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'm with you. Well said!
Well said.
Thanks for writing it, kristinn. Having had the opportunity to meet you in person, I think I understand what you are made of.
And you aren't a handwringing defeatist...you are a do-er.
Keep up the good work, I hope to meet you again soon.
I think it is important Lily to note this distiction:
The MSM are nothing more than a network of marketing firms all with the DNC as their largest client. They are a collection of ad copy writers and spokespersons for the DNC fraudulantly posing as credentialed jounalists.
This will blow your mind:
The MSM are not news organizations, they are marketing firms and as such must devote themselves to the successful promotion of their client. Balanced reporting is bad ad copy, therefore no expectation of balance exists.
Without the expectation of balance, I can reasonably state when Janeane Garofalo claims there is no liberal bias in the MSM, she is actually speaking the truth. :)
Best.Eddie01
Wow, I'd forgotten all about that. Nice find!
Thank God!! If we ran WWII like the Libs, we would be speaking German now.
barbra ann
Then I'd say we weren't very timid at all. About 3,000 KIAs in 3 years is nothing, More died in a single day June 6, 1944 in Normandy, and a bit later, (February 19-March 26, 1945) 6,825 Americans were killed taking Iwo Jima, in just 36 days. All this at a time when the total population of the US was much smaller.
You think we were "timid" then?
Just as proper cropping can a make a dozen people in a photograph look like a mob, proper "spin" can make a hiccup in a successful strategy look like it's a disaster.
Well, two that immediately come to mind that I have bumped heads with in the last two weeks are MNJohnnie and NYCRepublican, both of whom I'm pinging out of common courtesy. Johnnie makes a habit out of bashing conservatives, and I have openly questioned NYC Republican's knowledge of what a conservative really is. Sorry to have to drag you guys into this mess! 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.
This thread has close to 400 remarks on it. I've asked you to identify remarks on this thread that are not conservative, Ya know, using your words, "RINO, Pubbie, Country Club" type remarks.
I'm still waiting.
BTW, the gotcha game was yours and your request to another Freeper to identify "cut and run" Freepers on this thread. You then uesed the term "Pubbie/RINO/Country Club faction of this forum".
And then you blamed me for initiating the gotcha game that you started.
Nonsense. Internet usage in the United States is at almost 70%.
The thing to remember is that the Muslims--all of them-- do not want us in the Middle East...
No kidding.
they do not want us to set up a client state
Of course they don't.
and certainly they do not want Israel.
The Israeli's don't need 140,000 American soldiers to keep their country from falling into anarchy or to help them wage war.
I don't know what your point was.
I call bullsh!t. The President himself declined to bring Hussein to the US for trial.
We should stay and fight and finish the job.
I'm no Murtha.
There are a lot of people who cannot understand the point you make.
Been there, seen that. Thinking they are going to do it *again* in my lifetime, on *my* watch, makes me want to puke.
Either that, or run up the Jolly Rodger and start slitting throats, so to speak. (Although I'd prefer to use 7.62x51, loaded with expanding "sporting" ammunition rather than FMJ).
Excellent post, Phil!
BTTT!
(I laugh everytime I see the
chicken that laid a Murtha.)
;o)
so you say that the fearsome army that cut tail and ran before the American onslaught in '03 was a credible deterrent to Iran? The same Iraq that had been deprived of weapons and spare parts for 12 years? They couldn't fight Iran without poison gas 20 years ago. Did you believe they could now (prior to 3/03)? How long would it have been before the Shi'ite militias of South Iraq would have been armed by Iran and in revolt against Sadaam? Then what do you do, rehabilitate Sadaam (it seems that is what he was expecting even as U.S. forces closed in on Baghdad). Don't you think we'd be facing a more concentrated force of al Quada et al in Afghanistan if they weren't being bled in Iraq?You have to face them somewhere,in my opinion, and the old Clintonian approach that you appear to favor by default, ended with a bang on 9/11.
That is a very powerful photo essay.
BTTT!
Now that's a cut and run statement. We either engage the "popular" anti-republican way of thinking or we cut and run and let the dems take over.
If we refuse to engage them in discussion, we will never win them over to our side. You said it's "popular"... well how many times have you seen the electoral and popular vote go different ways?
Not on this forum, it isn't. The easy thing to do here is to drink all the BushBerry Kool-Aid you can hold, and not question anyone with an (R) behind his name. As your ad hominem remark proves, to step out of line here at Free Republic is to open yourself up to attack.
High school mentality? Sheesh...can't you come up with anything better than that?
Scouts Out! Cavalry Ho!
The troops' job is to follow the orders of their superiors, and ultimately (very indirectly, thankfully) the citizens of the country. No one here doubts they have done an admirable job of this.
Given this position of ours--this responsibility we have toward the troops--we would be irresponsible not to consider carefully at every stage whether we operations to which we commit them are worth the costs. I'm certainly not saying we should withdraw, but I'm saying we should keep an open mind; anything else would be wrong.
I think Rumsfeld lost this war...they should have taken out Sadr two years ago.
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