Robert E. Lee discusses the genius of a certain kind of self-impressed intellectual with whom we are all too familiar today
From Fred Singer by way of Michael Ledeen:
It appears we have appointed our worst generals to command forces, and our most gifted and brilliant to edit newspapers! In fact, I discovered by reading newspapers that these editor/geniuses plainly saw all my strategic defects from the start, yet failed to inform me until it was too late. Accordingly, I'm readily willing to yield my command to these obviously superior intellects, and I'll, in turn, do my best for the cause by writing editorials - after the fact.I think what strikes me the most about the Democrats in Congress and on America's editorial pages, is the fact that they patently (a) don't understand how important it is for the nation to win when once we have decided to go to war and (b) wouldn't understand what makes the difference between victory and defeat even if they were to come to some glimmerings of awareness of what's at stake.
-- Gen. Robert E. Lee, 1863
It isn't intelligence that wins wars. It is a particular set of character qualities. A nation with a large percentage of people who overvalue intelligence and verbal facility, but undervalue and indeed despise the military virtues -- and the military virtues are, indeed, virtues, not vices -- is a nation that, like all nations, will sooner or later find itself in a war that it has to win -- but which on the day of decision, will choose defeat of its own free will.
For the citizens of such a nation underestimate both the cost of victory, and the price of defeat.
posted by Ken Pierce @ 7:15 PM
17 comments
17 Comments:
Two questions:
1) Are you familiar with Michael Yon, an independent war-time blogger/journalist?
2) Have you ever read Expanded Universe by Robert A. Heinlein?
Btw, in case you are concerned, I will endeavor to refrain from anything unworthy of little eyes.
;-)
Of course, I asked that first question before I took a look at your blogroll.
*rolls eyes*
I'm spreading that particular word as far and wide as I can.
Heinlein is somebody I've always meant to get around to reading and yet, for reasons I can't explain myself, never managed to. Everything I know about him says he ought to be right up my street, but somehow he's been getting put off until next month for a quarter of a century now...I have no idea why.
As for Yon, I think I've said before in ATB comments that if somebody starts telling me how the war's going in Iraq, I immediately ask if they're regularly reading Michael Yon, and if they answer, "No," then I don't pay much attention to their patently uninformed opinion. ;-)
Heinlein is worth reading. Expanded Universe is a good taste of both his fiction and non-fiction. The non-fiction is amazingly applicable to contemporary politics, considering it was written before I was born. And it was most recently updated in 1980, which means I was like two. And yet, very applicable.
The thing that most impresses me about Heinlein is how well-educated he was, both in breadth and depth. That's my biggest envy at this time; Heinlein, L'Engle, and many, many others had formal educations of the type I'll never be able to get.
:-(
I do try to compensate with independent study, but it's not the same.
Yon is actually new to me. Before that I would read "the news" and get disgusted because it said nothing about what was actually going on on the ground. You talk to soldiers and they talk about what they're doing, the news just talks about the deaths.
Of course, most of the soldiers I've met and blogged with are in Afghanistan. So, I'm glad to have found a trust-worthy site full of depth and breadth about Iraq.
You're missing the real issue with Iraq (and Vietnam for that matter).... the flaw is/was not Generalship, but in the Political leadership.
This Republican administration did something tantamount to having the troops charge in the wrong direction and off a cliff.
Given the profile of incompetence that has emerged with everything Republican, the folly of Iraq is not difficult to comprehend.
The legitimacy of a cause, of a war effort, is all important in a Democracy lest you lose public support.
Republicans, long on bellicosity ("...bring 'em on") and short on competence continue to place America in a disadvantageous position.
Ghost,
"You're missing the real issue with Iraq..."
The problem with that statement is that the "real issue" is a matter of opinion. Yours is not more valid than Kenny's, just because it is your own.
"...the flaw is/was not Generalship, but in the Political leadership."
And from that, I could contend that you are missing the real issue of the post; but I shant.
General Lee's comment was such as to indicate that those at home do not know what those on the war front know, by lack of experience. A reporter telling a general what should have been done is empty. A politician telling a general what should have been done is empty. Such statements are empty, because the people saying them have no idea what the facts are and do not know what *they* would have done had they actually been there.
Many people thought the Civil War, of which General Lee was an important part, could be won in a matter of weeks, if not days. They were wrong. The politicians and the pundits were wrong, and the generals did what they could see to do. They were not always right, but they were closer to it than the leaders-from-a-far.
While I do fault Bush & Congress (both parties) on many accounts, the main account is in not listening to the generals. It seems to me that Bush & Congress are not interested in fighting a war, but instead are interested in playing politics with said war. However, whether or not this is true, is unknowable -- it's what their actions make them seem.
Ghost,
See, I think that anybody who says that in taking us into Iraq Bush was having the troops "charge off a cliff," just doesn't know what they're talking about -- either that or else they are using that metaphor in a way I don't comprehend. It seems to me to imply that Iraq either could never be won, or else can't be won now. And that is absolutely, totally absurd -- from a military perspective. If we the American people were to make up our minds right now that we were going to win, we could take out Iraq, and Iran, and North Korea all simultaneously.
But if you mean that Bush was sending the troops off a cliff in the sense that America is no longer capable of winning even relatively minor wars (and the war in Iraq is going badly precisely because the American people refuse to make even a miniscule effort to win it), because half the country thinks that it was a moral triumph for us to bail on Vietnam and also thinks that a loss over four years, in combat, of one-tenth as many soldiers as we lose civilians every year in car accidents -- if you mean that America's voters and media talking heads insist on losing wars that our military can win and badly wants to win...well, then, yes, Bush took the armed forces off a cliff. But that cliff is a political cliff, and the reason that cliff is there -- not to be unduly insulting or meaning to impute treasonous motives to you, my dear Ghost -- is people like you. "Like you," that is, in the sense of having no real comprehension of what is required to win wars, or why it's so important to win them, or what determines victory or defeat, or just how much more it will cost us to lose in Iraq than it would cost us to win in both Iraq and Iran simultaneously.
Obviously not everybody who insists that we have no option but to declare that Bush has lost in Iraq and to flee that country in disgrace, is a Democrat. But if the Democratic Party were to make up its mind that you guys really wanted us to win this war, and that you were going to get serious about doing whatever you had to do to help us win (won't ever happen, of course, because that would mean you would have to put aside your Bush-hatred and help him succeed), our enemies in Iraq would have no chance at all. Zero.
But you won't. And while I realize that y'all's intentions are good...well, so were Neville Chamberlain's. So, I'm not calling you traitors, any more than I would call Chamberlain a traitor. But you don't have to be a traitor to do your own country immense harm.
I'll make a deal with you: if you will devoutly hope that you and your Democratic Party friends are wrong about our chances of victory in Iraq, then I, in the event that you guys succeed in getting the entire country rather than just the Democratic party to declare defeat and retreat and surrender in Iraq, will devoutly hope that I'm wrong about the consequences that will follow. Fair enough?
Wow, Kenny, I think your last set of comments is off base. Here is why. Blaming the democrats for the republican administration’s failure to plan for the post war efforts is flat out wrong. The republican administration chose not to listen to the generals on the ground, and a secy of state with military experience, when they said that it would take a huge military effort, by one estimate of 500,000 troops. It was the republican congress in the years 2001 - Dec 2006, who chose to pay for a smaller military rather then push the republican administration into a winning strategy of over whelming force. It was a republican administration who chose to take their eye off the ball of Osama Bin Laden, and rebuilding Afghanistan, to go after the mirage of WMDs in Iraq based on falsified evidence.
Could the military win any battle or war the American people put their mind to, absolutely. There is no doubt that the American military is the strongest by far in the world, with the most advanced weapons, with the best trained fighting force.
But the question is and always will be, will you die for this cause.
As long as there is a volunteer military, that is the question that has to be answered. As long more young men decide that this war is not dieing for, it is not a question of political will, it is a question of the American people’s will. With recruiting in the military dropping, it shows that it is not democratic or republican choice.
I will take up your deal and agree that the war in Iraq can be won, if you take on the other side of the bargain. Describe in detail how everyone would know when we have won in Iraq. Describe in detail what it will take to get there. Describe in detail why the republican congress of the past 5 years, and the republican administration chose not to do that - without blaming the democrats. After all the rubber stamp republican congress gave bush the blank check. Oh year, Kenny, you can’t blame politicians, you have to describe this devoid of partisanship and rhetoric.
I don't see the war in Iraq being won, at best, it will be a cold draw. I predict we will have permanent troops in Iraq standing guard over a border between hated enemies, just like in Korea, and I count that as a loss. This is not because of political will on the democratic side, this is because of the realities on the ground. We are standing in the middle of three fighting factions, two of which hate us, and want us out, all three of which would rather die then see the other side win.
Blaming democrats for this, and insinuating that they (we) are traitors is demonizing - and you know it.
Jim,
Well, if I were insinuating that you guys were traitors, rather than going to a very great deal of trouble explicitly to say that I do not believe that you are traitors, then that would indeed be demonizing. Good thing I was careful to make that clear, eh? ;-)
I don't see very much that we disagree on, actually, though certainly we disagree on some points. In particular we agree in thinking poorly of Bush. I was absolutely furious with Bush before we set foot in Iraq because I thought he was either a complete fool, or else was deliberately lying to the American people about what the cost of victory would be.
Let us assume, for the sake of argument, the latter: he was deliberately underselling the cost of the war. In that case, I would absolutely agree that Bush was taking the military "off a cliff" in that he was committing them to a war that he did not really believe the American people had the stomach to win. I don't have the impression that that's what the Ghost was accusing him of; but if she wants to jump in and say, "Yes, that was my point exactly," then I will apologize for misunderstanding her, and will say that in my opinion she's got a good case.
I myself think that Bush genuinely underestimated what it would take to win this war. Remember that it took him years even to reach the point of being willing to admit in public that the terrorists' religion might be part of the problem, and to my knowledge he has not to this day ever issued a speech calling on America's young people to enlist in the armed forces. Long after it was obvious that he and Rumsfeld had grossly underestimated (despite all the historical evidence that stared them in the face all along) the difficulties of real victory, he stubbornly refused to change tactics.
There was a period for at least a year, and probably two, after 9/11, where Bush had every opportunity to go before the American people and spell out in detail the threat posed by the worldwide movement of Islamofascism, to be blunt with the American people about what the cost would be, and to call us, as Churchill once called England and as Henry once called his "band of brothers," to war. Real war, that is, with a realistic idea of what it would take to win, but also a realistic understanding of what was at stake. But he didn't. And insofar as his failure to do so has led to the current political situation, then, again, you could say that he has sent the military marching "off a [political] cliff."
Well, I think we all agree that he screwed up royally, and that our country will pay a heavy price; and that will be his shame when history looks back upon him, I think.
But I also blame the American people for buying the rosy picture to begin with, and for responding to the inevitable difficulties by wanting to turn and run away rather than by saying, "All right, let's figure out what has to be done and get this thing won, by God." I mean, I don't so much blame the American people, I suppose, because where are you going to find an American under the age of forty who was expected, in his public school education, to learn anything meaningful about military history? So I suppose it's mostly a matter of ignorance. But still, if ever there was a nation whose people had decided that the whole "eternal vigilance" thing was way overrated, it's the American people.
My problem with the Democrats in general is that they have no interest in winning -- they just want out. There are noteworthy examples, such as Lieberman and a few other Democrats in Congress. (This is one of the places where I give points to Hilary Clinton.) But the eagerness with which Democrats talk about "Bush's" war -- man, that drives me to straight fury. This is America's war, dammit, and when we flee in disgrace, the Islamic world isn't going to say, "Hey, looky there, al Qaeda defeated Bush." They'll say, "Hey, looky there, Osama was right about America all along." Got that? Not "right about Bush." It'll be "right about America."
In short, you guys aren't trying to figure out how to win in Iraq. You're trying to figure out how to run away from Iraq. It's elections, not the war, that you Democrats collectively appear to want to win. (Though I do admit that in this I'm probably doing rank-and-file Democrats a disservice by taking the behavior of Democratic politicians as standard "Democratic" behavior.)
You yourself, Jim -- look, I don't want to hurt your feelings here, but I find your choice of examples fascinating. You think the best-case outcome in Iraq is another Korea, which you consider a loss. But why did you not mention Japan and Vietnam? Japan is evidence that, though it takes years and monumental effort, a society can be radically transformed; so your pessimism about the best case is somewhat dubious. But far more importantly, if Korea is, to you, a loss, then what the hell would you call Vietnam??? Do you really think the world would be a better place, and the United States better off, if there had been a Fall of Seoul similar to the Fall of Saigon? Do you forget that Saigon fell only because of the United States' deeply dishonourable and deeply dishonest abandonment of those who had trusted our promises -- an abandonment justified by arguments that were almost verbatim the very same arguments being used today to justify abandoning those Iraqis of good will who have literally gambled their lives on America's reliability as an ally???
Where are all the South Korean boat people? Where are the letters like the one Spalding Gray describes in Swimming to Cambodia, from Prince Sirik Matak, constituting his refusal to accept evacuation from Saigon in American helicopters?
Dear Excellency and Friend:
I thank you very sincerely for your letter and for your offer to transport me towards freedom. I cannot, alas, leave in such a cowardly fashion. As for you, and in particular for your great country, I never believed for a moment that you would have this sentiment of abandoning a people which has chosen liberty. You have refused us your protection, and we can do nothing about it.
You leave, and my wish is that you and your country will find happiness under this sky. But, mark it well, that if I shall die here on this spot and in my country that I love, no matter, because we all are born and must die. I have only committed the mistake of believing in you.
Please accept, Excellency and dear friend, my faithful and friendly sentiments.
Sirik Matak
(That would be the same Sirik Matak who was shot in the stomach a few days later by the Khmer Rouge and allowed to die slowly and agonizingly over the following three days.)
You seem to be convinced (though I'm not sure on what grounds) that we could never possibly make Iraq into another Japan or Israel; and you seem to think the best we could hope for is to make Iraq into another South Korea. And from this you apparently conclude that therefore we might as well just skip town and let Iraq become another South Vietnam -- because Korea was, in your book, a "loss." I think that's complete and utter nonsense, even if I grant you your premise about the upside. There is a huge difference between South Korea and South Vietnam, and that difference is far greater than the difference between South Korea and Japan.
Victory in Iraq, to me, means the following things at a minimum:
1. We don't leave as long as our leaving would be perceived within the Muslim world as a retreat after having been defeated by al Qaeda, and as having abandoned those who were foolish enough to gamble on our resolve and integrity and honor and willingness to keep our commitments. If that means we stay there fifty years, then by God we stay there fifty years.
2. We get the murder rates in Baghdad and other hot spots down to the murder rates that were normal for New Orleans before Katrina. If the Democratic Party doesn't consider that such a level of violence disqualifies it from governing when said violence is taking place in America, then it ought to be satisfied with that level of violence in Iraq.
3. It becomes received Iraqi wisdom that for a would-be despotic faction or "militia" to set up shot to intimidate and kill its neighbors, is to accomplish nothing except to bring the American military down upon its head in swift and irresistible fashion.
4. We cut off the flow of Iranian money into Iraqi terrorist hands.
5. We master the art of defeating a terrorist insurgency, a skill which we will continue to need for as long as the post-Vietnam world continues to believe that America doesn't have the balls or patience necessary to defeat a terrorist insurgency. (It can be done, as the British proved in Malaysia; it just takes a while. But the only thing we've proved since Vietnam is that anybody can beat us if they're just willing to turn terrorist, because we are only willing to fight wars in which none of our soldiers ever die, which end in less time than it takes for this season's episodes of the latest hot show to go into summer reruns, and which can be carried on without any of us back home noticing the slightest inconvenient impact on our own personal standards of living.)
6. We keep killing al Qaeda terrorists at a rate of forty or fifty for every American soldier who dies, for as long as al Qaeda continues to try to drive us out of Iraq.
7. It becomes received wisdom throughout the Muslim world that we drove al Qaeda out of Iraq rather than vice versa.
8. It takes us no longer to get all of our troops out of Iraq than it took us to get all of our troops out of West Germany or Kosovo.
If the American people are the heirs not of the generation that insisted on losing Vietnam, but instead of the generation that won World War II, then we can -- and will -- win the war against Islamofascism. For that was a generation that simply would not accept defeat in the face of evil. Unfortunately I think we're much more the heirs of the rationalizers of our contemptible self-inflicted loss in Vietnam than heirs of the Greatest Generation; I fear we too are rationalizers for whom defeat with disgrace is preferable to victory with sacrifice.
And that's not really Bush's fault. It's ours.
Quick quip, doesn’t this post put you into the realm of armchair generals which Gen Lee was criticizing?
“But why did you not mention Japan and Vietnam” I did not mention Japan because Japan did not have three warring factions that will never accept peace as long as one is perceived as stronger than another, and these three factions won’t accept a co-equal status in a democratically elected government. Korea is as close to a model of warring factions that I could think of.
“we could never possibly make Iraq into another Japan or Israel;” Israel may be an interesting model for Iraq. You may have a peaceful side of a border, and a warring side of the border like the Palestinians. Neither side will accept the other’s right to exist, and terror will always be there – and given your model, Americans will always be standing in the middle. To me this is a loss, there is no peace.
“..turn terrorist, because we are only willing to fight wars in which none of our soldiers ever die” There are two points here. First, I don’t think it has to do with being willing to fight wars in which non of our soldiers die. It has to do with fighting wars in which we morally disagree. I have already stated why I disagree with this Iraq war, to add to that I don’t want to send soldiers to fight a war in my name, where I would not go. And I would not go to Iraq. Iraq was not a terrorist hotbed until we went in. I might have gone to Afghanistan, had I been a younger man. Afghanistan is where the roots of terror began, and will continue as long as Bin Laden and company are still allowed to be there. As long as al Queada is in a place other then Iraq, we will always have an enemy being sent to Iraq. Second point, it is possible to fight an insurgency and win. Our Military has not, and is not trained to fight an insurgency. We are trained to fight a stand up battle against a potentially smaller force in open warfare. This is a failure of the civilian military leadership.
We will never be able to fight Islamofascism in a stand up fight. There is no army to defeat. If America continues to alienate Muslims around the world, we may end up in a battle against one billion Muslims – without a stand up army.
I believe we agree on what winning in Iraq will look like, - except for staying there for 50 years. To me, this will be a loss. It will be a commitment that will take away our efforts to eradicate terrorism from the rest of the world – starting with Afghanistan, Sudan and neighboring African countries, Palestine, Syria, Philippines, Indonesia to name a few. Oh yeah, I forgot, it isn’t just Muslims that are terrorists. What about the anti-Castro Cubans who have bombed civilian targets, or the Maoist insurgents in Nepal? Oh, I forgot, those Cubans are on OUR side. And Nepal has no special interest to America, as long as China can keep it under relative control.
We disagree on what it will take. It will take a negotiated peace with not only Iraqis, but also Iranians, Syrians, Israelis, Saudis, Egyptians. Americans cannot and should not be the middle east police force. It has to be up to the countries that have stake in the efforts to make this happen. Until and unless we make the peace a regional peace, we lose.
A couple more thoughts about Viet Nam and Korea.
Both Korea and Viet Nam were proxy wars in the fight against communism. There was a stand up army in both wars. In Viet Nam the opposing force realized that guerrilla warfare was a better strategy because of the US’s overwhelming force. We lost the war because we were unable to deal effectively with an unconventional war.
We could have and should have won all of Korea had we done what Douglas Macarthur suggested and gone through the entire country with an overwhelming force. The American leadership chose not to do that.
One last point, in both Korea and Viet Nam, we were fighting the chimera of communism. We did not have a clear idea of who the enemy was. The enemy was an idea. In Iraq, we are fighting the mirage of Islamofascism. We will never win against Islamofascism until American leadership decides to make world peace a real goal. Islamofascism has no standup military. Islamofascism is an enemy that can only be marginalized and not conquered. It will take winning the hearts and minds of Muslims world wide, not battling an insurgency in Iraq. If we continue to alienate Muslims world wide, we may end up fighting a war against one billion Muslims – in a non-standup fight.
You raise a good point that I should have mentioned myself: the people who were against this war all along (Dennis Kucinich, for example, or however you spell his name) are not really the targets of my disdain here. It's the people who were for war as long as they thought it would be easy and are now saying, "Oh, wow, we didn't know it would be hard." Rather like the morons who rode out in carriages to watch the "fun" at Bull Run and then came back traumatized by the horror.
"If we continue to alienate Muslims world wide..." How, pray, are we doing that in any way that we weren't doing that before? In order to "alienate Muslims world wide," it is apparently only necessary to put Mohammed in a cartoon. If your goal is to avoid offense then you have no hope, because these are people who will manufacture offenses out of thin air if they have to.
In the meantime, I'm not so much interested in "conquering" al Qaeda as I am in killing the ones currently engaged in trying to kill us, and in counteracting their propaganda. The cause of jihadism will be far more rapidly advanced by our retreating -- and thus showing ourselves, in their eyes, to be weak -- than in our staying and "offending" people who are already offended merely by our choice of religion.
But on that, obviously, reasonable people can agree.
As for "Our Military has not, and is not trained to fight an insurgency. We are trained to fight a stand up battle against a potentially smaller force in open warfare" -- okay, this is what I mean by a lack of knowledge of military history. The whole point is that in war, you adapt. The American invasion force in Normandy was completely unprepared for, and untrained in, hedgerow battle. So we went to work figuring it out. We did not say, "Oh, well, we haven't been trained in hedgerow fighting; so we need to go back to England and let Germany keep France."
If you have been keeping up with the dispatches of front-row reporters like Michael Yon throughout this conflict, you already know that Americans on the ground have completely reinvented our tactics in order to apply lessons learned in fighting insurgents; in fact the whole point of promoting Gen. Petraeus is precisely that he's the guy whose forces figured it out the fastest and have been most successful. The tactics that our forces are now applying are radically different from the tactics we came in with four years ago, or even the tactics that were being used before Petraeus's promotion.
This is precisely what I mean by saying we have to learn how to beat insurgencies -- and you only learn by actually going out and beating one.
We will never be able to fight Islamofascism in a stand up fight -- fine. But we damn well are going to have to fight them, because they will keep actively trying to kill us until we kill them. And we're going to have to win the propaganda war, which is where the real battle is being fought -- and if we leave Iraq, we lose that war.
I don't really think you've addressed my point that not all losses are equal, and that if you have no choice but to lose, still it makes a helluva difference whether you "lose" like we did in Korea, or whether we lose like we did in Vietnam.
Sorry, disjointed comment, and I meant to acknowledge that you had a couple of solid points; but I'm out of time to review. I'll revisit later on tonight.
It was a good couple of comments, though; thanks very much. It's awfully nice having you around, you know.
I'm just gonna react to one comment here, and I will add a bunch to Arnies response.
Ragarding the cartoon outrage, I give as much credance to that as I do to the christianists who get outraged with the Maplethorpe exhibit of a crucifix in urine, or a school that decides to do a winter celebration instead of a Christmas celebration. In other words, not much, the islamists used the issue to whip up an already angered population.
Kenny (or do you prefer Ken?),
I swear I posted something, but it's not showing up. Either moderation is on and I didn't make the cut/wait long enough or Blogger is being -- well, Blogger.
Being a new "discusser" I do want give a bit of back-story. I supported the Iraq war going in. I was a rah-rah Republican sort, though I never belonged to the Republican party. "Iraqi freedom" was something I could get behind, and I saw the WMD as a legitimate excuse to accomplish it. To that, I still agree -- with serious qualifications.
Weapons of Mass Destruction have been found, they are of concern, and there are probably some things that slipped across the borders before we had sufficient control (Iran or Syria, maybe both, would be my guess). However, Bush did exaggerate the threat posed by Iraq to make his bid for war. Whether than exaggeration was warranted/acceptable is a matter of opinion. That it happened is a matter of logical analysis.
I'm not trying to debate the legitimacy of the Iraq war. I believe it was legitimate, and I also believe that debate along those lines serves philosophy and nothing more. Whether or not Iraq was legitimate at the on-set doesn't have a whole lot of affect on what we do with it now. (I'll explain why for your liberal readers in a moment.) I'm telling you this, because I'm about to disagree with you in part. While, from our past discussions, I have a great deal of confidence in your ability to resist labeling me as a groupthinking liberal I feel the need to make it perfectly clear that I'm not one. I have fallen for groupthink in the past (conservative, not liberal) and try very hard not to do so now. I may agree with some points of groupthink, but I do so only after a great deal of thought. (After all, even a broken clock is right twice a day.)
For liberal readers, the reason I believe that discussion of the legitimacy of our initial war with Iraq is pointless is two-fold: 1) We are already there. It's happened. Get over it. 2) That war has been won already. Hussein is gone. His dysfunction government is no more. We went in there with a great deal of force, and we won in record time.
Now, facing up to the music, our failure was this: We did not win the peace, we won the war. We did not put in place the force that was necessary to stabilize Iraq after we destabilized it. We let Al Qaeda in!!!
That's our failure, and because of that failure we are now fighting a different war. Let me repeat that: What we face in Iraq now is a separate, but related war than the one we went in to fight.
For some unknown reason, this change in thinking seems to be very difficult for quite a lot of people. They see it as a continuous battle. It is not. The enemy we fight now is a different enemy than the one we went in to fight. Bush played a great deal of cover-up with that, by acting like he meant for it to happen. Bad Bush; get over it.
Winning in Iraq now, this accidental war, is more important than winning against Hussein was. We lose Iraq; we lose our security at home.
Al Qaeda can come here. Al Qaeda is here. If we lose "face," as it were, they'll come here in force.
If I have to explain why I believe this, I will...but I'd rather hope it is not necessary since it is rather obvious.
This is the back-story. Agree, disagree, whatever -- now I will address specifics as per this discussion.
Kenny,
"If we the American people were to make up our minds right now that we were going to win, we could take out Iraq, and Iran, and North Korea all simultaneously."
Yes, if we wanted to bomb the hell out of them without any thought to civilian casualties, decency or stabalization afterward -- yeah, we could do that. We'd lose more than we gained in the long run, but we could do it.
"...and the war in Iraq is going badly precisely because the American people refuse to make even a miniscule effort to win it..."
The Iraq war is going badly because the Bush Administration and the Pentagon were not prepared to deal with the aftermath of winning the initial war. The rioting and looting were looked upon with genuine glee -- the Iraqi people were free at last! But, chaos is not freedom in the sense that America appreciates freedom. Such chaos allowed Al Qaeda to come in. It allowed Al Qaeda to take over certain portions of Iraq. And that was our failure. Our troops did their jobs; our government did not do theirs. They weren't prepared for the peace after the win; so we lost the peace.
"But that cliff is a political cliff, and the reason that cliff is there -- not to be unduly insulting or meaning to impute treasonous motives to you, my dear Ghost -- is people like you."
To this, I agree -- with qualification. The difficulty with politics in America is that it is ruled by party politics. This is damaging our country on so many obscene levels, yet it continues and grows. Many of the Democrats are more concerned with Bush and his being wrong, than being right or having solutions. Getting out is not a solution; it's a failure. Another failure on top of the one Bush already caused. If Democrats were concerned for the welfare of the American people, then I could (almost) forgive them their hate-filled spite of Bush. However, they are concerned with Bush losing, not with America winning; that I find unforgivable. They're too busy telling us we're losing in Iraq (which is not true, thus they have to repeat themselves), instead of telling us how to win (which Bush & company are also failing to do).
God, what I wouldn't give for a little common sense to blast the demagogues! But, alas, they wouldn't be demagogues then and less people would follow them.
*sigh*
Blaming Democrats is just as ineffectual as blaming Republicans; it's fun (either way), it's easy, but it's ineffectual. Who's fault is it that we're losing the war? NOBODY'S!!! It's nobody's fault, because we are NOT losing the war. Wars are won with battles, and the battles are what we are winning.
The failure comes in winning the peace. We're winning the war, but we're not winning the peace. Our soldiers are trained to win wars, they're not trained to win the peace. It's a different problem, and it's a problem both poles have repeatedly failed to address.
Leaving Iraq as it is does not win the peace, it loses the war. Keeping on keepin' on does not win the peace, it continues to win the war. We need something better; I call it strategy. You don't win the peace with battles, you need something more and that is where we consistently fail.
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