I understand war as well as anybody on this site.
The nature of the war we are in now is not offensive BY CHOICE, by Bush's choice.
The Administration chose the strategy. They chose it from the moment they decided to not ask for a Declaration of War, which certainly would have made the war a highly offensive war.
Victory was never achieved in Iraq. And that is the problem, and will remain the problem.
I agree with you that the public does not understand war as well as I do - why should they? But the public does see a war in Iraq that we're not winning, and they are not going to permanently support what we are doing. They stopped supporting that tonight.
So, the President had best make the war in Iraq considerably more offensive, because the alternative now is defeat. Sooner rather than later.
"Delcration of War"...just words. No different than how they do it legally today.
Do you truly believe everything would be different if instead of a "resolution" we had a "declaration"????
Geez.
We won the war long ago.
The dictator we fought was just sentenced to hang.
did you miss that bit of news?
I think you're right there. If the President did anything wrong in Iraq it was in taking too defensive a posture. We should've laid waste before attempting to play defense. Somebody tell me again why Al-Sadr is still alive? The US needed to unleash pain on Iraq two years ago and that place would be so much farther ahead today.
Your post 5140 is very interesting to me. I know little about war, but I've thought for a couple years now that if Bush didn't find a way to defeat the "insurgents" decisively, invading Iraq could turn out to be a bad move. He hasn't found that decisive victory and it must at some level be a great encouragement for Al Qaeda.
Who would they have declared war on? Iraq. We beat them. Many to most of the so called "insurgents" are foreign fighters. The nature of guerrilla warfare is that small numbers of unconventional forces can tie down large numbers of conventional forces.
Only if we are willing to go after the sources, be they in Saudi Arabia, Iran or Syria (plus Lebanon and the Palestinian territories) of the terrorists. That includes their sources of funding.
We, as a country, do not have the stones for that, even though our military could do it.
Your post is.....brilliant.
Not gonna happen.....
In Iraq, the 100% offensive is over, and has been over. There is now a political track, a humanitarian track, and light offensive.
It is matter of military and strategic necessity, not George Bush's.
Our enemy is not the Iraqi people, and the same can be said for Iran, Syria and others.
This is why it is what it is.
The only other option is to withdraw and wait. Then, after we have been trashed, we can respond against..............who.......where......what......how....
Geez......this sounds familiar....Is this not the same choices we were faced with after 9/11?
No, you may understand warfare, but you don't understand the nature of this current conflict that some call the war on terror.
It is really a war against a mist, or a fog of Islamic fascism that is scattered throughout the world.
No conventional military offensive plan can succeed with a enemy it cannot possibly differentiate from the resident cultures.
BTW, looks like we might hold the Senate by one seat.....maybe not.....
I'm afraid the American public has made a huge mistake, but perhaps they needed to make it.
I have already seen this mistake made once, and do not want to watch it happen again. If that isn't bad enough, the consequences of this mistake may well be far greater, but the fact is, that Republicans were given a gift and they misused the publics trust. The war is just part of it, it was more a retaliation for some bad behavior, coupled with a conservative ideology that the majority of the electorate will not accept any longer.
The moderates have been warning about this for years, and the best evidence starts with Santorum.
No, it's not just the war.
Allen is conceding.......