Posted on 12/12/2006 6:42:49 AM PST by Theodore R.
Coming GOP war … over the war!
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Posted: December 12, 2006 1:00 a.m. Eastern
"I believe this is a recipe that will lead to our defeat ... in Iraq," said John McCain. He has a point. For what does the Iraq Study Group say?
We are not winning this war. Our situation is "grave and deteriorating." Yet we may succeed if only we will withdraw all U.S. combat brigades in 15 months and bring Syria and Iran to the table to resolve the political crisis. This is simply not credible.
Nowhere in this report are there any "disincentives" to cause al-Qaida, the Sunni insurgents, the militias, the Mahdi Army or sectarian death squads to call off their campaigns to inflict a historic defeat on the United States and expel us from Mesopotamia.
(Column continues below)
The closer one studies the report, the more the truth emerges. These "realists" think Iraq is a lost cause, that Americans will not pay the price in blood, treasure and years to win it. And in this conviction the Baker Commission, too, may be right.
This deepening fissure in the GOP presages a civil war inside the party by 2008, over whether to stay in Iraq – or, if the war has ended in a debacle or defeat, over "who lost Iraq?"
In urging intensified training of the Iraqi army and an expedited withdrawal, the Baker Commission is laying down the predicate for the case that America did not lose this war, Iraqis lost their own war.
This ISG report is less about saving Iraq than about saving the U.S. establishment from being held responsible for the worst strategic blunder in U.S. history. It is about giving Bush and Congress a "decent interval" before Iraq goes down and a Saigon ending ensues.
The neocons are also preparing their defense before the bar of history. Realizing the Baker Commission recommendations point to slow-motion defeat, they are savaging Baker and calling for tens of thousands more U.S. troops to be sent to Baghdad and a new strategy of victory, no matter how much it costs or how long it takes.
If Bush fails to follow their counsel, they will then say: "It was not our fault. It was Bush's rejection of our advice that lost the war."
Neoconservative Ken Adelman, on Sunday's "Meet the Press," was calling for 20,000 to 30,000 more U.S. troops, saying Iraq had been a wise and winnable war, but the administration mucked up what should have been a "cakewalk."
The Democratic establishment, which gave Bush a blank check to take us to war, "to get the issue out of the way" before the midterms in 2002, is also preparing its defense of the role it played in plunging us into Mesopotamia, the "if-only-we-had-known" defense.
"If only we had known then what we know now – that there was no hard evidence of WMD, no hard evidence of al-Qaida ties to Saddam Hussein – we would never have voted for the war." "If only we had known how incompetent Rumsfeld's Pentagon would be in managing the war, we would never have given Bush a green light."
This Kerry-Edwards defense is a version of the 1967 defense advanced by Michigan Gov. George Romney to explain his earlier support of Vietnam. Said Romney, "I was brainwashed" during a trip to Vietnam, prompting the cruel retort of Sen. Eugene McCarthy, "In Romney's case, a light rinse would have sufficed."
The Democrats' defense begs these questions: Why didn't you know? Why didn't you find out? Why didn't you do your constitutional duty and refuse the president the power to go to war until he had convinced you that only war could spare the republic worse horrors?
What the Baker Commission is ultimately all about is providing political cover for a bipartisan retreat from Iraq.
For what was the one issue the Iraq Study Group would not and will not address? The crucial question: Was the Iraq war a blunder to begin with? The commission seeks at all costs to avoid the judgment of the nation that today's establishment that took us into Iraq served America as badly as the Best and Brightest who marched an earlier generation into Vietnam, then cut and ran and called it "Nixon's War."
The media are celebrating the ISG for its "bipartisanship" and the "consensus" achieved. But was it not a bipartisan consensus that produced the war: a Democratic Senate failing in its duty to ascertain the necessity of a war to be launched by a Republican president, because Democrats feared that telling a popular president "no" would reinforce the party's reputation as being soft on national security?
The people who were right about Iraq were those who rejected bipartisanship to warn that invading Iraq was an unnecessary, unwise and, yes, even an unjust war that would inflame the Arab and Islamic world against us. Unsurprisingly, this group had no representative on the Baker-Hamilton Commission.
This comparison is downright silly. Those U.S. Marines who landed on Iwo Jima were fighting for a country that had demonstrated its willingness to exact hideous destruction on its enemies, had no qualms about interring Japense-Americans on the simple grounds of a perceived threat, and which would eventually kill millions of people by bombing entire cities to the ground.
And if FDR had stood up in 1942 and stated that "totalitarian fascism is a religion of peace," he would have been chained to his wheelchair and dumped into the Potomac River.
I'd say comparisons are still not only valid, but absolutely required to put the conflict into perspective.
And we haven't always been willing to pay the price. In fact, WWII is a good example, in many ways. We could have stopped the Axis several times before the big one broke out -- the Rhineland, Spain, Libya. But the US public was against getting involved.
Even once the big one started -- Americans didn't care about saving France, England, etc, from the Nazi boot. Only when we, specifically, were sneak attacked militarily by one of the Axis powers did we even lower ourselves to finally take a side and fight for whats right.
I'm afraid the paralells to WWII are not only instructive, but frightening.
With the WWII comparison, we're still in the pre-1941 stage. And there was, indeed, significant Nazi sympathy in the US while the Fascists were invading the Rhineland, spreading fascism to Spain and Libya by force, etc.
Granted, that was the WWI/Great Depression generation. Folks who believed in fighting. And yet, they still didn't want to get involved. Even after Hitler over-ran France, and started bombing England's civilians.
We have to compare this conflict to past ones, for context. It's the only way to see things in perspective.
The historical event that we call World War II began as a long-standing conflict between two different forms of Marxism/socialism on the European continent -- the nationalist (German) model and the international Communist (Soviet) model. In stark, objective terms, you cannot even make the case today that the U.S. fought on the "right" side in that war (consider that the death toll in Eastern Europe under Stalin exceeded the death toll in all of Europe under Hitler's Nazism).
The Spanish Civil War was a perfect case in point. Most Spanish who supported Franco were well aware of what this national fascism was all about, and they found it a perfectly acceptable -- even desirable -- alternative to the brutal totalitarianism that prevailed under the Spanish communists.
See my last post regarding the internal political/cultural clash across Europe in the 1930s. Anyone who was reluctant to "save" France from Hitler had good reason to do so -- since Hitler had a substantial amount of popular support in France. How ironic is it that the much-maligned Vichy government was actually the duly-elected government of France?
Comparisons between Iraq and the previous military campaigns aren't really valid, when you consider that in those wars this country demonstrated that it was willing to go to great lengths to win, come hell or high water -- and PC bullsh!t be damned.
I agree, but I also hold the Administration responsible for our unwillingness to do what it takes.
In WWII, we had shared sacrifice. We had rationing to help the War Effort. Paper drives and ration cards. In the buildup to this war, we were assured that we wouldn't have to sacrifice anything - Iraq would pay for its own reconstruction.
The biggest sactifice the Administration asked from the American people was that we keep right on shopping. Any wonder that we no longer have the stomach for war?
Is it me?...
Or has every single person on earth forgotten why we went there?
We have to wake up... and fast.
This isn't a game. Untie the troops and let them do what they have to; They would've been home long ago with only reconstruction going on over there. Because of this PC rethink bullshit and jihadi press, even republicans and conservatives have been brainwashed. There has never been a conflict such as this and let's not forget the state our military was reduced to by you know who before.
There were too many things to be done at once, but it was and still is a just cause. I'm not sorry that defeat isn't in my vocabulary.
I'll be glad when people ask what the troops see, want and the difference this will make historically for those children who'll have a chance to see the opposite of what's taught in the future.
We still don't realize how Iraqis went in fear of their lives, and rightly so, to vote (does anyone know the history and how huge that alone was?), not once... but three times.
How must it have felt for the Kurds to finally find the bodies of those dear to them for proper burial... I can't imagine. To have running water? Hospitals? Schools for girls?
I love how it's harped re: the trouble in three provinces out of 17 (that doesn't bleed, hence it's not good news).
How many dedicated buildings have you seen on MSM? How many positive messages period have you seen? Does anyone have an idea how many of the more than four thousand projects are finished in record time? Of course not... that doesn't sell. Have the MSM seen fit to show once the planes unburied or the bio-weapons caches (and there are tons), destroyed? Nope. But they'll show a video of one of ours getting killed while praising the enemy.
A country without the will to fight... that blames itself for everything, is no longer a country. I've seen the aftermath of political pullouts... but i'm sure the MSM will neglect that. I've also seen the videos from OBL and Al Q themselves and what this weakness tells them... and it isn't, "Glad that's over, back to everyday life", it means more terror. If everyone knew the incidents that are not reported and twisted when they are in this country... they would rethink. They must be spanked. We're there, let's get it done.
Think about how long this Iraqi government has been in place... think about how long it took us and the extreme challenges added in their part of the world.
Sure it's easy to be an armchair general... I talk to the troops daily, I have the photos they send, the letters they write and their requests; I talk to the parents, I see the wounded, i've attended the funerals and i've heard their loved ones insist we push on... full force, so their deaths would not have been in vain. Does anyone know how many men were lost in the founding of our country? How many in WWI and II? Korea and Vietnam? I've served my country under Reagan and under Clinton, i've lost family recently and back before I was a twinkle in my mother's eye.
This isn't a one-front war... it's about something much bigger... the sooner we see that, the better.
Hmmmm . . . very interesting historical perspective. I like people who think outside the box, like that.
You certainly have a point about why we stayed out of the Spanish Civil War. Altho I'm not sure that really was the root of WWII. As I understand it, Hitler and Mussolini threw their support behind Franco primarily out of a desire to dominate Europe, not for ideological reasons.
I tend to feel that the roots of WWII were not ideology but men with territorial ambitions. I'd argue the seeds of WWII were sown even earlier, in WWI. Germany was defeated, impoverished by the reparations payments, which left average Germans looking for someone, anyone, who could just stablize things. There were, broadly speaking, two main thoughts on how to achieve that -- socialism and fascism. Along came Herr Hitler, a charismatic, ruthless man . . . Unfortunately, Herr Hitler also had territorial ambitions and this 'racism' problem. Details, details. :-) The real problem was his territorial ambition. I truly suspect the Iranian Prez Ahamedincias;ierfeaie (can't spell that name to save my life) might also have such ambitions. I suspect this opposition in Iraq is the evidence to that regard.
All of this, I think, allows a very interesting comparison to today. We're backing a govt in Iraq most of us wouldn't want to live under. And like WWII, you have two schools of thought -- the 'stay out of it' side and the 'the enemy of my enemy is my friend' side.
And I would argue that WWII is just one of the lastest of a long line of historical examples of why we can't just "stay out of it". Because then the little wars become 'big' wars.
Like the Mujahadeen in Afghanistan against the Russians. In Spain, we could have (should have?) supported the anti-Franco groups with arms and supplies. To 'bleed' the Axis powers. To show them they would face opposition in any attempt to expand their control. There is a chance that could have lessened, or even prevented, an eventual large-scale conflict.
Your points are valid, but this is the inevitable result of what happens when an affluent nation like ours goes to war. If the U.S. government ever demanded the kind of personal sacrifices from its citizens today that were considered "normal" in previous wars, there would be a huge groundswell of public support -- and by this I mean something like 99% public approval -- for a massive military campaign in which the stated objective would be the complete obliteration of the Middle East -- and by this I mean destruction to the point that it is unfit for human habitation for a period of time measured in increments based on the 36,000-year half-life of plutonium.
Maybe, but that doesn't change the basic facts of this case.
The Administration didn't ask for any sacrifice whatsoever from the American people. You might not have any faith in your fellow Americans, but in the wake of 9/11 I am convinced that we would have sacrificed just a little if our President had asked us to.
Instead, they insisted that we wouldn't even have to pay for the war. No wonder we as a country have no stomach to finish it - we were constantly told that no stomach would be required.
This kind of scene was repeated in many countries in Europe at the time, which is why there was so much support for Germany among these people who considered the Soviets far worse.
There's a PR strategy for you: blame the Dems for getting us into Iraq! Leave it to Pat.
And this government lost all moral authority to call on anyone to make even the simplest of sacrifices once that "9/11 Commission" was exposed as a complete fraud.
I do know a bit about that, and I understand your point. But I would add that the anti-Franco forces were, as I understand it, a broad coalition of different groups, including some who just wanted an elected govt similar to what you have in Britain today.
Altho it's kind of like a choice between Rs and Ds now . . . no good choices, in other words.
And from a standpoint of 'power politics' and all that, I'll just repeat that the US should have, in my opinion, backed the anti-Franco forces.
"The enemy of my enemy", and all that. Playing one side off the other. Divide and conquer.
True. And we won the entire Vietnam war, too, but you'd never know it from listening to the...heck, they aren't revisionists, they're liars.
Bump
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