have the USA to thank for that.
The region is now unstable in a way it never was with Hussein, and we're the only thing holding it together.
These folks who now argue that anyone who disagrees with them is a traitor, they're the ones who got us in this f-ed up mess to begin with. It's a little ironic, and painful, to watch them run at the mouth like this.
Are those the only two choices: keep doing what we've been doing or cut and run?
Thank you for letting me know that the loonie lefties are being watched. I am fairly new to reading and posting on Free Republic and I was becoming a little disillusioned at reading so many anti-USA and anti-military posts. There are also too many conspiracy theory posts that just don't belong here either. I nearly stopped logging in to FR recently. There ought to be a means of reporting trolls to the admins to keep FR focused and unpoluted by the left.
Good job ole bean!
God Bless our troops and the USA.
How the heck can the Iraqi people continue to just stand by and get blown up? How many more innocents are going to be shot and killed, kidnapped and tortured and burned alive?
I'm not worried about the support for our military, however, I'm getting more concerned about the will of the Iraqi people to accept this gift of freedom that we are helping them gain.
When are they going to start taking care of themselves? Why is Sadr still running his own militia? The Iraqi military and people need to start pulling their own weight soon.
g
Okay, now that's stupid. All you're doing is repeating DU talking points.
No comment.
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