Cruz on Iraq: "We Stayed Too Long And Got Far Too Involved In Nation-Building"

RealClearPolitics Video ^ | September 24, 2014

[tumblindice]

Right again.
Our armed forces are best at breaking things and killing villains.
Not (re)building infrastructure, schools and roads, a 750 million dollar embassy and a tall wall to defend it all.
Cruz gets it.
Blow them up one day.
Wait until they relax.
Then raid, harass & shoot ‘em up.
Let them calm down.
Carpet bombing.
Our troops must be tired of being occupying forces subject to onerous, confusing RsOE and with bullseyes on their backs.
Again, Cruz gets it.

[going hot]

You are now cooking with gas, but the valve is still not all the way to the right.

[cva66snipe]

By night two or three of the Iraqi War it was obvious we were there for nation building. Needed infrastructure to allow Iraqs future ability to be a military power was being left intact including communications and roads and bridges.

The war lacked a full commitment from congress meaning lacking a formal declaration of war and it lacked a clear "go in and destroy Iraq to the point of elimination of any future threat" military goal. The worst parts of Bush foreign policy was bringing radicals to GITMO and then not holding an immediate military tribunal. Next was the embedded media, The Baghdad Bob show, the cameras on our tanks and troops was a mistake. Leaving Iraq in any condition but no infrastructure was a mistake.

Just as many of us have said for over a decade long before Obama even ran that the next radical Islamic leaders in Iraq was going to get a shinny new fully equipped military to use against us yet again courtesy of our own government. You can not change the M.E/ Islamic culture. It's obvious you can't fix Stupid in government either.

[SoConPubbie]

In all of those cases, not enough was done to purge the elements that caused war; in Iraq, even less was done and they were allowed to institute yet another Islamic constitution to govern the land.

I’m not buying Cruz’s version of “cut and run” myself.

So, please enlighten us on how you would "purge the elements that caused war" since essentially, that defines all of Islam.

Please tell us how a fake religion, that has been murdering, killing, raping, and attempting to take over the world since it's inception until now, is going to be reformed and it's adherent pacified short of a nuclear bomb?

We're all ears here waiting for your wisdom.

[SoConPubbie]

My point is the dynamics of a fallen or conquered government are exactly the same.

Only if you ignore the Big Pink Elephant in the corner of the Room, ISLAM.

[SoConPubbie]

Agreed. We can’t blow it up and leave. We needed to keep a base of operation there.

For what reason? To make our servicemen targets for ISIL?

There is and never was a reason to stay. It always should have been just a shock and awe operation where we absolutely obliterated the enemy and left.

And if needed, as many times as needed, repeat until the enemy is pacified.

The motivation for any war with the adherents of Islam should be total destruction to impress upon them that anytime they attack, they will be destroyed.

There is no way to moderate their religion or the adherents.

The religion itself is the poison and it will not be reformed or fixed.

[Olog-hai]

I think you answered your own question. Treat it as the war it is; get rid of all the ROE restrictions, get rid of the UN millstone, force the Geneva Convention blatherers to face up to the fact that this enemy is not going to abide by said conventions. The more we retreat, the more they get emboldened; the “last helicopter” rhetoric is very strong among the Islamic enemy.

[papertyger]

There is no way to moderate their religion or the adherents.

Sure there is; we did it for almost a hundred years.

You don't have to declare war on Islam. We've existed quite satisfactorily with them for the same amount of time.

You also need not make asses of your national leaders by declaring a war on "terror."

The answer is simply to declare war on "Jihad."

[SoConPubbie]

The answer is simply to declare war on "Jihad."

You've got your head in the sand.

60% or more of the adherents to Islam believe that "Jihad" is not only a proper part of Islam, they wholeheartedly support it.

Furthermore, that other 40%, if push comes to shove, will always side with other Muslims, even if they are murdering the infidels.

You are living in a fantasy world.

[StoneWall Brigade]

Agreed

[papertyger]

You are living in a fantasy world.

No, you're missing the point.

Forget pissing around with what islam is or isn't: jihad isn't one of the five pillars. A declaration of war against jihad is a de facto declaration against islam propagated by the sword without ever involving muslims who don't feel the desire to fight. Those who promote jihad automatically declare themselves combatants to be treated accordingly.

We've done it successfully with certain Native American tribes and peyote, we've done it with Mormons and polygamy.

If they want to fight amongst themselves, not our business. But declare a jihad with all that moniker entails, and it's an automatic casus belli.

[Ethan Clive Osgoode]

Their business was terrorist-killing, not nation-building.

[McGruff]

“Got Far Too Involved In Nation-Building”

Boy do I agree with that. Soldiers are supposed to kill people and break things. If we have to go back in then so be it.

[cva66snipe]

Most Obama Foreign Policy Disasters, Most Obama Domestic Policy Disasters, Most Obama Abuses of Power, The Expansion of Federal Agencies, Federal Police Powers, Federal Spying on Law Abiding Citizens, were made possible by one GW Bush and his incompetent do nothing two house GOP-E Majority. But yet nothing was done to even remotely slow down radical Islam.

Not since WW2 has the United States Congress committed troops into war with the full intentions to eliminate a enemy. Korea was a draw and North Korea has had it's way with us ever sense. Nam not so much but still Communist won. Gulf War one and Two? Out troops will face Gulf War Three because father and son and the congress under their tenure lacked a spine.

In the mean time Obama destabilized nations which were not a threat to the United States or anyone else.

These type policies go all the way back to Truman who took us into Korea. Although he did make the decision to end WW2's final battles with Japan with WMD's he did not follow through in NK. Vietnam {LBJ and McNamara's war} was entered into for basically money. Smedley Butler's theory on war certainly applied to LBJ. Nixon allowed political pressures to loose a war we were winning. The Geneva Convention should be shredded and used as wiping paper on military bases.

Iraq? OK if Saddam had to go {BTW fine by me} we had Constitutional means to do so faster and cheaper. It was Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter who opened us up to terrorist attacks by an EO prohibiting recognized heads of state from being assassinated. That law protected many late 1970's-mid 1980's thugs such as Arafat. Reagan went against it by the ordered attack on Qaddafi's hut itself.

It's very obvious we are making repeated mistakes with highly predictable bad responses and outcomes. Most M.E. issues would have resolved themselves had we simply kept out busy body nose out of Israel's policies on dealing with Islamic Thugs. At least that much Reagan understood well.

[ilgipper]

We left and ISIS came in. Now we’re back. If the goal is to remove Saddam and high tail it home, we never should have gone in. We didn’t leave Germany when Hitler was removed. We are still there today for strategic reasons. We should never have fully left Iraq. We needed a base there for long term strategic value and to help Iraq develop.

What we shouldn’t have done, in retrospect, was continue our war footing after the new Iraq government was formed. We continued a costly street-level war operation for almost a decade, and that should have been ended a lot earlier. We should have used our power selectively by air and on the ground in post-war Iraq on a selective basis, and not a 24/7 force.

[SunkenCiv]

Thanks 2ndDivisionVet> Here's the money:

What the objective should be, I believe, is not trying to resolve the Syrian civil war, nor should the objective be trying to achieve reconciliation between Sunnis and Shiites. Sunnis and Shiites have been engaged in a sectarian civil war since 632 AD.

There ya go.

That of course flies in the face of all the pro-Shiite garbage, which often comes from the same mullahphiles who purport to claim that there's no such thing as moderate Islam, and/or to claim that this or that jihadi is "Salafist" or "Wahhabi" or just "Sunni".

They are all liars.

All Islam has to be annihilated from the face of the Earth. The best way is through muzzie civil war, because everyone wins.

Meanwhile, I don't want it to become economy-crippling or inconvenient, so, we need to keep the oil flowing to the world economy. IOW, strap DeCaprio, Gore, and the rest of the global warming demagogues to cruise missiles and fire them off to the Iranian nuclear weapons labs.