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To: Obadiah
The better question is, "Do we have the national will to persevere and win?"

The answer to that is a resounding NO. We haven't had the will to persevere and win a war since 1945.

Because of political pressure from Americans who were tired of reading or hearing about casualty reports we settled for a cease fire in Korea that left North Korea still entirely in communist hands and still a threat to South Korea after 3 years of war and almost 54,000 American dead. We pulled out of Vietnam because of public pressure after 9 years and 58,000 American dead plus 300,000 wounded. We can celebrate and hi-five each other when we slap down a tiny nation like Granada or Panama in a couple of days while sustaining only a handful of casualties. But the generations following the WWII generation simply haven't had and still don't have the stomach or the will to endure and win a long war of attrition and heavy casualties such as WWII was.

Here are a few stats that may give some perspective to the Iraq casualty figures. Approximately 700 MORE Americans are killed EVERY MONTH in traffic accidents here at home than have been killed in Iraq since day one of the invasion. Over 1/2 as many American servicemen were killed on D-Day alone as have died in Iraq since the invasion began. Almost 5 times as many French civilians were killed by Allied bombs, shells, and bullets in the D-Day invasion than Americans who have died in Iraq from the beginning of the war. The combined casualties sustained by the French and German armies during the WWI battle for Verdun ALONE totalled almost 1,000,000 men.

And now the majority of Americans are anxious to cut and run and declare victory after 2800 American deaths from all causes when everyone on the planet knows that most of Iraq is still in chaos, that it's government is still weak, incompetent, and dangerously divided by religious sectarianism, and that the Iraqi people will be totally engulfed in a vicious, bloody, civil/religious war the same day our troops leave. And what then will we have gained by the deaths of American servicemen and women when we bug out of Iraq? Since the Shiite PM Maliki and the Shiite cleric Al Sadr are already making overtures to predominantly Shiite Iran, I will not be surprised if the Iraqi government is officially allied with Iran and possibly Syria within months or even weeks after our departure.

Small wonder that we have so much trouble winning the hearts and minds of the ordinary people in every place where we try to install a democratic government. They all know by now that after a certain number of American casualties are incurred we will pull out and leave them to the tender mercies of the same kind of murderous tyrants, or worse, that we came in to rid them of in the first place. Maybe it would be better if in the future we just refrained from attempting to help oppressed people or from deposing hostile dictators since we obviously don't have the stomach to follow through when our people begin to die in that attempt.

157 posted on 11/29/2006 12:59:13 PM PST by epow
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To: epow

In light of the recently signed defense agreement between Iran and the Iraqi government, I should have said in my previous post that soon after we leave Iraq will probably be allied with Iran and possibly even Syria AGAINST the US and Israel, our only real friend in the ME region.


161 posted on 11/29/2006 1:13:02 PM PST by epow
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To: epow

Actually, we do have the will and stomach to win wars-if they are run by competent leadership. We have had none of that with this administration. Also, our military was not designed for the nation-building business. Reagan and Bush Senior both understood this.


171 posted on 11/29/2006 2:20:48 PM PST by WestVirginiaRebel (Common sense will do to liberalism what the atomic bomb did to Nagasaki-Rush Limbaugh)
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To: epow
Sadly, I wholeheartedly concur with your post. It is my position that selfish politicians have exploited wars for personal gain, think McGovern, Kerry, Democrats in general, all at the direct expense of our national good. In cahoots with them, of course, is the liberal, biased, agenda-driven 60's MSM. Watergate was their crowning achievement in life and they have sought to ever since to replicate that Pyhrric victory.
183 posted on 11/29/2006 6:47:58 PM PST by Obadiah
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