Posted on 05/30/2007 8:09:19 AM PDT by captjanaway
1 - There is only one reason to go to war - Whenever and wherever evil rises up to threaten peace and prosperity for decent people, good men must do something or evil will prevail.
#2 - There is only one time to go to war – Once convinced that evil can not be put down without going to war and before war comes to your own doorstep.
#3 – and there is only one way to go to war - United in the single purpose of winning that war, no matter the expense.
In the world-wide war against terrorism, Washington DC has failed in all three basic rules of war and continues to fail today.
(Excerpt) Read more at greatmindsthinkright.com ...
So, what do we do? It is frustrating that we are trying to be “civilized” while fighting barbarians. We have put so many restrictions on our soldiers it’s unreal.
I’m not a military expert, but we better start fighting this thing to win soon!
Very well said!
There is a lot of truth to that.
However, he did fight the war in Afghanistan to win, and win we did.
He did fight the war against Sadam's government in Iraq to win, and it was a stunning victory.
Where he faltered was on how to take the next step to stabilizing the region.
In my opinion he simply put too much faith in the Iraqi people, and did to little to seal Iraq's borders and prevent the flood of foreign terrorists.
However, his efforts still might have proved much more successful (and they have had considerable success) if it were not for the media and the far left's constant rooting for the enemy and encouraging them that the will of the American people could be broken with their help.
The war we are losing isn't the one of military engagements, it's the political war, and we are losing it mainly because the media and nearly half our own nation doesn't seem to want us to win.
The only solution to this that I can see is that Bush should have invaded Iran as well, and pummeled Syria as well. That would have resulted in a lot more loss of life, and would have made much of the world very, very nervous about our actions out of fear that we might really become a power-hungy, imperialistic country.
I don't know if it would have worked out better then, however it looks like we are still going to have to invade Iran and possibly Syria if we ever want success in the War on Terror. However it does appear that Bush doesn't have the stomach for it. It definitely doesn't help that the State department is stuffed full of liberals, communists, and peace at any cost nuts. But in the end Bush is the commander in chief, and his leadership has fallen short.
Jury's still out on that one. If we really wanted to decisively win the war in Afghanistan, we'd have bombed the smithereens out of Western Pakistan. That's where the Taliban and bin Laden are hanging out.
It's like that whole damn Parrot's Beak part of Cambodia that we wouldn't touch for so long. Nixon waited until public support for the war had evaporated before going in to Cambodia to cut off VC supply lines from the Ho Chi Minh trail. Prince Sihanouk of Cambodia was alternately playing China and the US like a violin, and only after he was deposed in a coup, did we do anything about that steaming pile of crap.
I guess Bush is waiting for muzzie terrorists to depose that blabbering idiot Musharraf before we finish the job.
We devastated the Taliban in Afghanistan and forced the remnants to flee into hiding elsewhere.
We won the war in Afghanistan to the same extent that we won the war in Iraq.
However, terrorists don't need vast armies. Strategically the war is won. The Taliban and Al Queda are beaten militarily. They can't defeat our forces, they cannot force their way back into power. If they did, we could crush them once again like we already have.
The only way for them to win now is for us to surrender to the relatively small groups of insurgents, most of whom are foreigners.
At the same time, the only way to have a reasonably stable victory is to cut off the funding for those insurgents and force the nations that are sponsoring these terrorists to stop.
We've gone from waging war to hunting terrorists. It's a matter of semantics as to if we have really won the wars in those two locations. The insurgents really only control territory if we allow them to do so while trying to get the new governments in those two nations to become more self sufficient. When we have given up on the domestic forces being able to handle it on their own, we have been able to quickly defeat the insurgent forces and uproot those we don't kill.
The problem is that we are never going to win the overall war on terror as long as we are unwilling to stomp out the major sponsors of it.
We are winning all the real battles. However, as long as we continue to tolerate the actions of Iran, Syria, and even Palestine, we will not have peace.
We could not win in Korea or Vietnam because our rules of engagement would not allow us to win. We were unwilling to go after those who were supporting and funding the fight against us.
Our enemies have learned how to defeat us, and it isn't on the battle field. All they have to do is make a quick victory impossible and prevent us from being willing to expand the conflict.
As soon as we invaded Iraq, liberals started predicting that Iraq would turn into a quagmire like Vietnam. However, they weren't simply predicting it, they were actively working to make it happen.
Bush made a number of mistakes.
Invading Afghanistan - good
Invading Iraq - good
Removing Saddam - good
Ignoring the Ayatollahs and Syrian Baathists - BAD
Wasting American military strength, time, lives and dollars in a social experiment - BAD
We should have cleaned out Saddam, cleaned out the Ayatollahs, cleaned out the Syrian Baathists, and PULLED OUT. Example made and taken note of by Islamic nuts. We could have then let the U.N. and the Euroweenies worry about picking up the pieces.
Alternatively, we could have set up an independent Kurdistan in the north which would have been more than capable of taking care of itself, turned over Sunni territory AND Sunni oil wells to Jordan and let the Jordans take care of their own (their “techniques” are very very effective - far more than ours and they would have been more than happy to have some oil), and turned over the Shiite areas to an Ayatollah purged Iran.
Bush was probably listening to the Brits who created this mess by “constructing” Iraq, as the “constructed” many of thier former colonies, or to his globalist idiot father, in trying to create a social democracy in a territory which never knew democracy in its entire history and is more of a geographic expression and collection of independent tribes than a nation state.
Unfortunately you have to work with the material you have, not the material you woul like to have and Americans, as you so lucidly point out, are not Romans - they haven’t the stomach for a long, drawn out bloodletting. Unlike Romans or Mongols or even Arabs, they don’t enjoy killing (most of them anyway - some of us are exceptions). Osama isn’t the brightest bulb in the chandelier but even HE figured that out.
How did the Japanese feel about us after the war? I think we killed a few of their people, and somehow they don't hate us now.
Those are the “well-trained well-motivated and dedicated military personnel we have” I referred to. Unfortunately they comprise a very small segment of the voting public.
If we were back in WW1 or WW2 days, the vast majority of Americans, civilian as well as military, was wupportive of the war effort. But back then we were in a conventional war.
Today we are fighting a “shadow” war PLUS a guerilla war in Iraq and Afghanistan and these require a very dedicated, well-informed and patriotic public to support.
The Administration itself and Congress are ambivalent about the entire thing and I don’t even think Bush and most Republicans or the Democrats really get it.
The enemy is Islam. Its an anti-western, anti-pluralistic, intolerant, primitive belief system. Not all Muslims fall into this category of course, but a significant number of them do - probably more than admit it - especially in America. Islam is out to dominate the world. It is doing this militarily in Asia and Africa and by using infiltrators in Europe and North America. BOTH sources of “infection” must be addressed.
We have to identify the enemy and not be ashamed or politically intimidated into NOT identifying it.
Your comments about the ROE in Korea and Vietnam are just as applicable in the War on Terror.
Well, we were at war with the entire nation on that one.
In this case, we SAID we were only at war with Saddam and is loyalists, and we were trying to “rescue” the rest of the citizens of the country.
And then, having defeated Saddam, now we aren’t at “war” with any regular army, just “insurgents” and “terrorists”.
In the long run, we may never “Beat” the terrorists unless we once use our full power. But their is that Superman issue. Our military is powerful, but power is nothing, without leadership and the ability to be used. Something the UN has effectively done, we cannot use our full power because of laws that were made their. Correct me if I am wrong, please.
But I just do not feel that Bush has ever gotten a fair chance to protect us. The Congress and Senate have too much influence.
The problem with that is that it isn't the towns that are attacking our troops, it is relatively small groups of insurgents that are attacking from those towns. The average resident of those towns has a pretty limited ability to do something about relatively better armed and better trained insurgents, and we have often stepped back and left the Iraqi's on their own in the hopes that they would take care of some of these problems themselves.
We can't just level towns that are filled with mostly non-combatants. Striking at genuine military targets and incidentally killing some innocents is undesirable, but an unfortunate part of war when the enemy hides among non-combatants. However that is different than attacking a whole town simply because we know some enemy combatants are hiding there.
We are going to have to clear some insurgents out of populated areas, but that isn't how we are going to win the war. The Middle East is full of discontent youth that have been raised on hate and lies. Even if we keep killing insurgents, they will keep sending more as long as they have the resources to do so.
We need to take Iran out of the picture. We need to get those in Saudi Arabia that are also trying to create strife in Iraq to stop as well. How do we take Iran out of the picture? We attack them at home so they are too busy there to spend money and other resources waging war against us in Iraq.
If we can significantly cut down on the foreign money and foreign terrorists flowing into Iraq, then the Iraqis themselves can be much more effective at policing themselves. Those people in those towns might also start trusting their government or us enough to start reporting where the remaining insurgents are operating from within those towns, so we can take them out without killing large numbers of non-combatants.
Hell, these towns SHIELD the "insurgents". Look at the few polls of Iraqi citizens, they hate us. They LIKE seeing American Humvees blow up.
Bottom line, fight like WWII, win like WWII, fight like Vietnam, lose like Vietnam. It sounds to me like your strategy is what they teach military commanders from that war. If you'll recall, we came in second place there. We cannot afford to when dealing with islamunists.
Without realizing that without Christianity there would be no America.
Yes. Without Christianity there would be no Western Civilization.
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