Free Republic
Browse · Search
News/Activism
Topics · Post Article

Skip to comments.

Mattis blasts ‘indifferent’ Biden for bungling Iraq: ‘The enemy gets a vote’
Washington Examiner ^ | September 02, 2019 11:29 AM | Caitlin Yilek

Posted on 09/02/2019 1:01:56 PM PDT by E. Pluribus Unum

Jim Mattis, the former Marine Corps general and Pentagon chief, has lashed 2020 Democratic front-runner Joe Biden for fueling the rise of ISIS by insisting on the total withdrawal of U.S. troops in Iraq.

"You may want a war over. You may declare it over. You may even try to walk away from it. But the bottom line is the enemy gets a vote, as we say in the military, and we simply have got to understand that terrorism is going to be an ambient threat," he said in an NPR interview.

As vice president, Biden was tasked by President Barack Obama with overseeing Iraq policy. In his new book, Mattis, 68, argues that Biden, 76, was "indifferent" to the consequences of complete withdrawal - consequences that included "tens of thousands of casualties, plus untold misery for millions of innocents," as well as the kidnapping and beheading of westerners, and horrific terrorist attacks across the world.

"He wanted our forces out of Iraq," Mattis writes in Call Sign Chaos: Learning to Lead. ”Whatever path led there fastest, he favored. He exuded the confidence of a man whose mind was made up, perhaps even indifferent to considering the consequences were he judging the situation incorrectly."

Biden had voted in 2002 to authorize the Iraq invasion, after opposing the Gulf war in 1990. Obama, who has denounced the Iraq invasion, had campaigned in 2008 on pulling out.

The U.S. pulled out its forces from Iraq in 2011, despite warnings from Mattis that this would be folly. At the time, Mattis was head of Central Command, overseeing the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Obama sent forces back to Iraq in 2014 after the Islamic State seized parts of the country.

(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonexaminer.com ...


TOPICS: Foreign Affairs; News/Current Events; War on Terror
KEYWORDS: 2020demprimary; biden; bideniraq; foreverwar; mattis; mattisbook; mattisinterview; postwariraq; secdefmattis
Navigation: use the links below to view more comments.
first 1-2021-4041-6061-80 ... 101-104 next last

1 posted on 09/02/2019 1:01:56 PM PDT by E. Pluribus Unum
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | View Replies]

To: E. Pluribus Unum

Dems are very proficient at abandoning victory for personal gain


2 posted on 09/02/2019 1:06:40 PM PDT by Spruce
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: E. Pluribus Unum

Not exactly what the media and the dimoKKKRATS want to hear.


3 posted on 09/02/2019 1:07:51 PM PDT by Parley Baer
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: E. Pluribus Unum

Biden was simply carrying out the policy of the Kenyanesian Usurper.


4 posted on 09/02/2019 1:14:55 PM PDT by Lurkinanloomin (Natural Born Citizen Means Born Here Of Citizen Parents_Know Islam, No Peace-No Islam, Know Peace)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: E. Pluribus Unum

Mattis and his buddies in the armed forces had over 10 years to get the war in Iraq fought and won. The US military squandered trillions of dollars and thousands of servicemens lives in the war effort, but failed miserably. We’re still in Afghanistan 20 years after we started. These people should all be cashiered out of their positions in disgrace, never to be heard from again. World war 2 was fought from one end of the planet to the other and was concluded in 6 years altogether. Eff Mattis.


5 posted on 09/02/2019 1:19:55 PM PDT by DrPretorius
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: E. Pluribus Unum
Biden was in Congress in 1973 and '74 when the Congress denied funding for the Vietnamese military to protect themselves and their country that was left to them.

He, along with other Democrats in Congress at that time have the blood of 2.5 million Cambodians, Laotians and Vietnamese on their hands.

Why? Remember Pol Pot of Cambodia and the purges that went on in Laos and Vietnam.

6 posted on 09/02/2019 1:20:59 PM PDT by Parmy
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: E. Pluribus Unum

Mattis writes in Call Sign Chaos: Learning to Lead
= = =

I would swear that when the cover of his book was shown on Sun AM talk, it said:

‘Learning to Read.’

I kid you not.


7 posted on 09/02/2019 1:26:28 PM PDT by Scrambler Bob (This is not /s. It is just as viable as any MSM, maybe more so!)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: Parmy

The South Vietnamese Army was better equipped than the NVA and fully financed when the US pulled out of Viet Nam but they couldn’t prevail when the chips were down. The US had squandered billions of dollars and tens of thousands of servicemens lives to no good end, just like Iraq and Afghanistan. The time is long past for this country to cease wasteful and destructive foreign wars or we will end up like the fall of the Roman Empire. Oh, wait...


8 posted on 09/02/2019 1:36:09 PM PDT by DrPretorius
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 6 | View Replies]

To: Lurkinanloomin

Biden was politically astute. The war in Iraq made George W. Bush — and the Republican Party in general — less popular than syphilis among American voters by 2006.


9 posted on 09/02/2019 1:38:54 PM PDT by Alberta's Child ("Knowledge makes a man unfit to be a slave." -- Frederick Douglass)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 4 | View Replies]

To: DrPretorius

Oh great! An expert in geopolitics and warfare.. I really appreciate you nonserving sorts that know all about combat.

1. We are a global power - we coward out of the wars we must not avoid and we’ll be gone.

2. Wars end when they’re over. Get used to it.

3. Now go back and pull the covers over your head and let the men (and military ladies) protect you. Just pay your taxes and stay out of the way.


10 posted on 09/02/2019 1:40:11 PM PDT by Chainmail (Remember that half the people you meet are below average intelligence)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 5 | View Replies]

To: Alberta's Child

Sure. Political expediency always works better than actually protecting the country. Never knew my fellow conservatives were so gutless.


11 posted on 09/02/2019 1:43:45 PM PDT by Chainmail (Remember that half the people you meet are below average intelligence)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 9 | View Replies]

To: E. Pluribus Unum

Mattis the moron might also have taken note that USAID/CIA/and State funded ISIS when we changed sides in the war in Libya and started literally supporting Al Qeida.

It was obvious ISIS was a US government operation designed to empower Sunnis in Syria and Iraq until it got out of control. It was obvious when convoys of brand new Toyota HiLux pickups rolled from town to town mass murdering and our planes watched from above.

That should have been like the stukas at Dunkirk or the P-47s the day the weather broke in the Battle of the Bulge.

They drove around in broad daylight, across empty desert highways. There is no other conclusion but that they were protected... and knew it.


12 posted on 09/02/2019 1:44:38 PM PDT by DesertRhino (Dog is man's best friend, and moslems hate dogs. Add that up. ....)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: DrPretorius

> Mattis and his buddies in the armed forces had over 10 years to get the war in Iraq fought and won. <

You’re gonna catch some flak for that one. And you deserve some of it. Because the politicians ultimately called the shots there, not the generals.

But your premise is sound, very sound. If a war cannot be won in 10 years, it will not magically be won after 11 years. After a reasonable amount of time, the old saying “Do not throw good money after bad” must apply.


13 posted on 09/02/2019 1:48:04 PM PDT by Leaning Right (I have already previewed or do not wish to preview this composition.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 5 | View Replies]

To: Chainmail
Fighting a stupid war in Iraq had nothing to do with “protecting the country.”

Having that debacle orchestrated by the same Beltway @ssholes who have been pushing for an unfettered invasion of this country by Third World peasants should have been the first signal to you. It sure as hell was to me.

14 posted on 09/02/2019 1:48:37 PM PDT by Alberta's Child ("Knowledge makes a man unfit to be a slave." -- Frederick Douglass)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 11 | View Replies]

To: Alberta's Child

> Biden was politically astute. <

After 9/11 Biden said that Afghanistan should be bombed, then bombed again. But no boots on the ground. After Bush II’s invasion of Iraq Biden said that Iraq should be divided into three separate nations: one for the Kurds, one for the Shias, and one for the Sunnis.

Biden was right each time. (Oh, how it pains me to say that.)


15 posted on 09/02/2019 1:58:36 PM PDT by Leaning Right (I have already previewed or do not wish to preview this composition.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 9 | View Replies]

To: Alberta's Child

Yup. Another “expert” with the same worldview the Left handed off to you.

Go ahead, tell us how your opinions are any different than our “anti war” Communists.

And while you’re at it, tell us all about you military experience.


16 posted on 09/02/2019 1:59:04 PM PDT by Chainmail (Remember that half the people you meet are below average intelligence)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 14 | View Replies]

To: Alberta's Child

It is strange, isn’t it? Every war the USA has fought in the last four decades seems to presage a huge wave of immigrants flowing from there into North America and Europe. Just a coincidence?


17 posted on 09/02/2019 2:02:13 PM PDT by PGR88
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 14 | View Replies]

To: Chainmail
The Left didn’t hand sh!t to me. I cultivated this myself, and then voted for Trump in 2016 because he said the exact same things I’d been saying here on FR for more than a decade.

I feel completely vindicated when I now have these conversations with people whose worldview is no different than the slop you hear from William Kristol, Jennifer Rubin and Max Boot.

18 posted on 09/02/2019 2:03:27 PM PDT by Alberta's Child ("Knowledge makes a man unfit to be a slave." -- Frederick Douglass)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 16 | View Replies]

To: E. Pluribus Unum

Btt


19 posted on 09/02/2019 2:07:32 PM PDT by EliRoom8
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: Alberta's Child

None of whom are combat veterans. They just watch and write about what other people have done.

Bystanders are a dime a dozen.


20 posted on 09/02/2019 2:09:41 PM PDT by Chainmail (Remember that half the people you meet are below average intelligence)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 18 | View Replies]


Navigation: use the links below to view more comments.
first 1-2021-4041-6061-80 ... 101-104 next last

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.

Free Republic
Browse · Search
News/Activism
Topics · Post Article

FreeRepublic, LLC, PO BOX 9771, FRESNO, CA 93794
FreeRepublic.com is powered by software copyright 2000-2008 John Robinson