Let the neo-cons bellow, just bring the troops home

The Seattle Times ^ | 9/24/03 | Bruce Ramsey

[Burkeman1]

George, here's what to do in Iraq: Declare victory and bring the troops home.

A senator from Vermont once suggested such a policy during the Vietnam War. It would have meant a defeat. In this case, it might mean chaos, at least for a while, unless you can get more international help.

You asked for help from the U.N. That was good. Get back to them and say, "We're serious. We're on a fast track to leave."

To America's soldiers, you can say: "You're fighters, not social workers. The fighting's done, excellent work, and you can start going home."

Thousands of American families will thank you.

To the American people, you can say: "We've changed our minds about the occupation of Iraq. We'll need only part of that $87 billion I asked for. The rest you can keep."

Watch your poll numbers go up.

The warrior intellectuals — the neoconservatives — will bellow. Let them. They don't have any electoral votes. The American people never bought their "neo-Wilsonian" fantasies of empire. Asserting American dominance was never your argument for war. You said Americans had to depose Saddam Hussein in order to protect themselves.

That's done.

Our occupation of Iraq is not yet six months old and already Iraqis are making sure that we tire of it. This will not tend to get better. An antiwar feeling has arisen in the United States, and Howard Dean, a nobody from a small state, has ridden it to the head of the pack. Dean says he wouldn't have gone to war in the first place. Few notice that Dean also says we ought to stay in Iraq to do nation-building.

"Well, Howard," you can say, "I'm bringing the troops home. If you're elected, you can send them back."

Would America be giving up if we did that? We would be giving up the right to reconstruct Iraq our way. We would not be giving up anything the average American cares about.

Certainly, the American people would accept a change in policy. They have accepted the official story from the start — the weapons of mass destruction, the "link" between Saddam and bin Laden, the "Woman Warrior" story about Pvt. Jessica Lynch. They are not paying much attention to Iraq. They will accept a pullout.

Consider the alternative: Five years of occupation. Maybe 10. Bombs, demonstrations, dead Americans.

Think of the Democrats. In 2002 you beat them by offering to save America from a foreign threat. If you do that in 2004, you're going to be in trouble. Americans get tired of wars that drag on and on, and tend to toss out the political party that does the dragging. Look up the election of 1952. Also 1968. Ask your dad about the political shelf-life of military victory. It is less than one year.

Think of the economy. Business has been terrible since you became president. The people have been pretty forgiving about that. They know the dot-com bust was not your doing (nor Clinton's, really). You have given the people a tax cut, and Alan Greenspan has given them rock-bottom interest rates. In normal times, these would produce a snapping recovery. But war sits on business confidence like a fat man on a dog.

Your war, a Republican war, of which the politically profitable part is over. We are now in the losing part. The occupation of Iraq could drag on well past November 2004.

But you can forestall that. Lean on the U.N. for troops. Lean on the Egyptians; they owe us a favor or two for the billions we've doled out to them. Speed up the creation of an Iraqi government. You don't need to wait for elections. That's Iraq's business.

Then you can announce that most of the troops will be home by Christmas and you will not be needing all of that $87 billion.

Watch Wall Street jump. The dollar, too.

Nobody expects you to do this. It will shock your friends, but what's more, it will confound your enemies. It will also steer the Republican Party back toward that nationalistic but "humble" foreign policy you described three years ago, which best suits the interests, and the patience, of those who might vote for you in 2004.

Bruce Ramsey's column appears regularly on editorial pages of The Times. His e-mail address is bramsey@seattletimes.com

Copyright © 2003 The Seattle Times Company

[Criminal Number 18F]

can someone explain to me what is so wrong about DRAFT?

Yeah, I can. In the fewest possible words, it produces a poorer Army than the voluntary system does. Even during times when the US had the draft (the Civil War, WWI, and the period from 1940 through 1972, including WWII, Korea, Vietnam, and the Cold War) the best and most effective units were voluntary in nature.

I well recall the sergeants whose harrowing recollections of the draft era led them to give the volunteer army a fair shake, and ultimately to embrace it. The people who speak of a draft, like yourself, have not been in the Army during the last couple dozen years. I intend no insult to you or other draft promoters (some of whom are decorated veterans who served many years ago).

d.o.l.

Criminal Number 18F

[MEG33]

Google "pay during the Revolutionary war".You may be enlightened.

[Criminal Number 18F]

Let me get this straight:

1. You were never in the military. (That's OK in general... this isn't Heinlein where you need to serve to be a citizen. Many serve the nation in other ways, and God bless 'em for it).
2. Your opinion of today's military: "welfare recipients" and "whiners". This opinion is obviously not based on first-hand experience, but apparently upon your analysis of the entertainments offered up by television's news departments. (The thought that the people doing the whining might not be the people doing the fighting seems to have eluded you. As well, the thought that reporters who share your isolationism might select their interviewees accordingly).
3. You try to fortify your opinions by calling on memories of ancient and remote relatives, seeking sympathy by pleading victimization as a proxy for them (I wonder how they would feel about you doing this?). I don't run a system of political apartheid here, where everyone has a classification stamped on him, but I note that the victimization ploy that you employ with such relish, is normally associated with a certain political ideology.
4. You are quick on the trigger with names for people who disagree with you; the names trip so smoothly from your lips that one suspects that you are a party to some discussion elsewhere where these recondite codes (ISTR one of them is "war-lover") are freighted with real meaning.
5. You set yourself up as the arbiter of who is conservative and who isn't. (I knew somebody had that political apartheid classification thing underway). Some free and doubtless unwelcome advice follows: Dude, you can only be the Great Grand Satrap to those that join your little organisation (you know, join up, like you didn't do to the military). There is no Scoutmaster bewstowing the title of conservative on folks who have amassed all the necessary merit badges -- and if there was, it mightn't be you.

It is funny that you think that not serving in the military doesn't make you unfit to comment on war. but not having a grandfather and great uncles (!) who suffered makes another poster unfit. That is exactly what you said:

don't ever respond to me again as you have no pain in war deaths among your family or long lasting injuries... [snip] ...my [not-too-immediate relatives] who all served their country but wish they didn't.

By the way, are these elderly relatives on record anywhere saying that they "wish they didn't" serve their country? I know a lot of guys who wish they hadn't been hit (a group which includes just about everybody that ever got hit.. see, it hurts), but they don't take the next step that you do. And if you are speaking of the desires of the dead, John Edward (the phoney medium, not the phoney candidate) doesn't need the competition. I strongly suspect that you are putting your words in the mouths of Grandpa and Great Uncles Father Jim and Frank. If that's the case, it's simply despicable, because it demeans and degrades their sacrifice.

You are also making one hell of an assumption, that you are the only one on this board that has experienced the "pain" of war. Don't mistake an unwillingness to wallow in an unseemly, frothy bath of it, for ignorance or inexperience of such suffering.

d.o.l.

Criminal Number 18F

[Cronos]

That's a cowards way out. We can't leave now or else it will be like leaving Beirut -- the US will look weak and invite more attacks like 911 from nutters who think we don't have the will for a long fight.

[Cronos]

A point I made on the previous posting of this article - what Ramsey is recommending is what we did in 1991, and it didn't work. The UN didn't step up to the plate, Iraq slid into chaos, and in retaking control Saddam gassed the Kurds. This policy is the reason we had to do it all over again.

Note: Saddy gassed the Kurds in the 80s when he was our ally and we were still supplying him weapons to fight with the Iranis

[Cronos]

A point I made on the previous posting of this article - what Ramsey is recommending is what we did in 1991, and it didn't work. The UN didn't step up to the plate, Iraq slid into chaos, and in retaking control Saddam gassed the Kurds. This policy is the reason we had to do it all over again.

Note: Saddy gassed the Kurds in the 80s when he was our ally and we were still supplying him weapons to fight with the Iranis

[Burkeman1]

Are you calling me a coward?

[autoresponder]

exit time for Cuba?

exit time for Germany?

exit time for Korea?

exit time for Haiti?

exit time for Bosnia?

We are waiting for your responses

[autoresponder]

snivelinglittleyellowcoward.org

[wimpycat]

That's par for the course.

[Chancellor Palpatine]

Our standing army paid for by you and me are not patriots but welfare recipients.

And here, in a nutshell, is one of the most reprehensible concepts going about the paleo world.

[A. Pole]

Reinstating the draft would destroy the finest military on earth.

If you want to keep a volunteer/hired army with growing foreign entanglements, then the only way is what ancient Rome did - hiring foreigners. Foreigners from poorer countries or tribes will fight for promise of citizenship and modest pay.

Otherwise you need to follow the precepts of Founding Fathers and give up the empire.

[metesky]

I have five uncles that were either drafted or volunteered for WWII. All came back with their heads screwed on straight, because their heads were straight before they went, including the uncle who was a waist gunner on the Ploesti raids and the uncle who marched through Burma with General Merrill and the uncle who fought across the Pacific from Guadalcanal to Iwo Jima.

They all went on to honorable peacetime careers and the murderous little (5'7") Marauder headed a major City of Boston Dept.

All were normal folks, except for the two who became New Deal Democrats. We couldn't reason with them...

[J. L. Chamberlain]

A pox on the Neocons!

May a fresh breeze of real conservatism blow away the foul stench of the neos.

J

[Long Cut]

I saw that one. Burke, I also saw your response to someone who called you a coward before, on another thread. You got all Billy-Badass and offered up a "Boston Irish" beating, or some such.

Well, I'm one of those active-duty "WELFARE RECIPIENTS" you just pi$$ed on, and guess what, Lips? You ARE a coward, albiet one who hides behind so-called "principles to mask the fact that you have never put it on the line like those of us in uniform have forever.

I'm bookmarking this thread. I hope others do, too, to throw your poisoned words right in your face the next time you open your yellow mouth.

I've pinged others to this thread, others who are true patriots who are not the craven kind like you who have to have someone on your very doorstep before you'll do something about it. In your case, however, you'd probably just kneel, anyway.

[Chancellor Palpatine]

Our standing army paid for by you and me are not patriots but welfare recipients.

Ahem.

[Chancellor Palpatine]

Burkeman's beliefs:

Our standing army paid for by you and me are not patriots but welfare recipients.

[Chancellor Palpatine]

As a Constitution Party supporter, do you find that Burkeman's beliefs on the military match your own? His comment - "Our standing army paid for by you and me are not patriots but welfare recipients."

[JohnGalt]

I resisted posting this article but it lays out (yet again, we've been a couple months ahead of the curve) the politics of this mess in a fairly convincing case.

Perhaps Rove is the conservative's best friend in this mess afterall?

[68-69TonkinGulfYachtClub]

Long Cut, why is it that those who don't know, always know?
Why is it that those who heve never been in the military know so much about the military?
(One does NOT have to serve in the military,
but those who have have a better understanding.)
Why do some people find time for negative military posts while conding Freedom?
My guess is they don't understand the real cost of our Freedom.
Long Cut : SALUTE