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 know our MILITARY can't be beat, but I know the people of this nation and the pols can.
I also don't believe this nation can easily recover from anything other than a total strategic victory in Iraq.
May God grant that victory!!
Thank you, Kristinn for writing this. And God Bless You.
Yes. Until you provide the date, place, number of Americans killed, and the name of the Hussein delegate that ordered these Americans killed.
"On October 23, 1983, around 6:20 am, a yellow Mercedes-Benz delivery truck drove to Beirut International Airport, where the 1st Battalion 8th Marines, under the U.S. 2nd Marine Division of the United States Marines, had set up its local headquarters. The truck turned onto an access road leading to the Marines' compound and circled a parking lot. The driver then accelerated and crashed through a barbed wire fence around the parking lot, passed between two sentry posts, crashed through a gate and barreled into the lobby of the Marine headquarters."
"The death toll was 241 American servicemen: 220 Marines, 18 Navy personnel and 3 Army soldiers. Sixty Americans were injured. In the attack on the French barracks, 58 paratroopers were killed and 15 injured. In addition, the elderly Lebanese custodian of the Marines' building was killed in the first blast. [1] The wife and four children of a Lebanese janitor at the French building also were killed.[2]"
Hussein Musawi was directed to carry out this bombing by Hojjat ol-eslam Ali Akbar Mohtashemi, the Iranian ambassador in Damascus.
http://www.kentimmerman.com/2003_12_22-beirut.htm
But hey, do not let little ole me dissuade you from supporting Shiite killers of US Marines.
I used the Sadr-from-a-lamppost thing to illustrate that the people who say "if we only killed him things would get better" are not correct. Killing Zarqawi and Saddam didn't stop the terrorists/insurgents in Iraq. Even killing UBL won't end AQ (although I would do little dancing in the streets). The war against Islam is going to be long and end up brutal. Even after 9/11, we (America) weren't ready for it and still aren't. I cringe every time I hear our generals at a briefing pat themselves on the back for our pinpoint strikes with smart bombs that minimized casualties. You win a war like this like our parents/grandparents won WWII, by saying in effect "f*** ALL the Germans and ALL the Japanese". Hell, my parents still won't buy a Japanese car and it's been over 60 years.
It's absurd to think there will be a militarily stronger Iraq within a decade of now.
What, do you think he'd have trouble selling the oil? It would be a mere hiccup, he'd have it in China next week if there were a problem sending it here.
We would be hurt a lot more than he would.
regretably, I do think an American presence there is part of the calculation as being a factor in the counterweight to Iran. Hopefully low profile.
You are 100% correct. Hezbullah Shiites just got a leg up starting in 1979 (or 1983, depending on who you believe). The mantra of "it is ALL AQ" has worked pretty well at deflecting any criticism of the poor oppressed majority Shiites. This is why Mookie al-Sadr is still sucking air. The administration lacked the intestinal fortitude to kill the fat b@stard in the cemetery. Even after his own men fragged him.
--What, do you think he'd have trouble selling the oil?--
Judging from the recent massive opposition demonstrations, he shouldn't be around to sell it in the future. However he knows how to rig elections (and Jimmy will certify them, of course).
I am not, nor have I ever suggested that our guys are killing them in great numbers.
What I'm saying is that it's more dangerous for people there now than it was under Hussein. The estimate in the newspapers for his secret-police killings number around 200,000. Throw in 30,000 Kurds he gassed. Spread that over 25 years. Do the math, and that's about 25 people per day. How many are getting killed in the mess there now? We just had a few hundred last week.
If you throw in the Iran-Iraq war casualties (500,000 Iraqis), it's greater, but then you'd have to throw in all the Iraqi combat deaths from our war too, including the army regulars and the militiamen we've killed. You're starting to approach comparable numbers of Iraqi dead.
Thank goodness for that.
it's a hateful bunch of snakes. Supposedly the Iraqi Shia , based in Najaf, Iraq, are more "orthodox, " and historically distinct from the Qom, Iran- based Shia of Ayatollah Khomeini and his successors; that's why they stuck with Iraq in the Iran-Iraq war rather than going over to the Iranian side.
And the last Palestinian suicide bombing in the U.S. was when...? Or are you suggesting that there were specific Iraqi plans to attack us?
He hasn't gotten the nukes he was clearly working toward. Nukes he would have found a way to deliver.
What we've discovered over there is that he wasn't even close to getting them.
Look for your own information.
I cite what I do out of common sense and seeing what happened 30 years ago when we decided to throw in the towel. We felt the Vietnamese weren't doing enough either and abandoned them, giving them nothing in the way of support but hollow promises that never came to fruition.
As for your "POOR" statement, is any amount of money worth facing sucide bombers when they could just as easily join the insurgents? Ever think there are many who truly desire a chance to build their own style of free society? Not a mirror of our own, but theirs?
Those were war dead from the Iran-Iraq war.
In a way, it is more noble to fight than to be executed, even if it means more dead, I agree.
But I'd prefer to say the current situation is simply more violent and less controlled. Instead of being picked up by Saddam's gestapo, you end up being blown up on your way to the store. People are still living in fear, it's just that now the killing is more indiscriminate.
You are spot on as usual Kristinn.
You know you spoke the truth, seeing so many Wiener nation, pseudo males with their usual bull on display.
My several relatives who have served in Iraq and continue to do so know why they are there and proud to do so.
Iraq is just part of the entire war against the IslamoFascist.
The cut & run, I will stay home and not vote or I will teach the GOP a lesson and vote Dem. malcontents need to understand we are not fighting the same type of enemy
as we did in WWII.
This is a world wide war of an enemy who wears no uniform, no front, no rear.
This is not simple, quick or neat.
One contention: "Name one good thing it has done for us to have him gone -- and I mean for US"
He can't command a cohesive national military hostile to the US. That includes all the NBC programs and conventional weapons (terrorism) at his disposal.
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