Let me break it down for ya
Look, I’ve quickly become disenchanted in my support for the War in Iraq. It doesn’t seem to be going very well and the reasons for the action (and the projected results) haven’t quite panned out. And, well, that’s an understatement.
But here’s the deal: A war doesn’t wait or stop or become all warm and fuzzy for vacation time. It’s still going on. This Webb amendment was simply shameless political pandering to begin with. It failed even though 56 senators are retarded and think that you can call a time-out in a military action.
Say, who’s the commander in chief again?
As you were.
September 20th, 2007 at 4:19 pm
Webb doesn’t strike me as a political panderer at all.
September 20th, 2007 at 4:21 pm
I’d ordinarily agree.
September 20th, 2007 at 4:22 pm
I still think it was the right thing to do, I’m just not sure we had the people in office who were the right people to do it. Anyone was bound to make mistakes… there’s no perfection in military conflict, and battles are often won on the basis of who made the fewest mistakes.
But the problem with the Bush Administration is they don’t seem to want to admit, either to the public, or even themselves, that perhaps the current course is ill considered, and trying something else might be in order.
September 20th, 2007 at 4:23 pm
[…] Say Uncle breaks it down for the younguns on the Webb Amendment which would have required that soldiers, sailors, marines and airman to have more time stateside between deployments: A war doesn’t wait or stop or become all warm and fuzzy for vacation time. It’s still going on. This Webb amendment was simply shameless political pandering to begin with. It failed even though 56 senators are retarded and think that you can call a time-out in a military action. Share and Enjoy: These icons link to social bookmarking sites where readers can share and discover new web pages. […]
September 20th, 2007 at 4:53 pm
The Webb amendment “feels” good; and it plays well.
I agree that it’s not realistic though.
September 20th, 2007 at 5:32 pm
I think the opposite approach is the way to go if you want the war to end. If it was like WW2, and you were over there for the duration…it’d have already been over, cause let’s face it nobody in the military really thinks there’s a clearly defined “end goal” that’s actually attainable.
Yeah yeah “as the Iraqis stand up we’ll stand down blah blah blah”. You’ll notice you don’t hear that touted as the end goal anymore…because it’s not attainable. It just isn’t…because Iraq doesn’t work as a nation without an iron willed despot like SH running the ship.
September 20th, 2007 at 5:55 pm
But the problem with the Bush Administration is they don’t seem to want to admit, either to the public, or even themselves, that perhaps the current course is ill considered, and trying something else might be in order.
Silly me, I thought that replacing Rummy and the top military leadership, implementing a new counterinsurgency plan along with many of the ISG’s recommendations, and putting more boots on the ground was trying something else.
I’m not saying the war has been prosecuted as well as it should, but the major f-ups are not in the shooting war, but the information war.
When Iraqis start to take responsibility for their own freedom/safety (which is after all the whole point) instead of it being hailed as a success for Iraq, we’ve got Chuck Schumer calling it a U.S. failure: “They only did it because we can’t”.
That hideous piece of propoganda cannot be allowed to go unchallenged in the war of ideas. And yet, it largely does. That’s where Bush has been piss poor.
September 20th, 2007 at 6:40 pm
let’s face it nobody in the military really thinks there’s a clearly defined “end goal” that’s actually attainable.
Huh. Nobody?
Do they think “Get Iraq able to stand on its own” is not clearly defined, or that it’s not attainable?
Gen. Petraeus seems to believe it’s attainable, if by no means certain – and I’ve thought it reasonbly well defined for these past few years, if not repeated by the Administration as often as would be nice.
September 20th, 2007 at 8:57 pm
I always saw the big picture as us getting control of Afghanistan and Iraq in order to get a handle on this terrorist thing.
We get Iran’s nerts in a vice by having a presence in those countries, and also we have Syria in a vise between us and Israel, as well as Pakistan between us and India. Good plan, IMO.
Unfortunately, we don’t have the troops available to put on the ground, courtesy of Bush I and Slick Willie. We can’t pull it off as we are now. Standard Army doctrine was to go into a fight with a 3 to 1 advantage. We didn’t. We can’t. Technology can’t take the place of boots on the ground.
Of course, I may be wrong about all this….
September 20th, 2007 at 10:17 pm
I think brutal dictators ought to be deposed, a warehouse of US Constitutions and AR15s left behind, then come home.
OK, that’s a little simple, but how about adding Mike Yon to your blogroll.
I think we are going to be in Iraq for a while. Just wish we were making them pump oil to pay for us being there.
September 21st, 2007 at 12:34 am
You fight until you either break the military will, or the will of the people to wage war.
We aren’t far from defeating the will of the people who are waging war against us, and we did break their military will, however, the only survival aspect that is available to the enemy is washington. The sold out our troops the day after they voted for the war.
It is always ourselves, who have caused defeat, and exactly HOW bad is it going? We had the most resoundingly historic success in history with the 3 week war against an organized force, and now we are pacifying, DESPITE the efforts of our own congress, and we have lost 3500 fighters over 4 + years .
It’s still a resounding success, and if the haters can shut the hell up for a few months, we might actually succeed without all the world paroting our anti-american, non-patriotic, self hating, media, and opposition “party,” who are actually the internationalistic party, then things will go smoother.
The enemy see’s how weak our weakest members are, and see that the biggest wussbags happen to be in positions of power, and they are using it.
September 21st, 2007 at 8:34 am
Did you actually listen to anything Petraeus actually said? He explicitly refused to go on record as saying he actually thought our continued presence would get us there. Put down the Kool Aid and slowwwwwly back away.
September 21st, 2007 at 8:48 am
Good plan on a white board maybe, but Iran knows what pretty much what everyone with a room temp IQ knows. We’re not going to invade them. It’s just not realistic. Not a militarily or politically viable option.
No, courtesy of the Cold War ending. The Peace Dividend and all that.
You know this how? Gut instinct?
If there’s anything to be learned from the last hundred years, it’s that foreign occupying powers haven’t been successful at suppressing domestic insurgencies.
Yawn…right, the reason our military can’t make Sunnis and Shiites quit blowing each other up is “the haters”.
Life must be nice when you can boil complex, impossible, unworkable geopolitical conflicts down into moronic soundbites. Why bother thinking, right?
September 21st, 2007 at 9:28 am
You have a point. But it would be helpful if America did not present a divided front. The constant refrain of “Retreat! Surrender! The War is Lost!” does nothing to assist our efforts, especially when it comes from the majority party in the House and Senate.
September 21st, 2007 at 10:28 am
You seem to be implying that it is not possible to “suppress domestic insurgencies”. But a different lesson could be learned: the methods used in the “last hundred years” were not successful. Maybe we should not do what was done before; you know, something that might work instead. Something short of the Roman solution to Carthage would be preferred but that should always be an option.
September 21st, 2007 at 10:33 am
No, we’ll leave the airstrikes to Israel, like last time. No one with a room temperature IQ thinks we can allow Iran (or Syria) to get nuclear capabilities. You claim to be a “thinker”, but your grasp of the big picture is lacking.
Whatever the justification, reducing our armed forces to extent we did was a bad idea. Besides, my point was more to the fact that we don’t have the troops we need to pull off what needs to happen.
September 21st, 2007 at 10:53 am
Silly me, I thought that replacing Rummy and the top military leadership, implementing a new counterinsurgency plan along with many of the ISG’s recommendations, and putting more boots on the ground was trying something else.
Sure took them a while. Don’t get me wrong, I think the current course of action is working out OK… I just worry we don’t have the troop levels to sustain it for as long as we’d need to in order to bring Iraq into some semblance of stability.
September 21st, 2007 at 10:58 am
At the expense of acknowledging reality? Why should people who recognize that a unified, stable Iraq isn’t a militarily achievable goal simply silence themselves so that we can indulge the fantasy that things might be better if dissent was squelched?
Iraq doesn’t work as a country. We don’t have the luxury of pretending that might be different if people who have a clue would just shut up.
Look…even freakin Colin Powell agrees with me. I fail to see where I have any obligation to not say “damn, that’s a kludge”. Silence isn’t going to change the reality on the ground.
Thanks for helping make my point–the only way you’re going to pacify Iraq is to pretty much kill everybody. Not our stated goal, not justifiable, and certainly not the role of a “liberator.” I thought we were spreading democracy?
You don’t do that by going Carthage on them. Are you out of your fucking mind?
Look, nobody’s saying we can’t defeat the next ten biggest armies toe to toe any day of the week. Spare me the macho bullshit.
The question is “can we build a stable Iraq with a continued military presence?” The answer is pretty clearly NO.
There’s a substantial body of thought in military circles that it won’t be as simple as Osirak. The Iranians aren’t doing anything out in the open, we can’t neutralize them by simply hitting one site, it’s a mountainous country with air defenses better than what Iraq had in 1981, and the ground options aren’t good.
Not sure where I said anything to the contrary, Capt. Strawman.
No, I claim to be a realist. But we’ll add ad hominem to your resume. What big picture am I lacking? Military experts agree that invading Iran isn’t realistic and the airstrike options aren’t pretty.
Wednesday morning QB’ing at its worst. We don’t live in a bipolar world anymore where we’re fending off the Reds.
Even if we had another 500K troops, that still wouldn’t mean A) Iraq would work as a country or B) invading Iran would be a good idea.
September 21st, 2007 at 11:39 am
Strawman? Maybe there was an extra degree of seperation there, but I assumed you’d make the connection between invading Iran and them getting nukes.
Ad Hominem? I don’t see any direct attacks on you by me, I simply said you don’t have a grasp of the big picture, and in my opinion, you don’t. I could be wrong. Maybe it’s more like you do grasp the big picture, but just have a different course of action in mind. To me, country intent on our destruction should be met with force, but I’m old and cranky like that.
I couldn’t expect you to know this, but I was in the military the whole time the drawdown was going on. I disagreed with it then, and I disagree with it now. Who quarterbacks on Wednesday, anyway? 😛
September 21st, 2007 at 10:26 pm
We aren’t far from defeating the will of the people who are waging war against us,
You know this how? Gut instinct
How about because in the last few months ordinary Iraqis have realized that the terrorist/insurgents are attacking and killing them as pawns to try to force them to force us to leave? How about because of that realization ordinary Iraqis are turning in these evil assholes and in some cases taking direct action to purge them from their neighborhoods using all means at their disposal? These people lived with 35 years of mortal fear of people just like the terrorists, and it has taken them longer than we thought it would for them to take their first steps toward freedom. But, they are now doing it. For the first time.
That’s how we know. No, not a gut feeling, just a growing of guts in people who never before believed they could afford them, now realizing they can’t not afford them. That’s how.
BTW, my nephew is now out of Iraq and in Germany. We don’t know if he was wounded, but as he wasn’t scheduled out till next month, I think he may have been. Though he tells his grandmother he is fine, he would lie to her to spare her as she is now 84, until such time as he comes home.
Except for one 8 month period this is the only other time we haven’t had at least one and sometimes five family members in the sand box since the first Gulf War. So to all who would waste the effort and sacrifice of all those fine people do not think I don’t take it personally, because I sure as Hell do.
September 21st, 2007 at 10:28 pm
As for the active people making war against us, we don’t need to defeat their will, we just need to kill them. With not even the tacit acceptance of them among the populace their will is nothing if not suicidal, which is just fine by me.
September 22nd, 2007 at 12:04 am
I like the way you think, SA.
September 22nd, 2007 at 2:00 am
Uncle,
Compared to what???? Dude, get some perspective!