I think their main reason is that they know as long as we have a military presence in Iraq, we cannot be defeated. We may take casualties but we won't lose. As Rush Limbaugh has said many times, the Democrats are DEMANDING defeat because that's their whole playbook. There is something to this. When I listen to many of the so-called "anti-war" people, what really seems to bother them, at root, is the prospect of the U.S. wielding power successfully.
But why are they so against that? That's what I can't figure out.
what really seems to bother them, at root, is the prospect of the U.S. wielding power successfully.
That sentence strikes a nerve. You may or may not have heard of the book Betrayal: France, the Arabs, and the Jews, by David Pryce-Jones (ISBN: 1594031517), I have not read it in full (yet) but have taken a brief scan through, which can be accomplished rather easily since it is a small book, not very long. What it lacks in length it makes up for with rather interesting content. Pryce-Jones had gotten access to and dug around in French government records, though maybe not necessarily discovering any huge state secrets, I think his info serves to set confirmation and explanation for a good bit of the political jockeying that has gone on around the Middle-East for decades. Namely, how the French government had a long enduring fantasy of establishing a Franco-Arab axis that would ensure first pick in business and diplomatic amenities for France among nations and territories in the Middle-East - they hope - to the exclusion of other nations and entities. That worked out well didn't it? - their bungling delivered Ayatollah Khomeini to power and unleashed a movement that torments us to this day. Guess the French could not grasp that there are those in the world who do not work well with others who do not share the same agenda and beliefs. The bad part is that it didn't just cost them, but is costing everybody on the planet.
Where I am going with this is that passages in the book reinforced the reality that there is a very competitive atmosphere in the Middle-East between a myriad of nations and idealogies for resources, and political clout, which is inescapably tied to the resources of the region. The U.S. is competition, and successfully diminishing if not fatally wounding our profile in the region, by hook or by crook, is one less entity for other interested parties to have to actively worry about and compete against. Better opportunity for "them", and none for us (they hope). I am just wondering who the "them" may be that apparently have some elected high officials in their camp(s).