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."
Go ahead and justify your support for Shiite Hezbullah now.
In retrospect, analysts say, the Beirut bombing provided a game plan for 20 years of terrorist attacks against U.S. interests, although no one at the time predicted today's war against global terror.
Speaking in Tampa last week, Caspar Weinberger, President Reagan's defense secretary, ranked Beirut as the worst event on his watch. In his view, there was no good reason for U.S. troops to be there to help a peacekeeping force responding to Israel's invasion of Lebanon.
"I urged as strongly as I could, apparently not strongly enough, that we shouldn't be there, that we should take those troops out, at the very least put them on ships offshore," Weinberger said. "They were sitting in the middle of a bull's eye."
The military soon pulled out of Beirut, and experts say that emboldened other terrorists. Six months earlier, zealots had driven a truck bomb into the U.S. Embassy in Beirut, killing 17 Americans and 46 others. And afterward, terrorists:
Attacked U.S. embassies in Kuwait two months later and in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998, killing about 230 people.
Hijacked TWA Flight 847 for 17 days in the Middle East in 1985, taking hostages and killing a Navy diver.
Blew up Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, in 1988, killing 270.
Bombed the World Trade Center in 1993, killing six and wounding about 1,000.
Bombed Khobar Towers, a U.S. base in Saudi Arabia, in 1996, killing 19 and wounding more than 370.
Struck the USS Cole in Yemen in 2000, killing 17 sailors and injuring 39 others.
Flew hijacked jets into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon and crashed one into a Pennsylvania field Sept. 11, 2001, killing more than 3,000.
By the way ALL of these events were brought to you courtesy of Shiite Hezbollah.
Given the hundreds of thousands found in mass graves I doubt that. But numbers aside there is another difference. Today two sides are fighting and killing each other. Before neither side was fighting. One was executing and the other was being executed. You're free to see the latter as the more noble condition if you want to.
don't despair; the unanimity around here departed about noon 01/20/01. And if lack of unanimity was the price we paid to be rid of that guy, it's just too bad it didn't end 4 years before that.
Ever hear about the German WOLF PACK, after we had supposedly won in WW II?
How long did it take to make Germany ( well, West Germany; the Russians had East Germany and we all know what a "great" job the USSR did with that bit of land ), a "civilized", Western nation, that had once had a democracy, CIVIL again? And what about Japan, a country that had NEVER had a democracy at all, into one, once WW II was over and done with?
Please don't even attempt to play games with history, here on FR. It will profit you nothing but scorn, derision, and contempt.
A brief glossary:
CARF = Cut and Run FReepers.
CARA = Cut and Run Appeasers.
CARB = Cut and Run Buchananites.
CARC = Cut and Run Communists.
CARD = Cut and Run Democrats.
CARE = Cut and Run Existentialists.
CARG = Cut and Run Globalists.
CARH = Cut and Run Hedonists.
CARI = Cut and Run Intellectuals.
CARJ = Cut and Run Jimmycarterites.
CARK = Cut and Run Know-it-alls.
CARL = Cut and Run Liberals.
CARM = Cut and Run Media.
CARN = Cut and Run Neosocialists.
CARO = Cut and Run Opportunists.
CARP = Cut and Run Politicians.
CARQ = Cut and Run Quislings.
CARR = Cut and Run Radicals.
CARS = Cut and Run Seditionists.
CART = Cut and Run Traitors.
CARU = Cut and Run United-Nationists.
CARV = Cut and Run Vacillators.
CARW = Cut and Run Wieners.
CARX = Cut and Run Xenophobes.
CARY = Cut and Run Yahoos.
CARZ = Cut and Run Zbigniewbrzezinskiites.
It's time to fight for a victory. If it's a struggle to win hearts while killing terrorists, those hearts are not on our side in the first place.
that's a movie.
We didn't hang any Nazis from lamp post; we captured or killed them and held the Nuremberg Trials.
I do not know of any studies that substantiate your statement, other than quoting a certain radio personality. Ever think that the IRAQI Police kidnapping 150 or so other IRAQIs are not just wearing copied uniforms (that issue was dealt with) and signed up for another reason? Makes one wonder, based on numerous similar occurrences, what kind of screening is done, what the "sign up" requirements are, and if they are recruiting BAATH party members... oh that's right, they (politicians) were trying to decide if they should let former Baathists into the Police and Army. I guess they decided FOR that! Please post a citation if they decided to exclude the Baathists from the Police and Army. TIA.
I don't want to lose heart. I want to believe as he does...
I don't get it. Are you still denying that Hussein killed Americans?
Really? I've kind of been under the impression al Quada is Sunni.
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Many come out to show war support across land
http://www.post-gazette.com/nation/20030324antiwar0324p7.asp
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EXCERPT:
"(November 19, 2006) -- Today, on a Sunday news show, Sen. John McCain called for a massive injection of U.S. troops into Iraq. He claimed that the war could still be won and the consequences of pulling out would be catastrophic. With the president's visit to Vietnam reviving bad memories and links to the Iraq war, McCain asserted that while it was proper to eventually abandon Southeast Asia, the fallout from leaving Iraq would imperil all of us. " REF: http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/columns/pressingissues_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1003409463
Oh, I agree; there'd be no reason to fight them if they weren't ; but they don't have inexhaustible resources or will either and no reason to believe at this point they can't be beaten, that I know of.
That statement alone is proof that McCain is not fit to lead an Easter Egg hunt.
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