FR EXCLUSIVE: "Mission Accomplished" banner was ordered by the Navy, not by the White House

NAVY WEBSITE ^ | 5-1-07 | DFU

[Mr. Silverback]

You need to go do some research on how deeply the military was cut after the First Gulf War. We don’t have 500,000 troops to send to war, period.

IIRC, we went from 18 active divisions to 8. The number of Air Force comabt wings that disappeared was even more dramatic.

[Bryan24]

We sent 130,000 troops to Iraq and about 1/4 of them were reservists or National Guard.

If you wanted to hear an uproar, try sending 400,000 troops to Iraq. When 250,000 National Guardsmen are called up, the nation would go nuts.

People don’t realize how drastically the regular army has been cut.

Everyone complains about the 130,000 sent to Iraq as being to little. How quickly they forget that a 130,000 man force took down a 500,000 man army, and a complete country, in 4 weeks. Without even a 1% casualty rate.

[Mr. Silverback]

Dead on!

[Alberta's Child]

Yes or no: Do you want us to pull our troops out of Iraq?

If it were up to me, they'd all be packing right now for an immediate shift to U.S. facilities outside populated areas. The U.S. military would then carry out a limited number of functions, including: 1) combat support for Iraqi military/police personnel in roles that Iraqis can't carry out themselves (air support, for example); and 2) protection of Iraqi-led efforts to construct/reconstruct critical infrastructure.

Item #2 would most likely put U.S. troops in harm's way, but I would add an interesting angle to our work there. Once the U.S. oversees a construction project and provides protection for the duration of its development, we're done with it. And I mean DONE. If it gets blown up or sabotaged some other way the following week, then tough sh!t . . . the Iraqis can figure out a way to cope with that problem, or they can live in a sh!t-hole filled with malfunctioning/nonexistent infrastructure.

If the U.S. has to do any more than this, then Iraq isn't even worth saving under any circumstances. And I say that even if it means that "letting nature run its course" would result in the starvation of 30+ million Iraqis.

There was a great article posted here a while back about an Army officer who has had the most success in Iraq with limited casualties, and this was pretty much his approach. A group of tribal leaders came to him and complained that they had no electricity or running water in their village, so he told them that he'd bring in food and water, but only if he could get their assurances that the soldiers in his command wouldn't be attacked.

This worked for a few days, until a couple of his men were wounded or killed in an ambush. He pulled all of the people and equipment providing humanitarian aid out of the village and told them that he'd give them a week to think about it -- and that if anything like that happened again, he'd pull them out for a month. At the time the article was posted, it was indicated that he never had a problem after that.

[Alberta's Child]

Everything you've posted here along these lines is correct, but it's a pathetic, lame excuse today -- MORE THAN FIVE YEARS AFTER 9/11.

Remember -- this was the administration that came out after 9/11 and insisted that everyone in this country should live their lives as if nothing was any different, to buy new sh!t at the shopping mall like we always did, etc. We've had five freakin' years to restore our military to its 1991 levels, but it simply hasn't been a priority of this administration because this administration blundered badly in planning for the effort in Iraq.

[Mr. Silverback]

I’m not sure your plan would work, but it’s 1,000% better than what any other war opponent on FR has offered. I especially like the tough love aspect in the last couple of paras.

[Alberta's Child]

Wow -- thanks! LOL.

It would seem to me that this "tough love" approach would have to be carried out BEFORE any kind of elected govenment were put in place. If a place like Iraq can't survive under those circumstances, then it is the height of delusional idiocy to give people any control over their government.

[Mr. Silverback]

It would seem to me that this "tough love" approach would have to be carried out BEFORE any kind of elected govenment were put in place. If a place like Iraq can't survive under those circumstances, then it is the height of delusional idiocy to give people any control over their government.

You may be right...and if the Dems demanding a "change of course" in Iraq were saying stuff like what you've posted, I wouldn't consider them to be traitors.

[jackieaxe]

I meant show some respect for the troops, not for me. That's why I cc'd the mod, because the last thing we need is another "patriot" spouting leftist talking points and patting themselves on the back for supporting the troops while trying to lose the war. And as I pointed out, you did not back up your argument. You not only cited a paragraph about commitment as "backup" for the idea that we're killing troops to prove a point, you cited it while cheerleading for the idea that we are a better nation if we abandon our commitment and make sure those losses accomplish nothing. You didn't back up squat.

Thank You for your concern of the troops. It was not my intention to disrespect the troops. I feel I adequately summed up General Petraeus's manual. I am not a vet so I don't have strong ground to stand on but from where I see it, we are trying to social engineer two cultures that hate us. Also, the best we can hope for is al-Malik who came to Washington and told the press he was routing for the Hezbollah terrorists. It's been four years since "major combat operations have ceased", last month we lost 100 soldiers. Ronald Reagan pulled out of Beruit we he seen that trying to impose peace was not working.

Also, I hope reality proves my argument wrong and that in a year or two there is a stable democracy in Iraq. But 4 years of being targets and not getting anywhere, I want to scream. I see Petraeus's manual as flawed. Has his methods worked anywhere? I'm not hopeful.

[Mr. Silverback]

I am not a vet so I don't have strong ground to stand on but from where I see it, we are trying to social engineer two cultures that hate us.

As a vet, I have to tell you that folks in the military community do not find the efforts of folks like you to be supporting or respectful, no matter how many times you say you love us.

People who support my brothers want them to come back from Iraq with a win under their belts. They do not support an immediate withdrawal, which will certainly benefit the enemy more than anything else we could do.

As for casualties...for Pete's sake, read a freakin' history book, would you please? I hate that we have to lose any soldiers, but this is a WAR and in previous wars we lost 100 soldiers in hours or (at some points) minutes.

During the Vietnam War there were many weeks where we lost hundreds of men. Then, we listened to people like you and ran away. All that got us was 58,000 needless deaths and a couple of million dead Cambodians.

I see Petraeus's manual as flawed. Has his methods worked anywhere? I'm not hopeful.

The counterinsurgency stuff Petraeus preaches is the reason that we won in the Phillipines and the good guys won in Malaysia, El Salvador and Nicaragua. And I'm sorry that you'll probably find this offensive, but since you've called for a pullout before we even have all the surge troops in-country, what does it matter whether to you Petraeus' methods will work? You're not interested in giving them time to work even if they are any good. If you were pulling for our success, you wouldn't be backing Ron "cut and run" Paul.

[jackieaxe]

You hit the fact that I’m not a vet out of the park. Touche!. I don’t think we should still be in Vietnam, the Petriaus Doctrine is flawed, and that my backing of Ron Paul is not evidence that I am routing against the troops. I don’t think Malaysia, El Salvador and Nicaragua are parallel to the Iraq situation, and in the Phillipines, we were a lot meaner than we have been in Iraq.

[jellybean]

RUN FRED RUN!!!!!

(can I take credit for starting it all?? read below)

I’ve got the perfect dark horse candidate.
Posted on 02/27/2006 2:17:26 PM PST by mark in iowa

Although I'm not the first to mention Fred's name, (BlueNGold I've heard you mentioned him back in Nov...correct?) here is my first Draft Fred Thompson post on FR...HELP WANTED: RIGHTY FOR '08

[jonrick46]

"We had high casualty rates in those wars, but the cost of these wars generally bore some relationship to the end result. This meant that Americans could have the expectation that the ultimate price would bring about ultimate results."

World War I, a war that the United States should not have even been in, was fought from 1914-1918. US casualties were 116516. If we had the Main Stream Media then that we have now, we would have stopped our efforts in that war the first week. What we have is a more dangerous threat. This threat is the ability to transform the peaceful form of the Islamic religion to one dedicated to jihad. When President Bush referred to the Islamic religion as a religion of peace, he was referring to the Islam where the jihad component was in its dormant form. "Totalitarian fascism" is what happens when Islam is manipulated by dictators and other demigods for the quest for power. This tells us that Islam is very vulnerable to those opportunist who know how to tweak its interpretation for their own advantage. The jihad component is easily inflamed by tactics long used to manipulate populations for political power. The best way to diffuse this mechanism is to bring about democracies where a demigod's hold on power is as limited as a constitution and a ballot box.

[Mr. Silverback]

I don’t think we should still be in Vietnam,

I'm sorry, are you trying to put words in my mouth, are are you really that ignorant? Read up on the Linebacker campaigns and their aftermath. We sacrificed 58,000 lives to protect South Vietnam, defeated the North utterly and then, because people like you said it was too hard and none of our business, walked away and let all that blood and treasure be wasted. If it wasn't for a Congress that viewed Vietnam the way you view Iraq, we would have won there, and there would still be a South Vietnam. Any troops we still had there would be a token force, I'm sure.

Doubt me? Vo Nguyen Giap wouldn't. He was the supreme commander of North Vietnamese forces at the end of the war, and in 1985 he said this: “[I]f it were not for the disunity created by...stateside protests, Hanoi would have ultimately surrendered.” Note that the result of the stateside protests and the disunity was Congress passing the Foreign Assistance Act of 1974, which made it impossible to conduct any operations against the North when they invaded the South in 1975.

We cut and run. That's what you're looking for today. And the funny part is, you want to hand the troops another Vietnam and act like you have their best interests in mind. Thanks, but no thanks.

the Petriaus Doctrine is flawed

Feel free to post your doctoral thesis on counterinsurgency so we can compare it to his. It can be argued that Petraeus is applying his theories for the first time in Iraq, but your method has already been tried, in Vietnam.

and that my backing of Ron Paul is not evidence that I am routing against the troops

Yes, I know you think you're helping them and you're all fired-up patriotic, but here's the bottom line: You (and Dr. Paul) want us to lose in Iraq. You can call it a redeployment or whatever, you can claim it's a consequence of a bad policy, you can blather all sorts of rationalizations until the cows come home, but the bottom line is that you want us to lose. That's what giving up is, especially when you're dealing with Al Qaida.

We--veterans and those currently serving--have no interest in hearing how supportive people are who want us to lose another war.

I don’t think Malaysia, El Salvador and Nicaragua are parallel to the Iraq situation,

1. Insurgencies are insurgencies. The only real difference between those fights and Iraq is that the enemy is slightly (yes, I do mean slightly) more disposed to kill the local population. BTW, John Nagl, author of Learning to Eat Soup With a Knife, a study of Malaysia and Vietnam, has served in Iraq and I don't recall him saying anything remotely like "Wow, this is so different from Malaysia, I hope nobody's using my book!"

2. Even if the tactical situations were radically different, the political parrallel is uncanny. In the Eighties, people like you were telling us that we had no business helping the Contras or the El Salvadoran government. What if we had abandoned them as "patriots" wished? Instead, President Reagan stood by the good guys, stayed tough, and saved one democracy and resurrected another.

BTW, what was your position on El Salvador and Nicaragua? And what do you think the Al Qaida guys in Iraq will do if we withdraw immediately as Dr. Paul wants us to do?

[Mr. Silverback]

[Here's an op-ed I wrote that appeared in January. Note the comment in brackets below.]

It’s said that a criminal always returns to the scene of the crime. But what if that scene is the Capitol, the deed was voted on in broad daylight and some of the conspirators never left?

In May 1972 Richard Nixon launched Operation Linebacker, an air campaign to stop a new North Vietnamese drive into the South. The bombings (and Linebacker II, carried out with B-52 bombers for eleven days in December) were also intended to bring the North Vietnamese back to the negotiation table. It worked. The Paris Peace Accords were signed in January.

It’s no stretch to say that America won the Vietnam War—our part of it, at least. The Accords ended our military involvement, brought our troops home and ended North Vietnam’s war against the South. It’s also no stretch to call it one of the most lopsided victories in military history. The North’s military and infrastructure was so devastated from the Linebacker campaigns that they could barely keep fighting, and though our loss of 58,000 Americans was tragic, the North suffered over 660,000 military deaths, over eleven times as many.

[At least your plan will be an improvement casualty wise: we'll only be pouring 3,300 lives down a hole this time. But then, the North Vietnamese were never interested in coming over here and barbecuing stockbrokers...]

How did we yank defeat from the jaws of such a mighty victory? Two words: Congressional Democrats.

In December the Democratic majority passed the Foreign Assistance Act of 1974, cutting off all military aid to South Vietnam and defunding all U.S. military operations in Southeast Asia. If North Vietnam violated their treaty with us, a treaty bought with the blood of 58,000 young Americans, we would do nothing.

It only took the North three months to make their move. They invaded the central highlands on March 10 and it only took one day for the ARVN units to crumble under the onslaught of armor and heavy artillery fire. As they retreated, streams of civilian refugees mixed in with them in what became known as “the column of tears,” but the enemy kept shelling them anyway.

Saigon fell in fifty days. Almost every American has seen footage of the desperate helicopter evacuation there, but few know the chaos happened because our ambassador waited too long to organize evacuation efforts. He was sure Congress wouldn’t abandon millions to a horrible fate when they could just send the $700 million he was asking for.

Hundreds of thousands were sent to “re-education” camps; many never came out. Laos was made a puppet of the Vietnamese regime and whole Laotian families were put in prison. In nearby Cambodia, the Khmer Rouge took advantage as well. After overthrowing the government they cleared out the cities, moving everyone, even hospital patients, into the countryside to perform forced labor in the fields. A nation of collectivized peasants without a single urban area was their idea of a Maoist paradise. Ironically, when they told all those city dwellers they had to leave their homes, they told them they were being evacuated because the cities would soon be carpet bombed by the Americans.

Under the Khmer Rouge, government workers and their families were slaughtered. So were schoolteachers and other educated professionals; hostility toward intellectuals was so strong that some people were executed merely for wearing eyeglasses. According to a Library of Congress study, other “crimes” punished by execution included having sexual relations (even with your spouse), wearing jewelry, expressing religious sentiments, not working hard enough and grieving too much for dead relatives. To save ammunition, peasant overseers often carried out executions with pickaxes. Between these victims, disease victims and those who were simply worked to death, almost two million people met their deaths in Pol Pot’s killing fields.

Sure, it wasn’t the Congress who killed those people, it was Communists. But we made a promise to the people of Southeast Asia that we’d protect them from this evil. Instead we sold them out and they died in droves.

Today we have another President who wishes to lead us to victory, but is faced with a Democratic Congress that is interested in tucking tail and getting out as soon as possible. Not one to reinvent the wheel, Ted Kennedy has declared that he will block funding for the proposed troop surge and even the Dems who oppose his plan are offering nothing but whining and carping. Our Illinois contingent joined in and embarrassed us all again. Barack Obama said we won’t “baby-sit” the Iraqis. Dick Durbin (who once compared our troops to the Khmer Rouge) sniffed and said the Iraqis “don’t get to call 911.” John F. Kennedy once promised America would bear any burden and support any friend to ensure the success of liberty. I guess Obama and Durbin think that’s for suckers.

The ground is being prepared to abandon our troops and abandon Iraq to the headchoppers. We can only hope the President and sane members of Congress can take a bite out of crime.

[jackieaxe]

Your replies are based on the premise that we owe the world something. That we owed the South Vietnamese, that we owe the people of Iraq. We don’t owe anybody anything. I’m not a PhD but believe the Petraeus doctrine is flawed because it requires our troops to die while we wait for the Iraqi population to come around to our way of thinking. We have superior firepower. We should leverage that superior firepower. We should not be going street to street or house to house taking casualties because the local population allows the terrorist to hide among them. The other day Harmid Karzi held a press conference saying there have been too many civilian deaths. If jackieaxe was the President, he would be sending his Secretary of State to Afghanistan and telling him we are here because your country allowed a gang of terrorist thugs to train and plan an unprovoked attack on American soil against civilians and our military, and that we are here still trying to eliminate those people. Also, we should tell him that although the Russians failed we could kill everybody in Afghanistan. In a corollary, the Iraqi people allowed Saddam to come to power, not the US. The Iraqi Secretary of State is here pleading the the US forces to stay. Why not, better the US take care of their terrorist than Iraqis. It’s been 4 years in Iraq. The Petraeus strategy is not new. Our soldiers have been dying while we wait for the local population to come around. Outside the Green Zone is still called “Indian Country”. After 4 years, its time to change tactics, meaning bigger bombs, and taking less sh*t, or its time to leave. I could go with either option, but I’m sick of our soldiers dying while we wait for the Iraqis to start liking us.

[Servant of the Cross]

Jelly - see FR commentary on Peggy Noonan article in Opinion Journal today which discusses the first Republican candidate debate. In case you haven't already.

An Incomplete Field

[Mr. Silverback]

Your replies are based on the premise that we owe the world something. That we owed the South Vietnamese, that we owe the people of Iraq.

1. My replies are based on a desire for victory. It's true that I have compassion for the Vietnamese and Iraqi people, but I could hate their guts and it wouldn't change my position one bit. I, as a patriot, want America to win, and that includes winning even if I happened to disagree with the decision to enter a conflict. Dr. Paul is happy with a American defeat as long as he thinks he can say "I told you so"...are you?

2. Again you show your ignorance. We were in Vietnam to stop the spread of Communism that threatened our nation, and though part of our motivation may have been our willingness to "secure the success of liberty around the world" it was a strategic move. What went wrong was Johnson's interference followed by folks like you saying they were helping the troops by making 58,000 of their deaths part of a defeat.

Similarly, we are in Iraq because Iraq was a place that harbored, trained and funded terrorists, including Al Qaida, and because the Iraqi regime itself had conducted hostile actions toward the United States.

3. Even if your historical premise were correct, that just makes your assertions worse! Someone who believes that you can make a promise to someone, and then you "owe them nothing" if the promise becomes hard to live up to, is a moral lightweight.

I’m not a PhD but believe the Petraeus doctrine is flawed because it requires our troops to die while we wait for the Iraqi population to come around to our way of thinking.

1. You have not backed that up.

2. This is a war. We are engaged with an enemy that has attacked us on our home soil. If defeating them requires some lives, that's what war is. What you want to do is make certain--CERTAIN BEYOND DOUBT--that those who have died so far were lost for nothing. In fact, the pullout you advocate is the ONLY course that will certainly lead to that.

Outside the Green Zone is still called “Indian Country”.

Horse hockey! From the Iraqi Foreign Minister's column today:

Contrary to popular belief, most government ministries are located outside the Green Zone, and employees drive to work every day despite death threats and attacks on colleagues and families.

Why would they put their government offices somewhere that's owned by the terrorists? Answer: They wouldn't. Where are you getting your war news from, Katie Couric?

Also, we should tell him that although the Russians failed we could kill everybody in Afghanistan.

And as I expected, we come down to the false choice every pullout fan offers: retreat or genocide. Maybe the El Salvadoran government should have carpet bombed their population, or the Brits should have nuked the Malay provinces, eh? Hey, have you got a target list? Now that we've got the Sunni tribes on our side in Anbar, how about we just start carpet bombing their families and they'll stay rock solid with us, right? Ooh, or better yet, let's bomb Sadr City so all those Shiites will realize that Mookie Al-Sadr was lying when he said we were invaders who would kill innocent Iraqis!

If the idea was to take B-2s and B-52s and whomp Iran and Syria's militaries and infrastucture back into the stone age, I'd be all for it, but we aren't fighting a counterinsurgency campaign in Syria and Iran. More firepower doesn't mean diddly unless you apply it properly, and I'm not seeing anything from you that tells me you even have the first clue what to do with it. You wouldn't know asymetrical warfare if a truckload of Mao's "On Guerilla Warfare" landed on you. counterinsurgency is about the scalpel, the bandage and the antibiotics, it's not about the meat cleaver.

It's easy to whine about casualties; any Cindy Sheehan groupie can do that. Winning takes commitment.

After 4 years, its time to change tactics

Harry Reid, is that you?

It's called "The Surge," double-bacon genius burger. And it's working. You know why it's working? One of the reasons is that it shows a little thing called "commitment" and because it shows that we are ready to kick butt and adapt to save soldier's lives.

Have you ever heard of that guy Bill Engvall, the comedian who says "Here's your sign?" Well, here's your flag:

Hope it fills you with patriotic pride.

I guess we're done here, because you not only can't find the clue bag, you probably don't even know what color the clue bag is.

[jackieaxe]

I guess we're done here...

Good. Finally something we can agree on. Thanks for the four days of arguing and insults.

[Alberta's Child]

World War I, a war that the United States should not have even been in, was fought from 1914-1918. US casualties were 116516. If we had the Main Stream Media then that we have now, we would have stopped our efforts in that war the first week.

And wouldn't that have been a good thing? As you yourself said, the U.S. should not have even been involved in that war!

Woodrow Wilson was thoroughly repudiated in the voting booth in the aftermath of that war, with the Republican Party gaining control of Congress largely because of strong anti-war sentiment.