Posted on 01/18/2007 7:50:55 AM PST by jveritas
The most lasting tragedy of the Vietnam War is that it has legitimized “giving aid and comfort to the enemy”. We are seeing the giving of aid and comfort to the enemy running wild in this war on terror and sadly not only among liberals and their media but also among some conservatives who some of them are right here on this great Free Republic.
When Al Qaeda terrorists, or the terrorist regimes in Iran and Syria, or the Iraqi insurgent terrorists whether they are Sunnis or Shia hear the speeches of defeatism coming from liberals and their media, or unfortunately coming from some conservatives who some of them are right here on Free Republic, will they feel comforted and aided by these speeches? Of course they will be comforted, and they will be embolden to fight more and more, kill more and more, destroy more and more, because they realize that many Americans do not have the will to fight a long and hard war.
Defeatism and providing aid and comfort to the enemy was something that we expected from liberals and their media because their hate to President Bush and the Republican Party is hundred of times more than their hate to the terrorists. However it is really sad that some conservatives and some members on this great forum are doing their share in providing aid and comfort to the enemy through their defeatist attitude.
Do the defeatists want to amend the Constitution so we will have the following? Stop the war and leave if we lose more than one thousand troops, or stop the war and leave if it lasts more than one year, or stop the war and leave if it costs more than 50 billions dollars, whichever comes first. Do they want to do this?
The defeatists who argue that Iraq is not part of the war on terror but rather it is just a civil war between Sunnis and Shia are wrong and naive beyond belief. Iraq is most definitely the central and most important front in the war on terror. It is in Iraq where Al Qaeda and their local Iraqi allies decided to fight the US. It is in Iraq where the islamic terrorists from all over the world are pouring in to fight the Americans. It is in Iraq where the terrorist regimes of Iran and Syria and their local Iraqi allies want to defeat the US so they can have total control of the Middle East. Since the terrorists are all over the world, then the best way to fight them is to attract them to one place to kill them. Whether it was planned or not, Iraq turned out to be the magnet that has been attracting the terrorists from all over the world, and that is the ultimate way to fight the war on terror and to kill as many terrorists as we can.
Every defeatist who is giving aid and comfort to the enemy should ask himself or herself this question: What will happen if we leave Iraq before we achieve complete victory? The First thing that will happen is that the enemy will be embolden beyond belief and the terrorists whether they are Sunnis or Shia, whether they are Al Qaeda, or Iran or Syria, will be given the ultimate victory that will embolden them thousands more time then when they were emboldened when the US left Beirut after the Marines barracks terrorist attack in 1983, or when the US left Somalia in 1993 after the terrorist killed 19 troops, or when no reprisal happened against the terrorists when they attacked many American targets through out the Clinton years. If our passiveness to the past terrorist attacks emboldened them in such a way to attack us on 9/11, think about what they can do to us if we give and leave Iraq and thus handle them the ultimate victory that they have been dreaming about for decades.
The defeatists must understand that if few terrorists sitting in a cave in Afghanistan with a small budget and few volunteers were able to do the 9/11 terrorist attacks, killed 3000 Americans, and caused over one trillion dollars in economic damages, then the terrorists control of Iraq and of the whole Middle East, and its vast oil resources will allow them to conduct terrorist attacks against us that we cannot imagine even in our worst nightmares. By controlling Iraq and the Middle East the terrorists will have hundreds of billions of dollars under their control that they will use it to attack us everywhere in the world and the US and cause unimaginable death, destruction and economic losses that will make 9/11 terrorist attacks look like a picnic in comparison. They will also use the oil weapon to bring the world economy to a disaster that will be many folds worse than that of the 1929 Depression.
Fellow Free Republic members, we are fighting the most important war since WW II. We are not fighting for the Iraqis in Iraq but we are fighting for ourselves, for our freedom and for our way of life. Let us all support our President and our brave troops because they need our support now more than ever.
I believe that Jane Fonda met that threshold when she visited NVN cohorting with our enemy. Yet even she was not charged with aiding and abetting.
Though today, one might reasonably argue that our own govt is aiding and abetting our enemy. Since it has committed an overt act that in my opinion may meet the threshold since it has taken upon itself to charge with murder the Haditha Marines.
How so? It is a well known fact that insurgents hide out in residences amongst the population...and especially in Haditha at that time. The Haditha Marines who survived the roadside blast were taking fire from one or more of those residences. They had a right to defend themselves, and under the ROES in place, their only obligation was to limit as much as is reasonably possible the number of civilian casualties under the prevailing circumstance. And who do you think made the film a day later that has implicated our Marines? It is the contention of some that on scene Iraqi insurgents made that filmwhich has resulted in our Marines, who were defending their position, to be charged.
Therefore, if charging our Marines with murder under the circumstances of their engagement does not meet the threshold of providing comfort to our enemy, then certainly having internet discussions both pro and con regarding the war doesn't even come close.
I am familiar with your work here jveritas. It is indeed highly commendable. I just disagree with your approach on this one. Charging fellow freepers as defeatist who aid and abett the enemy is not so commendable.
Yes, I support the war in Iraq and our troops. I like you believe that Iraq has become the magnet for international terrorists. So please don't count me in as one of those defeatists. Although, I am waning on the President since he has never recanted his statement that "islam is a religion of peace."
Islam is not a 'religion' of peace under any definition of the term peace. Islam is a rabid idealogy posing as a religion that is consumed by hate, intolerance, and bigotry, and whose stated goal is to conquer and convert western civilization. I challenge anyone to prove otherwise.
Indeed, we must 'give war a chance.' But please, our leadership must recognize and profess the identity of our enemy, and our enemy is islam. No ifs, no ands, and no buts about it.
Yes :)
In response to 371, you are correct in many aspects. Where I think you're missing the point is the heart of the Arab world is not being faught. It's quite different. And now it's more a civil confrontation than anything else. Where the region has a homogenous population (mostly Kurd or Shite) the area is largely, but always peaceful. It's where there is a blend of Sunni's Shites and Kurds (although less Kurdish involvement) is where the problems are. It's Sectarian. Not the fight you're portraying.
Many Americans have no concept of what losing in Iraq will mean to our own comfy lives here in this nation. We must win or face miserable changes and deadly consequences.
Ok, please define what you mean by "losing." Do you mean military defeat where there is a US surrender and all of our military lay down their weapons? or do you mean the sort of losing that took place in Viet Nam? or something else?
also
based on the answer above, please expand on the scenario that you see happening as a result.
AL Qaeda, Iran and Syria has planned the sectarian violence so they can drive the US out of Iraq and declare their divine victory, control Iraq and the Middle East, and use its oil resources to destroy us and the West. If you read Zaraqawi letters before he was killed you know exactly that the whole Al Qaeda plan from the begining was to create such a secterian war so the American people will lose "hear to fight" and surrender Iraq and the Middle East to the terrorists. If we leave Iraq because we think it is just a civil war between Sunnis and Shia then we have fallen into the trap of AL Qaeda and Iran.
Frankly, I believe if we won today, they wouldn't see that as long term defeat. They would only retreat to plot and scheme another day. But that new day is probably not that far away. And the cycle starts all over again.
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Take a look at an interview that Bill Ardolino, at InDC (temporarily renamed InIraq) Journal, did with a young, new Iraqi policeman last week:
He then told me that a secret war is going on in Fallujah. That citizens, fed up with the insurgency, are tracking down insurgents and killing them. These vigilantes then blame the killing on other insurgent groups, to try and get the splintered mass of terrorists to start killing each other.
You can read the whole interview at the link. It's interesting. It's good to see more bloggers going to Iraq as embeds. They are doing some very good reporting.
We don't need a draft.
Big conscript armies are not what is needed. Good sized professional armies are better.
We needed to be a lot more willing to use our biggest advantage: air power, to devastate those towns and villages in the Sunni areas where there is constant resistance. We surrounded Fallujah, backed off, then surrounded it again, and fought house to house. We should have surrounded it the first time, not backed off, and levelled it with airpower. That would have caused a lot of civilian casualties. So what?
We should have declared war, which would have allowed us to ditch the post-Korean War precedents and clearly and unambiguously used the World War II precedents, including press censorship. Solid press censorship from the beginning would have prevented the Abu Graib story from doing as much damage to us as it did.
But that's all water under the bridge and can't be undone.
What we still CAN do to win the war is arm the Kurds to defend themselves and their autonomy, and arm the government-led Shi'ite Arabist forces, giving them the firepower to decimate the rebellious Sunnis, and the ability to operate against the Sunnis using their own strength (instead of relying on the pro-Iranian Shi'ite militias). This will give the Arabist Shi'ites who already control the government in theory the sort of firepower and real power to run their own show. It will mean the ethnic cleansing of the Sunni Arabs (who are our mortal enemies there anyway, so that's a net plus in returning the country to stability), and it will allow for nice sharp civil strife between pro-Iranian Shi'ites and Arabist Iraqi Shi'ites. The end of that game is a victory for the government there, especially if we interdict within Iran and use special ops to start sowing mayhem in the Iranian provinces.
Of course arming the Kurds and giving them our full backing will mean that the government forces will be essentially limited to killing Sunni Arabs and pro-Iranian Shi'ites. We should be clear that we will use airpower and arm Kurds to the teeth to prevent any sort of Shi'ite Arab effort to subjugate oil-rich Kurdistan.
This will give us a divided state with two clear victors, empty Sunni lands, and a decimated pro-Iranian faction. Of course it will mean a bloody civil war that kills tens or hundreds of thousands of Iraqis, wrecks certain regions of the country, and results in a flood of Sunni refugees into Syria. So what? We will WIN, in the sense that we will dominate the politics of Iraq in the aftermath, and still be there. And OUR TROOPS will not do the fighting or the dying. Iraqis will.
That victory we can achieve. But we're aiming at something pie-in-the-sky and Wilsonian, in which all parties share and share alike and get along in a reunified Iraq. Asking Kurds and Shi'ite Arabs to "get along" with the Sunni Ba'athists is like asking Jews to get along with Nazis in a reconstituted Reich. Some things are humanely impossible, and naive to suggest.
When the Communist forces in SE Asia attacked every provincial capital in South Vietnam simultaneously they hoped for a popular uprising and a military victory.
They did not achieve a military victory with the Tet holiday offensive, in fact, a dismal military failure. The Viet Cong were, for all practical purposes, wiped out as a fighting force, NVA Regular troop losses were high, no territory had been gained after Hue City had been taken back, and no popular uprising had handed the Communists so much as a single province.
However, the Press, right here in the US and elsewhere, managed to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory by their presentation of the Tet offensive as a defeat for our forces.
That desperate blow, struck by our enemies in a futile attempt to gain a military victory, was turned by our own Media into a victory for the enemy.
How? By the steady media drumbeat of " failure ". Tet… failure... Strategic Hamlet program… failure... MyLai... failure... Ho Chi Minh Trail... failure... Operation Linebacker… failure... Khe Sanh besieged... failure... Dien Bien Phu…(not even our battle, for God's sake!).
The drum beats on…
The same media (plus CNN and other 'new kids on the block') which spew ravings of doom and gloom in Iraq lost the war in Vietnam (for the US and the South Vietnamese, anyway)..
Now add to the current concert the enemy's media and willing dupes in high places and low who will not hesitate to create 'evidence' to smear our forces or present questionable evidence as gospel.
Hell, they as much as announced they were going to do the same to our troops in Iraq by equating Iraq to Vietnam early on in the war... and they will, if we let them.
Stir into the potent brew of partisan politics nostalgic and aging hippies whose only memory of adolescent relevance came from smoking dope and picking up what's her/his name at the peace rally ( Oh sh*t, was it that long ago? ), a new crop of rudderless younglings seeking relevance, and a wide assortment of people (both foreign and domestic) who have significant cultural, economic, and/or military reasons for wanting the hegemony of the United States reduced, and there is an uphill battle, alright.
But that battle is right here at home. The 'hearts and minds' we need to win are right here.
Regardless of what transpires on the battlefield, to the uninformed, the flow of what the media have so sweetly dubbed "insurgents" coming down the pipeline looks much the same.
What does water look like coming out of the tap just before the water runs out?
Water.
Far be it from our media to emphasize the differences in background, training, and even nationality of those captured and killed in opposition to our forces and allies, just as they refused to mention the significance of fighting increasing numbers of North Vietnamese Army regular troops during the Vietnam War after the Tet Offensive of 1968.
Instead, they just stuff the lens deeper into the flow to make it appear more intense, and anything done to increase the pressure just makes for better copy and sells more ad space/time.
Sadly, although the proportion is decreasing, huge numbers of Americans (those who are even paying attention, anyway) still get their news from the same two column-inch, quick soundbyte, voice-over media in which every term is carefully selected to provide a certain resonance, an ambience, and leave a subtle semantic impression on the listener/reader.
In the case of Iraq: " Gloom... Bush=failure ... Doom... Iraq= Vietnam... Slaughter... Bush=evil... (even) Hurricane... Bush=failure Iraq... quagmire... and the drumbeat goes on, wearying to those who are paying attention, who recognize it for what it is, who tire of rebuttal of terms which are used so deeply in the basic framework of articles as to form fundamental axioms for the uninformed. Bush lied…
While we poke fun at lousy grammar, poor syntax, and even incorrect usage, the subtle (and sometimes not so subtle) drumbeat continues, mesmerizing the masses even through the bad writing.
"Tarzan, what drums say?"
"Bush's fault".
Unless and until the American people realize that in this instance there will be no peaceful withdrawal (oh it might work apace while the enemy gathers strength), as ultimately a refreshed and rested enemy will carefully select targets for maximum shock value and strike us here at the time of their own choosing.
Be assured any failures of resolve in Iraq and elsewhere will follow us home, not as some sort of national embarrassment, but in the form of an enemy who is gaining prestige and the power that goes with it every time they count coup against the "Great Satan"--an enemy whose religiously-based desire for world domination differs from similar politically-based desire in that to the faithful it is demanded by their god, and great rewards await in the afterlife for those willing to sacrifice themselves in order to make it so.
This is not some mere political difference to be negotiated away, although I fully understand that to the secular humanists of the Left, who believe ultimately in nothing, anything can be negotiated, which renders them incapable of understanding the mentality of those to whom "It is written" carries the weight of words carved in stone by God himself.
To those who hold such beliefs, there is no negotiation, only the 'out' their prophet has given them of being able, no, encouraged to lie to the infidel for the purpose of advancing the worldwide dominance of Islam and all that goes with it.
Think about that for a second.
Realize that the years of pandering to "victimhood" on the Left have rendered the Left into the ultimate pool of ready victims waiting for a victimizer, for someone to take advantage of them, because being able to wail about being victimized is their currency, their stock in trade. They even create 'victims' where none really exist so they, in a fit of do-gooderness reminiscent of Munchausen Syndrome can create political coin by 'addressing' the issue--not fixing anything--(that would remove part of their political base), but talking about it.
'Having dialogue.'
Those who would 'have dialogue', rather than have us stand our ground and continue to reduce the ranks of our enemies, one at a time if need be, in a foreign venue, are incapable of understanding that there will be no dialogue with those selfsame enemies if we fail to persist and prevail.
It is hard to 'have dialogue' when someone is sawing your head off with a dull knife.
Just as the steady drumbeat lulls the sacrifice into a trance, so Americans are being lulled into a trance by the drumbeat of propaganda from the media.
Its hypnotic rhythm continues in the background, even as we attempt, bleary-eyed, to fight an enemy who will not capitulate readily nor soon. An enemy who only waits for their foe to doze off in the watchtowers, to become complacent, and to forget the horror of watching as aircraft plowed into the Twin Towers and thousands of countrymen died in what was finally an undeniable and graphic act of terror on our shores.
Unfortunately, that act was presented to the American Public, not as the culmination of a decades long series of escalating attacks, but in an incomprehensible denial of perspective, as an isolated and unique incident, to be blamed on 'he for whom the drum beats'.
Denied that perspective, Americans will not understand the nature of the inexorable, persistent and pervasive threat they face until again, there will be no denying it.
May Almighty God help us find our resolve then (in the face of that slaughter, if we fail to find it now, else the 'great experiment' will die with a whimper.
"I know exactly what is the goal of islamic jihadists and their dream to establish an islamic empire that rule the world by the Sharia law. My point is that once we defeat them in Iraq, right in the heart of the Middle East and the Arab world, we will crush their ability to establish and fulfill their islamic empire. The islamic terrorists have thrown everything they have in Iraq, if they cannot establish their islamic empire starting in Iraq, it is over for them for many decades if not centuries to come. That is why the winning in the Iraqi theater of war is incredibly important to win the overall war on terror."
What you have written here is all true.
We MUST win in Iraq.
It is the central front in the war on terror.
Maybe we wouldn't need a draft if the war were being fought under your terms, but it ain't being fought that way.
Right now the grunts are worn out and used up. It's a disgrace that 25 year old guys are being killed on their third tour, while there are able bodied keyboard warriors back home.
Rumsfeld obviously convinced the President a small Army and Marine Corps is all we needed. He's gone and the President deserved better counsel in that regard, but it was his call anyway. It is too late now to mobilize popular support for a greatly expanded military, but it wasn't five years ago.
The country, congress and the President have painted us all into a corner. Twenty one thousand five hundred now is like spitting in the ocean. There is no doubt in my mind that if the President had more troops for Iraq, he'd use them. Without completely breaking the Army and MC, he doesn't have them.
I bet most military families would support President Bush's plan vs. Franklin Roosevelt's.
There are excellent posts throughout the thread--one that I especially like is by MEGoody: Patriotic citizens will take into account the consequences of exercising their right to criticize. Unpatriotic citizens don't care about the consequences, especially to others.
I think that is a key element of the definition of giving aid and comfort to our enemies.
I think another key element is that a patriotic citizen will be careful to be truthful, to develop arguments based on facts, evidence, and logic, and to avoid confusing fact and opinion. This requires considerable intellectual and emotional self-discipline and maturity.
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He who curses first loses.
General Lee certainly derived aid and comfort from those in the North who railed against the war without regard for the consequences of their speech on others.
I knew where you were going but I just couldn't resist the opening.
I would, however, dispute the 7.5 million post Vietnam war deaths. Maybe you're including deaths in other countries in the region?
jveritas is absolutely correct, IMHO. Your country is at war. If America exits Iraq with anything less than complete and total and unconditional victory, America will suffer an unbelievable credibility hit.
No other possibility other than achieving total victory should be entertained by any American: this is not even a matter for serious debate. 9/11 killed Democrats, too.
The Democrats and all others who think it is just GWB who would wear that credibility hit are naive: it would permeate all US society and survive a change of government from Republican to Democrat. And it would take years to recover from: if indeed that be possible.
More likely it would signal the beginning of a long and slow, painful decline. This cannot be allowed to happen.
The rest of the Western world is naive to think that this credibility hit would be isolated to America: it wouldn't. It would signal Open Season to the terrorists on everything every decent civilized Western society member holds near and dear.
It would even hit us in NZ. In my view, our Government should pay attention to what is happening and mobilize: we are no longer "living in a profoundly benign strategic environment." Peace without Victory cannot be achieved.
The world's alarm bells should be ringing right now. All hands general quarters! Yet they resolutely refuse to sound. It is like watching a train wreck about to happen, in slow motion.
Already the belligerent border people (unlike any people I run into in my daily life) have caused two good freepers to leave the forum.
That was before all of the defeatist posts started appearing on FR.
I firmly believe that a large percentage of these defeatists are either DU types posting as "perfect conservatives", Patsies who want to hide behind our shores and hope we can stick it to Bush while we do so, or misguided people who think that this war should be like things they see on TV.
I don't like this stuff being put on the forum for the military folks to see. It is doubly demoralizing when they see it here, at a place that has always supported the war and our troops. I think that is EXACTLY why they post this junk.
They have already hijacked this site. Try and post a pro-Bush thread and see what happens.
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