Posted on 12/04/2006 5:15:18 AM PST by Molly Pitcher
While George W. Bush's many critics and detractors portray him as facing the same dilemma as Lyndon Johnson in Vietnam, Bush himself seems determined to proceed the way Harry Truman did in Korea -- or, as some might put it, as Winston Churchill did after Dunkirk.
Leading Democrats like Sen. Carl Levin of Michigan have been calling for troop pullouts from Iraq starting in four to six months. The Iraq Study Group co-chaired by James Baker and Lee Hamilton, The New York Times tells us, will recommend a "gradual pullback" of troops, direct negotiations with Iran and Syria and pressure on Israel to make concessions to the Palestinians.
But Bush seems unpersuaded. "There's one thing I'm not going to do," he said at last week's NATO summit in Riga, Latvia. "I'm not going to pull our troops off the battlefield before the mission is complete."
In this, Bush has the support of others. Defense Secretary-designate Robert Gates opposes a quick pullout. So does the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the Central Command's Gen. John Abizaid.
Retired generals who have criticized Bush testified that we should send more troops into Iraq. Democrats seem disinclined to use their congressional majorities to cut short our mission in Iraq lest they be blamed for the unpleasant consequences many predict.
So maybe the Vietnam analogy will not apply. And it shouldn't, because it's misleading. The communists' Tet offensive was a smashing defeat for them, not us, as outlined in Peter Braestrup's 1977 book "Big Story." Military historian Lewis Sorley has shown how after Tet, Gen. Creighton Abrams produced a strategy that was proving successful -- until Congress prevented the United States from fulfilling its promises of aid against the North Vietnamese offensive in 1975.
In Iraq, our enemies may not be making all the progress they seek, and changes in our military tactics are likely. Many argue for embedding more U.S. troops in Iraqi Army units. Other recommendations may come from the review commissioned -- evidently out of dissatisfaction with current operations -- by Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Peter Pace.
Bush, like Truman and Churchill, seems determined not to concede defeat. And remember that for Truman on Korea and for Churchill after Dunkirk, no promising military courses were immediately apparent. Truman, after firing Gen. Douglas MacArthur, had forsaken the threat -- a nuclear attack -- that his successor Dwight Eisenhower deployed to get the communists to agree to a truce.
But Truman's perseverance despite his 22 percent job approval -- much lower than Bush's -- was essential in preserving the independence of South Korea, which now has the world's 14th-largest economy. Churchill, facing Hitler alone, could promise only "blood, toil, tears and sweat" until his enemies' mistakes -- Hitler's attack on the Soviet Union, the Japanese strike on Pearl Harbor -- gave him the allies that made victory possible.
Churchill's stubbornness prevented a Nazi victory in midsummer 1940.
We should keep in mind, as well, Bush's repeated vow not to allow Iran to get nuclear weapons. That's in tension with the Iraq Study Group's expected recommendation of direct negotiations with Iran: The obvious quid pro quo for Iranian help in stabilizing Iraq would be dropping our opposition to Iran's nuclear program. In fact, the opposite approach may be what's needed.
Historian Arthur Herman in this month's Commentary calls for airstrikes not only on Iran's nuclear facilities but also on its ports and refineries; Iran depends on imports for its gasoline, and without ports and refineries, its economy and military would grind to a halt.
That's a move that might be condemned by the "international community," and it risks antagonizing the people of Iran, many of whom tend to hate the mullahs and admire America. But it also might destabilize the regime and dislodge a president who has threatened the destruction of Israel and America. Who today regrets Israel's strike against Iraq's nuclear reactor in 1981?
NBC News has declared that Iraq is in the midst of a "civil war," just as CBS's Walter Cronkite declared Vietnam was lost after Tet. Many in the mainstream media today, as in 1968, see nothing but the prospect of American defeat. George W. Bush seems to have other ideas.
If we had begun a gradual pullback in 1943 and opened negotiations with Hitler and Mussolini and Hirohito we could have reached an agreement whereby they would have together pacified the European and Pacific zones of violence and we would not have wasted all those lives and resources in 2 more years of war that just made the Germans and Japanese mad at us.
When Bush fired Rumsfeld, I took that as a sign of defeatism. I no longer believe that. I believe that Bush still has what it takes to win in Iraq.
Ultimately, the negotiations will go exactly nowhere. They never had and never will. Somebody explain to me why we waste time, effort and our tax dollars trying to do the impossible.
If I were Israel, I'd tell whoever to go piss up a rope. Oh, wait, it's Olmert. Sure, how 'bout we give 1/2 of Israel to the Palifascists? That should "satisfy" them for, oh, at least six months.
GW's on the mark here. Stay till the job is completed. If that means more troops & money, so be it!
Either America stays and wins or we cut and run only later to be thrown on the wood heap by the historians as the begining of the end for the great empire.
I say dig in and fight. Drop bombs, bring in more troops, whatever it takes win, win, win, win!
It's impossible to know whether someone has "what it takes to win in Iraq" without first knowing precisely what the phrase "win in Iraq" actually means. In the 4+ years since the Iraq conflict started, I have yet to hear a coherent explanation of this from anyone inside the Beltway.
Bush explains what he means by "win in Iraq" all the time. It's the one thing he does explain well. If you don't hear it, you're just not listening.
In any case, it's very hard to find a connection between what the U.S. perceives as a "victory" in Iraq and what has transpired there over the last few years.
This guy needs to be advising Bush, not James (Phuck the Jews, They Didn't Vote For Us) Baker, who hasn't met a limp-wristed compromise that he doesn't like. How about it, Jimmie-boy, give the President a policy recommendation that's actually oriented toward defeating our enemies instead of swapping spit with them.
I heard it just yesterday. And the day before that on his radio address. I don't have it memorized but its very clear, and very consistent. You want to Bash Bush, fine. I bash Bush myself at times. Go back and look at my posts, you'll find plenty of Bush bashing. But on this subject he's been clear as to what victory is (involving a stable govt in Iraq, and one that is a viable partner in the WOT) and what defeat is (walking away and letting Al-Q take over). If you want to be thick-headed, like a mule, like a donkey, like a DEMOCRAT, go ahead, keep repeating the mantra you're repeating. That's fine with me.
This is where there is a complete disconnect between the silly statements mouthed by this administration and the reality of what has transpired in Iraq.
1. If a stable government in Iraq is a condition of victory, then the U.S. utterly failed on this point (and should have immediately withdrawn every U.S. troop from that country) once the new Iraqi government decided to permanently embed Islam into the country's constitution as the official state religion -- thereby ensuring: (a) that non-Muslims (who tended to be largely left alone under the Ba'athist government of Saddam Hussein, ironically) would flee the country in large numbers, and (b) that the country would become a focal point of the Sunni-Shi'ite conflict that has gone back for centuries.
2. If "walking away and letting al-Qaeda take over" would be tantamount to defeat, then I find myself asking why the hell the U.S. insisted on toppling and imprisoning the most effective weapon that country ever had against al-Qaeda in the first place.
If a stable government in Iraq is a condition of victory, then the U.S. utterly failed on this pointAre you just arguing just to see your words posted, or do you actually want to exchange ideas?
I did not say, and Bush did not say, that the govt is currently stable.
Bush has repeated, many times, that stability is a condition of his definition of victory.
You keep saying he has no definition.
Then when I tell you what it is, you say the fact that the conditions aren't met proves... ???
Proves what? Clearly you don't know yourself. You seem extremely muddled on this point.
Defining victory is NOT the same as claiming victory.
Maybe you should just focus on that concept for awhile, let it soak down to where you can digest it, and then try to struggle with just a wee bit more.
Here it is again:
Defining victory is not the same as claiming victory.
As for your point#2, which is nothing but a dreary old repitition of dreary old leftist propaganda, you are either a liar or an idiot if you think Saddam wasn't in bed with Al-Q.
But that's too much for you to comprehend right now, I think. Just focus on the beginning concept first:
Defining success is NOT the same as claiming success.
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