Posted on 03/11/2007 10:56:39 AM PDT by srmorton
A front-page story in The Post last week suggested that the Bush administration has no backup plan in case the surge in Iraq doesn't work. I wonder if The Post and other newspapers have a backup plan in case it does.
Leading journalists have been reporting for some time that the war was hopeless, a fiasco that could not be salvaged by more troops and a new counterinsurgency strategy. The conventional wisdom in December held that sending more troops was politically impossible after the antiwar tenor of the midterm elections. It was practically impossible because the extra troops didn't exist. Even if the troops did exist, they could not make a difference
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
How do you envision us winning? I'm just curious.
It's not as if the Muslims in the Middle East are going to wake up one morning and decide that they want to be pro-West. In my opinion, we will have to change their culture. Meaning we will have to replace their religion with something else. How to convert a hostile culture to a different sort of ideology when you can't even get most of Western culture to agree on anything?
With Germany after WWII we were working with a nation that was very similar to us. Much of our own philosophical and scientific heritage comes from Germany. We are more alike than not. Think about this- we have more in common with France than with Iraq. But we rarely can convince the French to side with us on anything at all- even though they were our first ally as a nation.
We do not have this same sort of connection with the Islamic nations. Their religion is bizarre. Their language is alien. They have never had democracy. They treat women like cattle. They are simply different than we are.
Nuke them all. Be done with it now rather than later. Why wait?
"Types with Fist"
Thinks with Feet
Four months later, the once insurmountable political opposition has been surmounted. The nonexistent troops are flowing into Iraq. And though it is still early and horrible acts of violence continue, there is substantial evidence that the new counterinsurgency strategy, backed by the infusion of new forces, is having a significant effect.If we plan to stay in Iraq forever in force, the surge is working. However, if we ever plan to leave Iraq and let the "Iraqi people" police their own country... then the surge is working the same way any side in a civil war would see success if the opposition suddenly went to ground to wait our an offensive.
It depends on what happens in the time that the insurgency is forced to lie low. During that time that the insurgency would have been on the offensive but instead is forced to hunker down, both the insurgents and the US/Iraqi government will try to build up personnel, training, arms, and supplies.If the pressure of the surge prevents significant buildup by the insurgents and makes it harder for the insurgents to recruit and easier for the Iraqi government to recruit and train, the end of the American surge is not the beginning of a successful surge by the insurgency but is matched by a continuation of an Iraqi government surge.
The Post was pro-war before they were against it.
The Post was pro-war before they were against it.
I think the Iranian government still has a better chance of uniting the public behind it than Saddam did. In many respects this is true for the reasons you note about Iraq being in three pieces.
Iraq's weakness can be our political strenght. We can always play 2 against one in every problem. Eventually, that process yields democratic adherence. The fact that this adherence is far less than 21st century America hardly matters to me at all.
They have a constitution and an elected government. They have a large and growing army. The army is becoming more reliable-- though this part is painfully slow.
This is not a war about hostile forces in Iraq. This is a war about hostile forces here at home. We must defeat the anti war movement. It seeks to empower ALL American enemies. It sees this victory as more than the humiliation of Bush. It is an all out war against American hegemony and on behalf of neo-socialism.
The humiliation of the anti war movement is ongoing . They are presently realizing that they are bogged down in Congress-- unable to get the political traction they need to win. They desperately want us to lose and pull out the troops.
Even if they won, they would lose. Iraq could become a rallying point and they would attack us again-- causing a painful resurgance of defensive patriotism which they have been laboring against since 911. It looks to me like the anti war movement can be defeated.
I sincerely hope we stay permanently in Iraq like Japan, Korea, and Germany. It would be a major humiliation to our anti war opponents and to the Islamic caliphate dream.
Good comments. Thanks.
The second thing is to help establishing some type of democracy similar to that of Turkey and by no mean similar to western democracies. However it will be enough to put some fundamental and basic concepts of freedom and equality where people can have some say in electing their leaders and they do not have to kill each other or have a brutal dictator rule them for decades.
Now let me ask you, do you know what will happen to us if we leave Iraq before we crush terrorism there?
That is exactly the point of the whole strategy from day one...if the friggin Dims had an ounce of character and love for the foundations of our country we would have met the goals already...
their treson againt our President and our Country has given the hope to all who hate us!!!
We now are winning inspite of their hate for America...the way I see it is...Bush is giving Iran, Syria the warnings now that...in my opinion will be heard or we will take out their leadership and military infrastructures before he leaves office...
>>But one problem in Iraq is the three differing ethnic groups. Iran, for example, would not have this problem.
Ethnic groups:
Persian 51%, Azeri 24%, Gilaki and Mazandarani 8%, Kurd 7%, Arab 3%, Lur 2%, Baloch 2%, Turkmen 2%, other 1%
Languages:
Persian and Persian dialects 58%, Turkic and Turkic dialects 26%, Kurdish 9%, Luri 2%, Balochi 1%, Arabic 1%, Turkish 1%, other 2%
From here:
https://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/geos/ir.html#People
The one aspect of the surge working, that no one seems to be emphasizing, is that the Iraq Security Forces are reaching a state of critical mass, and being much more effective. This doesn't happen overnight. It takes time to train up and fight a military.
Praying for Carrie;
Father, I thank you for Carrie's FULL and COMPLETE recovery. I pray that you give her family and friends, strength and patience as we move from point A to point B, Carrie's complete recovery, in time.
I thank you Father. Amen
Miss-post. Sorry
ROFL!
Exactly right!
If Gen. Petraeus pulls this one off, he can ride his victory straight into the White House in 2012.
Nope. And neither do you. No more than any of the enviro-nuts know what's going to happen with the climate 100 years from now. The world is much too complex to be able to divine the future. If divining the future was just that easy we'd all be rich and war would never happen.
Terrorism is never going away. The problem for Western democracies wanting to do away with the terrorists is all the terrorists have to do is wait for a change of administration. We, on the other hand, have to hope we can keep our voting public interested in continuing to fight year after year, administration after administration.
In the end, we are fighting their culture. The only way to defeat that culture is to completely change it. We need to undermine Islam. The most qualified group of people in the world to do that is American liberals. Look how hard they work at undermining Christianity. If we could set them to work doing the same thing to Islam, we might actually get somewhere.
This means somehow enlisting Hollywood, feminists and the rest of the liberal establishment as a sort of 'intellectual shock force' (I don't think of them that way but if you give it a spiffy name you might get them interested in it). Feminists have long been opposed to Islam. Feminists hated the Taliban. But they hate Republicans too so they didn't really rally behind our leader when he decided to destroy the Taliban. If Bill Clinton had done the same they would've hailed him as a hero. Think about that last thing I said. What it boils down to is if a Democrat wanted to go after Islam, that Dem would have the liberal establishment behind him... Or her.
Personally, I'd be content to fight behind democratic leadership if they truly meant to identify and destroy the enemy. This might be unthinkable to many conservatives but if it meant destroying Islam for all time, it would be worth it.
The terrorists whether they are Al Qaeda or the Iranian and Syrian terrorist regimes or a combination of all of them will not only control Iraq but the whole Middle East and with it come consequences to the US and the West that is worst than our most horrible nightmares. The terrorists will use the hundred of billions of oil revenues to conduct terrorists attacks that its hundred of folds more horrible, more deadly, and more damaging than the 9/11 terrorists attacks, including the use of nuclear weapons and they will also use the oil weapon to blackmail the Western and the world economy for many years to come.
If some terrorists dwelling in camps in Afghanistan with a limited budget and few volunteers were able to do 9/11 terrorist attacks, killed 3000 of our citizens and caused one trillion dollars in economic losses, imagine the incredible horrors that the terrorists can inflict on us if they control the whole Middle East and it vast revenues.
Any person who has a shred of patriotism and a basic common will realize that we simply cannot afford to leave Iraq before we defeat terrorism there.
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