Terrorists are being killed there & aren't attacking us here. Seems like that was the plan. First you say it can't be won, then you imply that we are losing... which one is it? Agreed. But we're there & can't just pull out. We're starting to focus on terrorists in Pakistan. Osama is obviously scared...
I've made this point many times in the last two years. I'm glad to see that you agree, bub. FSA--November, 2004 post 3. We won the war in 21 days and sacked their capital. So why are we still there? Saddam is gone and the WMD's don't exist. Why do we still hear war hawks like yourself saying that we can't leave until we WIN this fight against the insurgents? I say, What exactly constitutes victory? I think we've already won the war, too. The occupation is unwinnable. We win by leaving them no Americans there to attack . . . either sooner or later. I'm for sooner, not instantly, but soon. The Iraqis will not step up and take control as long as we are there. They still have some major internal issues to fight out amoing themselves and it ain't our fight. If these ragheads were such a dangerous enemy that we had to invade and defeat them, then why are we rebuilding their damn country for them? They are damn sure not cooperating. Let them do it themselves.
Iraqi insurgents have never been a threat to us in America, amigo. We invaded Iraq because Saddam was "bad" and he owned WMDs, not because we feared their street thugs with suicide bombs and Ak-47's. That was the plan and it was a bad one. And I never said we were losing, I said we were not winning. We never lost the Vietnam War either. How can you lose a war in which you win every battle? But neither did we win it. It took us 8 years to figure out that a guerrilla war is not winnable in the usual sense and that it was in our best interests to just quit and leave them in the mud to fight out their civil war among themselves. Vietnam is still a third-world hell hole and we are still a superpower. In a sense, we won by leaving.
In a perfect world, I would say leave them too. If there were no bombs, missiles and planes to fly here from there, then yes, Red we should just have gone in there, blew everything up, and left. But see, so that we don't have to go back over there in a year and fight some Taliban-like regime again, we have to equip and train them enough to defend themselves so the place doesn't fall to the savages like Afghanistan was. That's why Red. You don't see that if they can't defend themselves, we will be back over there in 6 months attacking Al Qaida because that's where they will go to to setup shop? Seems pretty simple to me and everyone else in the world that in order for us to save more American lives in the long run, we have to fight now to teach them to defend themselves.
Everyone has a right to criticize, but it does not help. Yes, bin Ladin would fight on regardless. But he knows he will not win a military victory. His only home is to win the kind of political victory the North Vietnamese did in the 70s. And to do that, he needs help from the critics of the war just as the Vietnamese did. So far it looks like the critics are primarily targeting the war in Iraq. Few people question our being in Afghanistan - as of now.
Yoiu are dead wrong. We won the the major combat operation phase and are winning the insurgency phase. Saddam has been overthrown, elections have been held, a legislature and chief executive have been elected despite the best efforts of the terrorists to intimidate voters, Iraqi security forces are being trained and a constitution had been drafted. But we are not finished yet. There is still another election coming up and the Iraqi security forces and police require more training. We will leave when Iraq is capable of governing itself and providing for its own security. The security issue is probably what will take the longest. That is how I define victory. The terrorist winning? Not by a long shot.
In a perfect world, I would agree with most of that. If not for reality, we would have much common ground. But in the real world I think it just won't work out that way. We are using modern American values to evaluate the conduct of third-world religious fundamentalists and I think we misinterpret logical results. There is no democracy anywhere in the Arab world for a reason. It is incompatible with Islam. Strongmen rule everywhere, even among our allies. We thought the Iraqis would welcome us as liberators. That's what we would have done in their position, after all. But we were wrong. We never dreamed the Iraqis would loot and plunder their own country and then hold us responsible. It would never happen here. We didn't believe the Iraqis had such national pride in their 4,000-year old country that they would fight a benevolent occupying army tooth and nail for as long as they were there. Even though the United States of America had such pride after only a century and fought our occupiers, too. We totally misread and misunderstood the Iraqis. We never fully understood that our assault upon Saddam would be seen as a humiliating assault on their homeland. Saddam was just the latest strongman. While your argument makes good sense, Craig, it only works if the Iraqis thought, felt, and acted like us . . . and they just don't. Nothing they do makes sense to an American. If they had just cooperated, we would have been gone in a year. One must try to think like the enemy to understand him and to defeat him. I don't think the current plan to democratize Iraq has a snowball's chance in hell of ever working because the Bush administration hasn't done this. They were wrong about everything else in this misadventure and they don't have it right now. I am amazed that they have credibility with anyone at this point in the snowballing blunder. I think it will take a smarter, stealthier, and more prudent adminstration to extricate us from Iraq without making the matter even worse.
I'd like to see some evidence that we are winning the insurgency, please. I don't think you can make this case. Casualties are up, attacks are up, suicide bombings are up, territory is still insecure, borders have never been sealed, our "coalition" is departing, oil production is down, and Iraqi security is still ineffective and infiltrated with insurgents. Iraqis have not taken over control over a single province or government agency in three years. Man if I thought that would happen in the next year or two, I would be with you. But what if it still hasn't happened in 12 or 15 years? The British tried to leave a democracy behind them in Iraq 80 years ago, too. Democracy has to come from within, it cannot be imposed on someone. I think Iraq goes back to a strongman within a year of our leaving--in 15 years or next year. But instead of a secular Sunni dictator like Saddam, it will be a Shiite fundamentalist dictator, an Ayatolla. Well, that could take a very long time, indeed. I fear you will never see your victory.
I think you've got the one who is not dealing in reality here backwards. We agree on the common part.....killing the terrorists. I didn't see you answer the simple fact though.....if we do not train the Iraqi's to defend themselves, we have done ourselves a horrible disservice because that place will fall into a refuge for terrorists.....a safe harbor like Afghanistan. We have to attempt to train them to take these bastards on and make sure that doesn't happen. If not, we'll be back over there fighting Al Qaida as "The Taliban" just like we did in Afghanistan. But we'll be fighting them after they have attacked us like 9/11 which cannot happen. If they fail....well, they fail. But we can't just leave them to the wolves. And, I think your attitude of "Iraqi's don't want freedom....they will never get it" is a huge generalization. Like as huge as "all white people from the south are racist rednecks." Some are, most aren't and I believe most Iraqi's get what's going on.......
Well, we are trying. I just don't think it is working very well, and if it ultimately fails, then what do we do? Al Qaida is mostly everywhere else, so eliminating this one potential refuge is not a cure-all. I think we should return to holding countries responsible for not allowing terrorists on their territory . . . or we'll destroy their infrastructure with airpower--our way of war. The kind that we always win. This was never the case with Iraq. Even Bush has stated that they were not involved with 9/11. Taliban Afghanistan defied us and protected Al Qaida so they were taken down with airpower, but not occupied. Al Qaida was not in Iraq under Saddam and they are only there now because we are there and they can actually get at us with limited resources. I want to believe this, too. I just don't see them stepping up to the plate like they should be doing. They are going to let us do the dirty work for as long as we are willing to do it, I fear.
