As Tigerhawk long ago wrote, the enemy's strategy is no mystery; it is to vex and exhaust us, to foment defeatism and division at home so our civilian leadership will lose heart and withdraw our soldiers from the field, leaving them in control.
Posted on 05/20/2007 9:32:51 AM PDT by Chi-townChief
We're waist-deep in George W. Bush's nightmarish Middle East misadventure as the new, theoretically empowered Democrats are difficult to distinguish from the old, hamstrung Dems of a year ago. They're still too timid. Rather than deftly acting to bring the troops home, the Democrats continue their eye-shifting and throat-clearing while the killing and dying go on and on. Last week, the new majority party yielded to the oxymoron argument that we have to support the troops by keeping them in the line of fire. The Feingold-Reid Iraq Bill that would have cut the funding and thereby forced the president to bring the troops home was defeated Wednesday in the Senate. On a procedural vote, the proposal that would have cut off money for combat operations in Iraq after March 31 of next year fell 31 votes short of the number needed to advance, losing 29-67.
The bill was defeated even as three U.S. soldiers remain missing and the death toll in Iraq is rising. The bill was defeated even as our puppet Iraqi government continues with its plans for a two-month vacation while the American men and women serving in their country are getting three months added to their yearlong tours of duty. The bill was defeated even as reports of poor care at Walter Reed Hospital for the mounting number of wounded troops is barely yesterday's news.
The Americans who voted the Democrats into power have been let down. Instead of counting on the Democrats to deliver on their implicit promise to end the occupation, we continue to count the costs of not correcting Bush's calamitous course. Those costs have been enormous in human casualties and financial resources. More than 3,300 U.S. military killed and more than 25,000 wounded -- nearly 1,000 of those amputees. A minimum of 63,796, a maximum of 69,850 civilians have been killed, according to the Iraqi Body Count Web site. More than 400 billion U.S. taxpayer dollars squandered. And we're not getting much bang for our buck. Daily attacks in Iraq have fallen only slightly to 149 in April from 157 in March. Mortar rounds are now battering the Green Zone, Baghdad's last presumed safe refuge.
Last week's vote was a loss for Wisconsin's Sen. Russell Feingold and other Democrats who want to bring the Iraq occupation to a halt. But the undertaking forced Democratic presidential hopefuls, including Senators Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, previously reluctant to limit war funding, to come out in favor of the measure. Unfortunately, 19 Dems couldn't or wouldn't heed the distress signal that the American electorate fired last November, joining 47 Republicans in the vote to end the occupation funding. Sen. Carl Levin, chairman of the Armed Services Committee, is one of those Democrats. He said he opposes any measure that cuts off money for the war because ''we don't want to send the message to the troops'' that Congress does not support them.
That argument -- made smugly by legislators sitting safely and serenely in Washington, D.C. -- is about as logic-defying as others buzz-worded by the incompetent and corrupt Bush administration. We know them by heart. They play well to our emotions but not as well when we step back to question them. For example, could it be that setting a deadline to bring the troops home benchmarks the end of Americans dying for a continuously changing cause? What job are we staying to get done? Why are we staying where we're not welcomed? How are we supposed to secretly withdraw our troops without the insurgents knowing we're leaving?
We shocked and awed our way into Iraq four years ago, so if Baghdad should become an al-Qaida stronghold, what's to stop us from shocking and awing the city again? If 6 million Jews, surrounded by more than 200 million Arabs, have not been annihilated, why do we believe that an Iraq withdrawal will lead to a pitched battle with invading terrorist forces on Main Street in Peoria?
And, one last question: How much American blood has to flow to drown out the civil war in Iraq or cut through the hollow patriotic sloganeering here at home?
monroeanderson@gmail.com
What make any sane person think that if we removed our troops from Iraq that the Islamic war with the world will stop?
As Tigerhawk long ago wrote, the enemy's strategy is no mystery; it is to vex and exhaust us, to foment defeatism and division at home so our civilian leadership will lose heart and withdraw our soldiers from the field, leaving them in control.
Common sense is an uncommon virtue these days.
This hysteria is for one reason. This represents a fear that the left is having that we will actually win this conflict. They have made themselves irrelevant. Notice how they progress...
1. Leading up to the Liberation of Afghanistan the really far left fretted but were largely irrelevant.
2. We invaded and the Taliban collapsed as suspected and up until we invaded Iraq the left began to slowly tear around the edges of Afghanistan saying how it was going to be another Vietnam.
3. Then the march to liberate Iraq begins and Afghanistan is largely forgotten.
4. The far left again is the lone hold out standing against the invasion of Iraq while a clear super majority of the US population supported it. Christopher Hitchens is one notable hold out from the left who supported the war and still supports it.
5. The initial invasion goes extremely well and the liberation proceeds as planned and Baghdad falls quickly.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/2930913.stm
Liberals are virtually silent with no cries of illegal war and such.
6. Slowly the left and the Democratic party feeling threatened begin latching onto each and every misstep they could find with the more radical among them saying nothing was going right in Iraq and that there was no plan though such a plan had been publicly stated and available from the beginning with most of the milestones accomplished on schedule including elections and a transfer of power to the Iraqi government. This began with outrage over looting and then down the line to AbuGrab and cries about Guantanamo.
7. They proceed to conduct a disinformation effort on the war in Iraq and then to the general war on terror and Afghanistan though some still use Afghanistan as “evidence” of their balance saying they supported that effort but that Iraq was an Illegal war and there were “No Wmds”. Michael Moore takes advantage of this seed and the Muslim/Arab conspiracy theories about 1st the Mossad and then the US blowing up the towers so they could invaded Iraq becomes a rallying cry for the left. Today over 60 percent of Democrats either believe or are open to the idea that President Bush knew about the 9-11 attacks in advance.
5. Now they have progressed from falsely claiming a civil war to now claiming the war is lost. Many conservatives worn down from this no longer express that the war can be won even though most of Iraq is stable with more than 2 thirds of the population living pretty much normal lives. Things have been improving but the emphasis on death counts and the ignoring of the successes has presented a picture skewed to the leftist advantage.
6. Now that a backlash is beginning they will cry even louder and try to force as they did in Vietnam that we leave
and snatch defeat from the grasp of victory while millions suffer and die for the cowardice of a few.
Do not forget that the South Vietnamese were holding their own after most of our troops left but it was the Democrats in Congress who in a show of political power essentially defunded the aid to our allies and it was only after that that Vietnam fell and millions of those we had pledged to protect were left to the communists. The Democratic party should be tarred with Vietnam, the real story should be their scarlet letter but instead they use it as a rallying cry to call America again to defeat.
Exactly and we can not let that happen. We conservatives have allowed ourselves to be swayed or cowed by the largeness of liberal lies. It doesn’t help that we have an Administration that doesn’t know how to market itself. There is no shame in getting the truth out and George Bush should stop worrying about the amnesty for the fn illegals and show he is still has the leadership capability he had in taking us to war. We don’t need more equivocation we need a leader that will show a little anger and call to a few hearts against the hoards. This polite upper class Republican “I don’t want to sink to their level crap” is beyond old. We should be knocking heads rhetorically not validating traitors by calling them patriots.
Compare WWII (”The Good War”) where our losses were up to 750 per day after the D-Day invasion of Europe.
Bush’s obsession with importing poverty and social ills from the 3d world that will eventually bankrupt the nation and Balkanize it into warring camps is beyond comprehending. Kennedy rips him a new one every few weeks and, yet, there he is helping Jorge craft the “No Child” legislation and now, the Amnesty Travesty. It makes me think he is, as his detractors say, not very bright, or, what is more likely, he is in the backpocket of internationalist interests.
You got that right. I'll still stand by my remark that 2/3 of Americans are brain dead. Most just uninformed, too busy playing with their toys, product of a liberal education, etc, etc.
“...even as our puppet Iraqi government continues with its plans for a two-month vacation while the American men and women serving in their country are getting three months added to their yearlong tours of duty.”
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The Iraquis need to get with the program....this ticked me off. No wonder Cheney had to go over and pay them a little visit.
http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/013/662muenn.asp?pg=1
Yes, their hysteria is transparent, they obviously think they can pull off some sick “win” by spreading enemy propaganda.
To bad Americans can’t see or hear the other side, (as in the article above).
Actually, the rats need to get with the program as well.
I can’t say he isn’t very bright I think that he has a goal that is out of the line with mainstream conservative thinking. He’s bought the idea that someone the country can’t survive without the illegals and I think that partially comes from his advisers and his background. He is a politician and though I’ve agreed with many things he has done this one is just one I can not support him on.
I personally think that he is one of a group that thinks North America will benefit from a blurring of the borders. That just doesn’t change the fact that this is a horrible bill. Any bill that is 400 pages is bad by definition and that this is an immigration bill makes it even more so. The very size of it guarantees that it will only be enforced selectively and it isn’t difficult to figure out the parts that will not be enforced.
Last week's vote was a loss for Wisconsin's Sen. Russell Feingold and other Democrats who want to bring the Iraq occupation to a halt... Sen. Carl Levin, chairman of the Armed Services Committee, is one of those Democrats. He said he opposes any measure that cuts off money for the war because ''we don't want to send the message to the troops'' that Congress does not support them.Only a traitor would call it "the Iraq occupation".
The British hung Lord Haw, Haw after the war. Can’t we do the same now to Monroe Anderson?
If he were sane he would know that the oil reserves of Iraq equal those of Saudi Arabia, and half of these are yet to be exploited. That means that if Iran gains control of Iraq by associating with a Shia government, then the Mullahs will have a death grip on a main artery.
They are succeeding. Since last October, Congress has been in a panic, and as Abisaid said that this time, panic is no policy. My guess is that they are more concerned about money than about the lives of our guys. Everything depends on implementing the constitution, and my question is: Are Maliki and the other Shia serious about bringing in the Sunni, or just waiting for us to crush the Sunni insurection, and if we do, will they remain friendly to us (and the Kurds).
The troops need to come home and do the job they initially signed up for, protecting America. They are not doing that in Iraq, on our border they could.
Traitor to whom? It is what it is. Denying reality doesn't make it go away.
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