Great post!
AGREED! excellent post... good enough for a repeat...
“We would not be in the middle of this mess if we still had troop presence. People had returned to the cities, and a sense of normalcy had returned. And, at that time, Al Qa’ida in Iraq was on the run and their ability to conduct operations was largely broken.
The insurgents had lost the favor of the people and popular support was mostly with Coalition Forces. An insurgency NEEDS public support to survive. In Iraq, people had enough and they were killing the terrorists.....they had plenty of bravado because Uncle Sam’s kinfolk were just down the road.
I was there when the talks of cut and run started their steady drumbeat and Iraqi after Iraqi came strolling in begging us not to go because......well, what is happening now would happen.
We had proved that with patience and a strong will, we could defeat terrorism even if it were state sponsored and entrenched. Not only could we remove a dictator, homegrown terrorists (the fedayeen), and imported foreign fighters, but we could win on “their” turf. We also provided a “flypaper” for the worthless flies on humanity’s sh#t pile to land and die.....rather than a concerted effort to attack us at home.
Further, with bases in Iraq and Afghanistan, it gave us strategic positioning in the region - e.g. we had Iran’s flanks with bombers, re-fuellers, tanks, and mass numbers of troops on station. And, with Iraq and Afghanistan “ours” we didn’t have to worry about requesting permission for airspace (like the initial stages of OIF/OEF). The Iranians could saber rattle all they wanted to, but at the end of the day those troops and munitions proved a pretty strong deference as any day, Operation Persian Freedom could commence with just an order to close the noose.
We spent almost 3/4 of a century maintaining strategic presence and security in Europe, Korea, and Japan.
We are still in Germany, Korea, and Japan. All three have democratic governments, peace, stability, prosperity, and are allies. We also have forward staging areas that enable us defense from threats “over there,” while the threats are still “over there.”
Vietnam - we cut and ran and thousands of people died and/or live in poverty. You are seeing the same thing play out in Iraq, and will soon see it play out in Afghanistan.
And then, with the “successes” of the “Arab Springs,” and the fall of IRQ and AFG.....you’ll see the real fun begin. Just wait until the jihadis get settled in IRQ and AFG, because God help us all when Saudi (short trip through the desert from IRQ) and Pakistan (right on the other side of Torkam Gate; and the Paks have never one a war) fall.
Our best hope right now without re-securing Iraq, is that we can supply the resistance in Syria, while the Russians and Iranians arm ‘Assad that the slow bleed takes some of the fight out of the jihadis until we can get someone in the White House that doesn’t have their head up their ass and some Joint Chiefs with testicles.
And it isn’t like I’d be asking anyone to do what I was unwilling to do....I spent four tours in Iraq - two after I was wounded.
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Dinesh D’Souza wrote that Obama is an anti-colonialist. I really see a lot of that character flaw in Obama in all that he does. I think he believes that he is “righting” a very old “wrong” by helping Islam re-establish the caliphate of old. Obama believes that the colonialist West “wronged” the Islamic people by conquering the Ottoman Empire and attempting to establish a civilized culture in the Middle East. Obama has a hardon for seeing it become a Caliphate again.