Birds of a feather....
Posted on 02/14/2016 9:53:04 PM PST by 2ndDivisionVet
The anti-war movement of 2003 has finally found its voice: Donald Trump. To judge from the polls and his recent victory in New Hampshire, Donald Trump is the Republican front-runner. Yet in his critique of the foreign policy of President George W. Bush unleashed in tonight's GOP debate, Trump sounded not at all like a Republican but like the most radical anti-war activists of the early 21st century. He said the Iraq war was a disaster which was sold by lies about weapons of mass destruction. When told that Bush kept America safe, Trump snorted, "How did George W. Bush keep us safe when the World Trade Center came down during his reign?"
Bush's heterodoxy earned him boos from the audience, but might rally his legion of followers watching from home. The best way to understand Trump is in psychological terms: He represents the return of the repressed. There were countless Republicans who had doubts about the Iraq war and its consequences but kept quiet for the sake of partisanship. Trump allows those disaffected Republicans, who were unhappy with the Bush years and also by the actions of the Republican establishment, to have a voice--and it's earned him a large, devoted following.
Most of us conservatives believed that Bush and his advisors knew what they were doing, and that they would put our nation and Christian values first.
We were wrong to trust them so blindly, never thinking that W was pushing the Religion if Peace out of Political Correctness and not the truth of Islam.
To this day W still supports democratic movements, even if they lead to Islamist, terrorist sponsoring nations. As long as there are elections, that is all that matters, according to W. We learned our lesson, that no politician is to be trusted at face value ever.
The price was, shockingly, 1,000s of dead and maimed patriots, and the futures of 2-3 more generations mortgaged away for a far less stable, and less free world. We could have learned that lesson at a price far less dear and devastating.
Excellent review, risen. Thanks.
It’s official!
Trump was brought in to this process to get Hillary elected President.
It worked.
No, just a maroon.
This idiot’s foreign policy fantasies will last exactly until his first National Security Intelligence briefing. Not one second longer.
Easy to second guess Bush now. We had a variety of views here at the time but mainly I think we missed the big picture. None of us could have foreseen a closet Muslim president helping to empower the MB, ISIS sponsored by Sunni elite, etc. Bush gave him some of the precedent to do that. Bush’s nation building was not too different from the Arab Spring and may have helped feed it.
Everybody but Sanders and Obama was in favor of going, in 2002 and 2003. The votes in the Senate were counted. Hillary voted for the resolution.
"Bush lied, people died" and "No blood for oil" were after-the-fact backstabbing by the 'Rat high command which was replaying the Antiwar Movement and the New Mobe, and they didn't drag the old signs out until well after the Administration was fully committed.
Would this be a good time to revisit the "Trump <=> disruptor" meme that we run into from time to time? That a vote for Trump is a vote for Hillary?
Remember that cordial phone conversation, pre-announcement, between Trump and Slick. I have trouble forgetting it, myself.
Your call is unduly pessimistic.
You do not give enough credit to:
Unless these unfavorable factors are accounted for, things naturally look like incompetence on Bush's part.
Notwithstanding all of which, the Surge still worked, requiring Obama to throw the war in broad daylight.
Birds of a feather....
Dang...Shaheen and Trump look a lot alike.
In hindsight, the Iraq war, without occupation and confiscation of the oil was a fool’s errand. Saddam had tried to have GHWB assassinated and that was GWB’s ill advised motive. Iraq was never a threat to the US. Only to Iran, our worst enemy in the region. Totally stupid. I was fooled like the rest of us. But, I can admit my mistake in supporting GWB’s war. When will the rest of you?
No. I did not. You did. I said Trump is NBC American and Cruz is not. Reading is fundemental.
I see it as excellent opfor Intel. I’m glad 2D Vet has the stomach to do it.
I have only one questyoion about anything working, LG.
If you had been a commander in iraq during bush’s 6 years , was there any point in time when you would have permitted your troops to walk into town to go to a restaurant?
I appreciate your even-tempered post. /salute
Even if those were factors, and to some extent they no doubt were, they were dwarfed by the fact that Bush did not tell the truth about the true nature of Islam. He was the one who pushed Religion of Peace down America’s throat. We know that to be 100% false.
Knowing what we know today, if Saudi Arabia sank one of our Aircraft Carriers in the Gulf, would you send American troops in on the ground, expecting that all we needed to do was kill every member of the House of Saud, and elections would then make that a nation a Western style democracy, just with camels and kebabs? Or would you basically bomb it to shit from 30,00 feet and be done with it?
I do not think it is second guessing Bush.
We have to realize that Bush and co. convinced us that Muslims were just like us, and that all they needed was Democracy. Can anyone honestly argue, 14 years later, that there was any scenario that would have allowed for the population of Iraq to have created a government that was anything other than an Islamic theocracy of some form? Even the Constitution we helped draft confirms Sharia as the root of their law.
It is bad enough that Bush, at best, ignored council that tried to warn him of Uslams rejection of Democracy, and its bloodlust. That he refuses to even acknowledge that the RoP crap ws 100% bunk, should be confirm his ignorance and hubris. And our naivete as conservatives.
Before Vietnam, the wars we were involved in were conventional with clearly demarcated front lines. Therefore it was perfectly safe to eat in a bistro behind the lines in France in 1918, per your question, or in Italy in 1944.
Restaurant killings have been common in guerrilla wars since then. Example: My Canh floating restaurant in Saigon, 1963. And yet U.S. troops did walk around freely in Saigon before 1975.
This was never the case in either Afghanistan or Iraq, and I doubt it's true for the Russians in Syria or anyone in Libya. It has occasionally been untrue at Fort Hood.
So I don't know if your premise is well-founded, that the litmus test of success in a guerrilla war is whether partisans of one side can parade openly in areas contested or coveted by the adversary: the Parisian banlieus come to mind, and Harlem above 90th Street, and Nuevo Laredo.
The only people who love the outcome of the Iraq war are in Tehran.
The Saudi king is behind a lot, if not most, of the hate and discontent. Most of my concern would be with getting foreign nationals out of the Arabian Peninsula before we consigned it to the scorpions forever.
Not a false analogy at all, LG.
You obviously just agreed that you wouldn’t let your troops wander into town on R&R or even to eat at a restaurant at ANY point during bush’s years in iraq.
That means that the war had not been won at any point.
I’ve known too many who’ve been there and they would agree with me.
The WWII model is exactly the way we should have fought and the way we should have interpreted winning.
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