Jim DeMint votes to end Iraq War

The Daily Caller ^ | 2011-12-08 | Jack Hunter

[Carry_Okie]

Refusing to protect this country from its enemies and from danger is the only cowardice here.....

There are lots of ways to do that. "Nation building" is not among them.

[Scotsman will be Free]

Got news for you, sport. Obama ha already pulled the plug on that war. DeMint doesn’t want an endless cycle of us going to war in Iraq for the next hundred years at the pleasure of whomever is occupying the White House. If we need to go to war against a country then let’s declare war and go pound them.

[Scotsman will be Free]

You are pretty free with your insults and I sure as hell don’t remember you wearing fatigues when I was. I’d guess from your tagline that you never did.

[Colonel Kangaroo]

"We fight them [Islamofacists] over there so we don't have to fight them over here" sounds like a winning strategy to me.

A better strategy would have been to leave Saddam Hussein in place so he could fight the Iranians, keeping a lot of that burden off us.

A better strategy would have been to finish the job in Afghanistan before starting something else.

The Iraq war was a colossal blunder. President Bush meant well, but it was not well thought out. Realism and a sober assessment of the region was lacking.

[cva66snipe]

A better strategy would have been to leave Saddam Hussein in place so he could fight the Iranians, keeping a lot of that burden off us.

That would have worked and did work for years. I'm for it and I'm serious. If they want to go at it then let them. Keeps them busy. Too accomplish this though would requiring the closing down of the U.S. State Department that considers itself the only expert on all military matters :>}

[Bokababe]

A better strategy would have been to leave Saddam Hussein in place so he could fight the Iranians, keeping a lot of that burden off us. A better strategy would have been to finish the job in Afghanistan before starting something else. The Iraq war was a colossal blunder. President Bush meant well, but it was not well thought out. Realism and a sober assessment of the region was lacking.

Precisely! Afghanistan and bin Laden were Jobs 1 & 2, and no distractions were worth it.

[ohioWfan]

My 'insults' are narrowly directed, and do not include men or women who have served this country honorably in uniform, other than Ron Paul, who is a pacifist who wants to be CinC. I do not insult his service, however. Only his naivte regarding the dangers of the world, including his ridiculous pov regarding Iran.

You're right about my not serving. I'm old enough not to have had that privilege as a female.

[ohioWfan]

Sometimes it's required. For example, it's a good thing we didn't leave Germany or Japan to their own devices after WWII. I would say we did quite a bit of 'nation building' in Japan, and I, for one, am glad we did.

Not an exact parallel, I know, but an example that can't be ignored.

Ron Paul buries his head in the sand and pretends that Iran is not a threat, and can be ignored.

He would be a dangerous President. Fortunately, he hasn't got a prayer to be elected, his rabid groupies notwithstanding. (I think that's why they're so mad all the time. Their 'cause' is hopeless. :)

[Olog-hai]

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Got news for you, sport. Obama ha(s) already pulled the plug on that war. DeMint doesn’t want an endless cycle of us going to war in Iraq for the next hundred years at the pleasure of whomever is occupying the White House

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You're contradicting yourself. Here, libertarian backs up liberal. Nobody was conducting any war "at the pleasure of the White House"—that is, unless you believe all the anti-US propaganda about the war, coming out of places like (where?) Iran, Russia, the European Union, and other such places with enmity towards the US. All this pullback was done because of folly insofar as very fearful-looking liberal foreign policy towards Iran, and no other reason. Iran's the number-one state sponsor of terrorism on the whole planet, and allowing surrounding middle-eastern states that have themselves sponsored terrorism in the name of Islam or Islamic socialism to become more like Iran is to institute anti-US policies right on US soil . . . sport.

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If we need to go to war against a country then let’s declare war and go pound them

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What, their declaring war on us isn't enough?

[Olog-hai]

PS. Iran was indeed fighting against US troops in Iraq—and we're still pulling out while leaving the job unfinished in both cases. Same goes for Afghanistan, where Iranians have been assisting both the native Taliban and the Taliban in Pakistan. Do we have to wait for a declaration of war every time to protect the US and other nations? Imagine if we had to wait for such declarations for both Barbary Wars (none were made), the engagements in Iraq and Afghanistan being modern-day parallels.

[Carry_Okie]

Sometimes it's required.

Not in Iraq, and not when there are superior alternatives,

For example, it's a good thing we didn't leave Germany or Japan to their own devices after WWII. I would say we did quite a bit of 'nation building' in Japan, and I, for one, am glad we did.

Oh, and the Europeans just LOVE us now, right? As long as we hand them a knife and turn our backs. What "nation building" there accomplished is EXACTLY what was done when we exported jobs to China. Look at how many assets have been sold to foreigners in this country so that we can borrow the money to fund it. It was all about establishing the dollar as a world reserve currency, not the fundamentals of American prosperity. Asset after asset has been transferred abroad, soon to include food production. Did you know that we are now a net-food-importing nation? How does that work for national security?

I'm with Patton. Our money would have been better spent taking out the Soviet Union. There would then not have been the need to buy off Europe into a socialist model to "fend off communism." Think about the subsequent savings over the Cold War. Had we not financed the Russians during the war and allowed Hitler to overextend himself into Siberia, we could have taken Berlin with less effort than we expended.

Same story as regards Japan and China. Victory is cheaper than nation building. Instead of government charity, personal charity should have been operative, as it is far more discriminating on standards of behavior.

Our big problem has been treason. WE financed communism around the world. "Victory" in WWII gave us the UN. We financed the reconstruction of Europe and they loaned us the money for the Great Society/ Vietnam debacle. When we ran out of credit the price was the end of the gold standard and fifty years of inflation. Now its bankruptcy.

I used to believe the story you're telling, but now don't buy it any more.

[SaraJohnson]

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If we need to go to war against a country then let’s declare war and go pound them

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What, their declaring war on us isn’t enough?

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Just so you, Article One of the Constitution says Congress has to declare war. So if Congress votes to go to war against a Nation, we can go to war. Otherwise, we can’t unless the President and the military are violating the constitution.

Congress voted to permit Bush to attack Iraq with the argument Saddam had weapons of mass destruction and was threatening us. Later, President Bush said he was mistaken; that Iraq had no WDM.

[Olog-hai]

Why is it that some of the libertarians are hell-bent on trying to make FR look like DU . . . ? The primary reason for going into Iraq was not over "WDM" as you call them, besides; and maybe one should call up to Canada to ask them what they did with that 606 tons of yellowcake uranium that was taken out of Iraq.

Like I said in another post on this thread, the First and Second Barbary Wars were engaged in without formal declarations of war by Congress; and the present-day conflict in the Middle East is a modern-day form of that conflict. Article 1 section 8 does not say that Congress has to formally declare war, only that they do possess the power to do so; and the POTUS has the power to wage war.

[mkjessup]

Hi, mk! rabs is trying to stir up trouble again. :)

I don't think it's a matter of trying to 'stir up trouble', it is the usual result when divergent opinions clash. As I see it, taking out Saddam Hussein like the garbage he was, was in fact a good thing. The way it was done was quite frankly exceedingly sloppy and took way too long to accomplish but that is another debate for another time. Despite the yammering of the global leftist media, Saddam Hussein WAS pursuing a nuclear weapons capability and had we not overthrown his regime, we would now have THREE megalomaniacs (Saddam, Gaddafi AND the Iranian mullahs & Ahmadinejad) pursuing and producing nukes.

As it is, Gaddafi folded his cards and turned over his nuke programs to the US and the UK. Those programs are now 'residing' at Oak Ridge Tennessee, as I recall. That is a very good thing. Saddam finally twitched from the hangman's noose, and his barbarity ended. That too is a very good thing.

Here is the very BAD thing:

George W. Bush failed to finish the job, he talked the talk ("we will not permit Iran to acquire a nuclear weapons capability") but when he had a window of opportunity to take out that capability in it's earlier phases (late 2008), he didn't "walk the walk" and blast the Iranian nuke and development sites to Kingdom come. We had the ability, we had the opportunity, he was urged by no less than Dick Cheney and John Bolton to pull the trigger, but GWB failed to act. His unwillingness to act against the far greater threat (Iran), effectively undid all the good that was done in Iraq, and in Libya. (i.e., Iraq remains unstable and subject to Iranian subversion and ultimately, control, Libya's Gaddafi (admittedly a barbaric, murdering SOB) will be replaced by even MORE barbaric and murdering SOBs in the form of radical Muslims aligned with al Qaeda.

As I said: a very BAD thing. George W. Bush KNEW that his successor was an extreme radical Marxist by his words, deeds and declared intentions. It matters not that 0bama did not immediately withdraw from Iraq, it matters not that 0bama's then-SecDef (Leon Panetta) was the one who gave the go-ahead to kill 0sama bin Laden, what matters is that the greater threat (IRAN), has been allowed to continue on with effective impunity regarding it's own brutal oppression of it's people, regarding it's drive for a nuclear capability, regarding it's continued undermining and subversion of Iraq.

When George W. Bush failed to direct the war effort to INCLUDE Iran, especially when it was Iran that was supplying IEDs that were killing our troops in Iraq, that was an absolute dereliction of his responsibility as Commander-in-Chief. When it was proven that Iran was the power killing our boys via IEDs in Iraq, the damn B-2's should have been flying, "TARGET TEHRAN" in addition to any and every target of opportunity within reach.

Now I will be the first to give George W. Bush credit for restoring a sense of personal moral behavior to the White House after the depraved Clinton-Gore-Reno years, however his conduct in executing foreign policy was sloppy and shabby at best: he declared that America was threatened by an "Axis of Evil", namely Iraq under Saddam, Iran, and North Korea. So what did he do?

Iraq: overthrew Saddam, destroyed his regime, helped to institute free elections, freed the Iraqi people.

Iran: absolutely NOTHING. As I stated above, GWB "talked the talk" but failed to "walk the walk" and now Iran is on the verge of achieving what George W. Bush said we would never "permit" them to have.

North Korea: again, NOTHING. George W. Bush met with heroic North Korean author Kang Chol-hwan in 2005, who wrote "The Aquariums of Pyongyang", detailing the depraved barbarism of Kim Jon Il's torture camps, they spent over half an hour discussing how the North Korean people might be helped, and 'help' he sure did: 3 years later in order to continue the charade of those ludicrous "Six Party Talks" (addressing North Korea's nuclear weapons program), George W. Bush REMOVED North Korea from the list of terrorist supporting states in October 2008. Kim Jong Il's regime continues (just as Iran's), the North Korean people continue to suffer (like Iran), the nuclear weapons programs continue in development (like Iran), the threat to peace has INCREASED due to the failure of the Bush Administration to deal with all three legs of that infamous 'Axis of Evil'.

Sure, Iraq was liberated from Saddam Hussein. But Iran was ignored and North Korea was 'rehabilitated' in late 2008.

Some 'War on Terror'. Some 'Axis of Evil'.

And I've not even scratched the surface of the Bush Administration's failure to secure our borders, failure to institute responsible spending (reminder: it took 6 years for GWB to find his veto pen), which led to the infamous TARP, not to mention the assault on our civil liberties and freedom with the ironically named 'Patriot Act', the creation of the fascist infrastructure known as the 'Department of Homeland Security' and the 'TSA' (aka 'The Sanduskying of America').

George W. Bush presided over the largest expansion of federal power and excess over and above that of FDR and/or LBJ. And as icing on the cake, he let two good border patrol agents (Ramos and Campion) rot in prison all for the sake of his corrupt buddy Johnny Sutton.

"But alas, I digress".

For those students of history who may have wondered what America would be like had Nelson Rockefeller become President, one need only look at the Bush years of 2001 through 2008. (The only difference being that Nelson didn't have a Texas drawl)

That is one tragic legacy.

Sorry oWf, nothing personal but as you know already, sometimes "the truth hurts".

[Vigilanteman]

Even worse, these traitors leave the back door wide open for foreign invaders, all the while lying to the men and women whom they send to die in strange lands that they are "defending" their families, friends, and communities, when in reality they are being dispatched as mercenaries to serve foreign powers and foreign interests.

In 2001, I would have called you a moonbat for making such a statement.

Today, I call you spot on.

[SaraJohnson]

Go back to DU. :)

[ThermoNuclearWarrior]

We shouldn’t be fighting wars anymore. We can’t accept the horrors and realities of war any longer. We don’t accept winning a war at any cost the way wars should be fought. That’s why WW2 was the last war we won decisively, and against an enemy that was much more superior than those we have faced since. It’s not that our military got worse. We have the best trained, and equipped soldiers the world has seen, but they are restricted to a level that’s ridiculous. That’s why we have gotten worse at getting decisive victories since then even though we have faced worse enemies. How many people who talk about our WW2 Veterans being the greatest generation, would be calling our troops today war criminals for fighting the same way?

Even a lot of people on the right wouldn’t except fighting a war like WW2 these days, and that’s why we can’t get what should be small short wars over with like we could before. That’s why we talk of an invasion of Iran like it would be something on scale of invading Germany in WW2; because it would be fought to make it the equivalent even though it wouldn’t have to be. It’s like saying we are going to have peace through strength. It doesn’t work when you fight like we did these two wars. If we had went into Iraq and Afghanistan, and showed our real strength with a brutal and short war that showed our true power then that might have worked. But we can’t accept that civilians get killed in war, and there isn’t anyway to avoid that.

If had went into Iraq and Afghanistan with the mindset we went into WW2 then they would have been wars that were over with, and we would have actually gotten something out of it. Why didn’t we take oil from Iraq? Why did we allow Afghanistan to put the right to murder Muslims who convert to Christianity in their Constitution? I think with a WW2 mindset we would have gotten something out of the wars, and finished them in a short period of time. Instead we fight 10+ year wars with no end in sight, and no one even knowing what the hell we are suppose to be gaining from them anymore. If we can’t fight a total war then it’s not important enough to be fighting.

[ThermoNuclearWarrior]

Maybe people who supported the wars are sick of our military being restricted so bad they have to fight 10+ year wars because we won't accept the realities of war these days, and fight them like we did back when we won them against much more powerful enemies. I doubt it would the same if we had the mindset we had in WW2. Now we are just propping up governments who aren't even friendly to us, and the fact is Mexico is a bigger national security threat than Iran. Just because they are different types of threats doesn't make it any less true.

[Scotsman will be Free]

Reread my post. You know, the part about endless cycles of war in Iraq at any sitting president’s pleasure. I had no problem going in there in the first place and kicking asses. We should have left after that with saddam hanging froma lamp post with a sign pinned to his chest promising to come back and kick their asses again if they ever assist others in attacking us.
Unless missles are enroute, we have time to decide if we want to go to war. You sound like obama and the demonrats who are always in a big rush to push their garbage through before anyone can figure out what’s going on.

[Scotsman will be Free]

Ron Paul is an idiot. I do not like chicken hawks like you who are beating the war drums when you know it won’t be your butt on the line. By the way, unless you are well over a hundred years old we had women in uniform in WWII, Korea, and Vietnam. Where were you, hero?