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."
I've said many times to many people here in the Bay Area. This Iraq War is the resumption of hostilities following Saddam's numerous breaches of the treaty he signed at the end of GW1.
Cut-and-runners: You don't like what's happening in the hot spots of Iraq? How much better would you like that happening in our home towns?
One aviation writer I know (not a Freeper), was in Fallujah. A year-and-a-half ago, he told me emphastically that we won Fallujah. Wouldn't know it from the fifth column press.
We cannot go wobbly. We have a future to protect, as do the Iraqis. Al Qaeda and their cohorts are salivating at the thought of the United States of America showing that our collective spines have dissolved.
Who will accommodate them?
We have to continue killing them in sand-land. My choice would be to put all the PC bullsh!t aside and bomb the enemy the way we did 60 years ago to Dresden and Tokyo.
But just tonight I was watching The Day After on TV for the first time since I saw it's original airing as a college student in 1983. For those of you who don't remember, it was a made-for-TV movie about the effects of a nuclear war between the U.S. and the Soviet Union.
I remember then how it was billed as a major television event. Virtually everybody I knew watched it that night. There were discussion groups after the movie aired, and commentary from just about every political pundit. And, of course, it was a thinly veiled attack on Ronald Reagan and his policy of rebuilding our nuclear deterrence.
There was no internet, no talk radio, no new media of any type to present an opposing view. The DBM was monolithic in it's support of the movie and it's opposition to Reagan. Yet somehow, Reagan still made his case to the American people and prevailed in 1984.
It gives me hope that it's still possible to defeat the Democrats and the DBM and win this war.
You're confused because it is a democrat technique being used by republicans. Those who support an unconditional victory in Iraq, those who feel we should allow our troops to do what they do best and that's fight to win, those who question whether the war should be fought by politicians as it was during Vietnam are being called "cut and run".
It is confusing because it's not honest
amen
I could spend the next hour or two researching past threads and come up with a much longer list, but I don't think I really need to do that, now do I? Sorry...your "gotcha" game didn't work.
Scouts Out! Cavalry Ho!
I agree with you completely. Liberals have no clue how handy they are for the terrorists. I bet Old Osama busts a GUT in his cave reading his subscription to the NYT.
And let me add something from another thread (the story of Army Capt. Jeffrey Toczylowski's post-humous $100,000 party for his friends and family:
***QUOTE:
Later in the news story, Toz is quoted:
"Don't ever think that you are defending me by slamming the Global War on Terrorism or the U.S. goals in that war," Jeffrey Toczylowski wrote. "As far as I am concerned, we can send guys like me to go after them or we can wait for them to come back to us again. I died doing something I believed in and have no regrets except that I couldn't do more."
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1741294/posts?page=4#4
Are you suggesting that Iraq had made specific plans to strike on our soil? There is zero proof of that.
BUMP!
I don't see how it benefits us, the taxpayers who are financing the whole thing. Read the whole sentence:
"Name one good thing it has done for us to have him (saddam) gone -- and I mean for US, not for freedom or democracy or the Iraqi people or any of that BS."
Bump!
Slight OT: Did you or anyone see the latest episode of "Criminal Minds"? A brilliant piece of unvarnished story-telling that supported the use of cross-agency intelligence sharing, Gitmo interviews (this was a chess match in motion) and ultimately strategic deception to save thousands of lives.
I was shocked.
I wanted to say that badly. I have 100% faith in our troops, but I dont have enough faith that the politicians in DC will understand it before it's too late.
We still have Syria and Iran to deal with. And North Korea. Syria and Iran surround Iraq... I say bring the war to those bringing it to us and Iraq.
Scouts Out! Cavalry Ho!
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