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FINISH THE JOB
Jonah Goldberg joins the regretful hawks club:
The Iraq war was a mistake.
Well, maybe not, as Jonah himself concedes in the column’s final par:
If we can finish the job, the war won’t be remembered as a mistake.
More on Jonah’s change of opinion from Hugh Hewitt and Mark Steyn.
UPDATE. In other unlikely-convert news, Alexander Downer joins the warmenizers.
OK-I saw this linked via FR the other day.
First-SHUT UP JONAH!!!
Second-you have to look at the war in Iraq in strategic terms. After 9/11 we knew we were going to have to fight the jihadis, but Afghanistan offers a variety of disadvantages-terrain for instance, but also the fact that it is surrounded by unstable regimes which are not exactly sympathetic to us.
With that in mind, why not make the battlefield Iraq? It is positioned so that we can use an allied nation (Kuwait) as both an administrative base and a port for supplies. It is also positioned so that we can pressure neighboring nations that are supporters of terrorism (Iran, Syria and Iran) and we can eliminate an avowed enemy-Saddam-in the process.
I have to run now, but I wanted to get this off my chest first.
More later.
The whole Corner crowd at NRO started to show signs of lympnoodlespinitis after Hurricane Katrina, and the disease has sadly progressed apace. Better they should stick to the science fiction nerd-fest that preoccupies most of the commenters there. Or maybe Jonah is hanging around the LA Times way too much for his own good.
John Quiggin finds another convert... or maybe not.
I think Jonah Goldberg is a bright guy, and I have often read his essays with great pleasure. But I think he’s wrong about Iraq, and I think the timing of his conversion, or rather, the public acknowledgement of it, is an exercise in bad judgment. As a political wag once remarked, “honesty is one of the better policies”, and I think that truly applies in this case. I don’t think that I’m deprecating Jonah’s skill as a writer or his erstwhile sound judgment on an array of issues by saying that his change of heart is not likely to have much influence. But in a close election, where even a little influence might make a difference, what is he hoping to accomplish? Does any serious, thinking person, not of the ideological left, believe that a Democratic victory is going to make the situation in Iraq better? That anything Nancy Pelosi espouses is going to make America stronger, or her military personnel, let alone the citizenry, safer? My own view is that, regardless of the original formal justifications for going to war in Iraq, there were a number of excellent, perhaps unspoken, reasons. Paramount among these was the need to shake up a part of the world characterized by a patchwork structure of decadent monarchies, military dictatorships, and messianistic theocracies, whose pathologies had long been approaching a boiling point that threatened the West. The biggest mistake I think that has been made by the Administration is in dealing with Iraq in isolation and in not replying with devastating effect to the most visible enablers of insurgent activities in Iraq: Syria and Iran. Jules Crittenden, in a different context (I believe it had to do with responses to Iran’s pursuit of nuclear power capabilities) outlined some things that could be done in the way of military action against Iran that fell far short of an actual invasion: taking out the nuclear facilities through air or sea-based missiles, incrementally destroying its infrastructure, etc. The same strategy could be used against Syria.
Mistakes have been made, but the biggest mistake of all would be in failing to summon the resolve to see the war against radical Islam (by all means, let’s call it what it is) through to the end, especially when we now have the opportunity to choose the battlefield.
Sure there is a certain amount of climate change taking place, but there is nothing that Alexander Downer or his nutcase SA buddy can do about it.
It’s not due to human activity and even if it was, there’s fuck all we can do about in our, or our grandchildren’s lifetimes. After that, who gives a shit.
We have the money, we have the technology - let’s get on with nuclear power and desalination.
Let’s open up Lake Torrens to the Southern Ocean. Let’s demonstrate our domination over the elements.
I am not a visionary, I am a civil engineer who has worked in the field of hydropower all of my adult life. I know what is possible and what is not.
(apologies for rare serious post)Ah, me thinks you’re missing Jonah’s point. He is using the lefties’ anti-war argument against them, by conceeding that in HINDSIGHT the war in Iraq was a mistake.
There are no conditions under which a decision maker can foretell the future with certainty.
Only in a children’s game does one get a “do over”. That the reality-based community has now premised their ever-changing anti-war argument upon an element of a child’s game is to point out the lack of substance and seriousness in that line of reasoning.
The anti-war left argued against the 2003 invasion on the premise that Saddam would use his WMDs against the troops. They now rhetorically ask, “Where are the WMDs?” as proof positive of the righteousness of their anti-war position—without irony or embarrassment.
Only the insipid and childish are debating yesterday’s decisions.
Cheers.
By the way, I’ve read Steyn’s book, and I highly recommend it. If you read him regularly, you will recognize the rhetorical flourishes, and have familiarity with many of the ideas he’s written about these past five years—all wound into a tight argument regarding the seriousness of the conflict between Islam and the West. (As if you didn’t know that!)
I was gonna say (and Forbes is on my line of thinking) - you guys don’t think it might not call the Leftard’s bluff for the US to support a referendum vote among the Iraqis, a straight up and down vote “yes” or “no” in keeping American troops there?
The only way I’d see that no working is if it happens, the MSM will blithely and willfully ignore it too, just like it did Iraq’s first elections, and will probably fund Al Gore and others to go in and complain about hanging chads.
I dont always agree with Jonah Goldberg, but I have been reading him since his mother, Lucianne, started up Lucianne.com and am a bit more familiar with the voice he puts into his columns, which usually as a sarcastic tone that matches how I feel about Leftards in general.
I fall more on Forbe’s line of thinking
Posted by Sharon Ferguson on 2006 10 20 at 02:06 PM • permalinkI agree with #8 Forbes. While Jonah is not completely tongue-in-cheek, he is pointing up the myriad ways the “Anti-War” crowd is wrong and unhelpful.
The aftermath of any war that the US has participated in can be shown to “untidy” at best. Historians still argue over the post-Civil War Reconstruction which took a century to work out, Versailles was a disgrace to everyone involved, and post-WWII saw totalitarianism rage over three continents.
It doesn’t however invalidate the effort expended (or the toll taken).
I’m not a “pro-war” person, per se, but I saw (and continue to see) the strategic value in taking down Saddam. Tactically, it hasn’t been as smooth as many hoped but that’s the nature of war.
Another advantage to having gone into Iraq is the number (thousands) of jihadis killed there, who did not turn up in our shopping malls and schools and pizzerias with suicide bombs strapped to their waists. If the military had been allowed to win in Vietnam, that war would not now be called a mistake either.
Full disclosure: I hadn’t actually read Jonah’s article first. Not as bad as I thought it would be, but I don’t agree that it’s as tongue-in-cheek as all that. And if our own prestige is at stake - this is not a question of mere national vanity, incidentally, because such prestige as we enjoy is a potent deterrent to the machinations of tyrants and terrorists - I don’t know that simply submitting our continued presence in Iraq to a plebiscite is such a great idea. In the first place, we cannot afford to be disinterested in the possibility of an expansion of Iranian influence, should we be asked to leave. In the second place, are we to abandon the Kurds to their fate after helping them to a measure of freedom? This is one group that is not noticeably eager to see us go.
#13 RebeccaH, I’m sure we’‘ll all forgive you for this. Remember, though, that the military DID essentially win in Vietnam, it was only the political manoeuvring afterwards that allowed a successful North Vietnamese invasion to occur. It’s a testament to the success of the left wing propaganda that we make such slips and that many people still don’t realise what actually happened. BTW Greg Sheridan has a good article in today’s Australian on this and the Tet comparison that President Bush made
In other unlikely-convert news, Alexander Downer joins the warmenizers.
He’s a warm-monger?
Posted by Mr. Bingley on 2006 10 20 at 02:53 PM • permalinkI’ve looked through all the posts on “the Corner” since Jonah’s piece was written and if he is taking the piss out of the lefties I don’t see any winks to the right evident there.
In any event the lefties would just ignore all that and point to this piece as (per Will, Buckley, etc) yet another rightie who has come around to their way of thinking (“see we were right all along, even those eeevillll conservatives now say so”).
If he is trying to use the lefties talking points against them, he is doing a poor job of it and if he has had a sincere change of heart-well then he was astoundingly ignorant about the nature of war and morally unserious in the first place.
I reiterate-SHUT UP JONAH!!!
Just STFU!!!
OK, Jonah,you want us to quit. Fine. What happens next?
What a wimp. A wimp with a short attention span and even less patience.
Posted by Gary from Jersey on 2006 10 20 at 03:37 PM • permalinkDowner converted because there was a day that hit 33 degrees Centigrade, like that’s never happened before. “Maybe there’s something in this global warming thing.” Like you’d notice a one degree change in temperature over a century.
Posted by daddy dave on 2006 10 20 at 04:13 PM • permalinkIf, IF Jonah Goldberg is being, ‘funny’, or being overly bright, in using a reverse strategy, these two didn’t get it.
Who knows, maybe Hugh, turned the open air mike off…and each rolled on the floor, until they gathered themselves, before air time, again. But I doubt it. Could be, but I doubt it.
HH: Mark, your colleague at National Review today, and a guest on this program, Jonah Goldberg, wrote a column saying the Iraq war was a mistake. And I shake my head, both at the profound wrongness of that, but also its timing. And it seems to me, as we come up to this election, so much is in the balance, that it’s almost hard to overstate how badly things could go with a Democratic majority.
MS: Yes, and I think it’s simply a mistake to argue about whether a war is a mistake. Once you’re in it, I think the best thing to do is to win it. And obviously, it’s not easy. Nobody said wars are easy. And that’s why I think in fairness to Jonah, who is a very agreeable person, and I’m sorry to see him join the great flock of molting hawks, because I think it’s grossly irresponsible to argue the case for a war, and then three years later, to decide oh no, maybe it wasn’t such a good idea after all. I’m sorry, it’s…right now, what is at issue for everybody but the Iraqi people, is American credibility. And by that, I mean I think I said in the book somewhere that if you happen to be living in Fallujah, or you happen to be living in Tikrit, or you happen to be living in Basra, the Iraq war is about the Iraqis. But if you are living in any other country in the world, the interest in the Iraq war is in the credibility of the United States, and its ability to be a credible superpower in the 21st Century. And we know what happened in Vietnam. Vietnam had incredible long-term consequences, in part because people drew the conclusion that the United States was just this sort of effete sissy, pampered, corpulent, lazy kind of late-period Ottoman sultan, puffed up on his cushions. And if you gave the guy a little tiny pin prick in his toe, he’d just squeal in pain, and you wouldn’t have to bother defeating him, that in other words, the United States is not a credible superpower. And that’s where I think Jonah’s making a mistake in going through this all over again.Iraq was, and is, important because you don’t leave Saddam on your flank if you are taking on Iran. A look at a map tells you the importance of the invasion. That is simple.
It is this half-fighting that has put off people. It is not winning. It is pretending that you can conduct a “sensitive” war, with all of its proportionality, etc., and rules of engagement that say you’d rather lose the life of an American rather than incur any civilian casualties. These are the things that make me think Iraq is a mistake, not that we went in in the first place. The mistakes have occurred after the invasion. It is turning our military into a police force. It is Just War Theory in all its glory that is bleeding the military and the will of the people.
It is because of these things that people like Goldberg, and many others, say that it was a mistake. It has damaged any future actions we may need to take because it has sapped the will of people who see the necessity of this war. It puts us in a terrible Catch 22. We have put ourselves in a position of being slowly drained of finite resources while being hen-pecked by a bunch of pissants who will never win on a battlefield, but who, given time, will win the propaganda war against us—ARE winning the propaganda war against us. A la Viet Nam. That is the only true comparison with Viet Nam that may now be made, and the left, who is in control of the MSM and the universities, have made sure that it will come true. The difference now is that when we leave the battlefield, unlike the North Vietnamese, the enemy will come after us. And we will be significantly weaker because of the way we have fought in Iraq.
In this case, RebeccaH, comparisons with Viet Nam are called for. We are here in significant degree because of what we allowed to happen there.
Salty-all that you say is true, and numerous mistakes have been made in pursuing the war effort.
For instance, defense spending is still less than 5% of GDP (3.9% according to this chart). Raising it to 5% would hypothetically mean 12 more active Army brigades, another 30 or so ships (useful in blockading Iran into submission) and money for many of the transformation projects that the services say they want. You can’t fight a war on the cheap.
But still, our casualties amount to less than 3 KIA a day. We had more GIs killed than that in training accidents in the early 1980s.
The lefties were never going to be able to put aside their loathing of America for long-regardless of whether or not we were fighting in Iraq, Afghanistan or wherever. Conservatives are supposed to be made of sterner stuff.
Ergo, Jonah should STFU!!!
Here’s a partial explanation from Jonah Goldberg in NRO’s The Corner.
They favor military intervention when it comes to stopping genocide in Darfur or starvation in Somalia or doing whatever that was President Clinton did in Haiti. In other words, their objection isn’t to war per se
Oh really? Give it a shot Jonah, oh hey try DPRK too while you are at it, genocide and starvation, remember. Damn forgot, you missed one. R-w-a-n-d-a.
Ummm, come clean, are you still snickering, or do you really believe what you have typed?
If you really aren’t pulling legs, Jonah, do you really believe that military interdiction and/or intervention in the above you named, would not be viewed as; Interventionist? Imperialistic? UNilateralist? Cowboyesque? No Blood For… whatever the hell each nations natural resource, du jour?
Update, if not posted already…if it has been, please excuse the re-post.
Column Reax [Jonah Goldberg]
Readers are all over the board in response to today’s column (hence the stuffed e-mail box). I’m too car sick to respond in detail to very much of it (lots of stop-and-go traffic on the Turnpike/95). But I do think some folks misunderstood the column’s point, in part.
El Cid: While I wouldn’t disagree with Mark Steyn’s response, as you posted above, I would disagree with HH’s characterization of JG’s column as “the Iraq war was a mistake”.
Read in its entirety, the column asks the question: What is the proper course to finish the job, i.e. by finishing what we set out to do, it will be a success. JG’s implication is that the policy options are not merely between “cut and run” and “stay the course”. And further, he points out the uselessness of relentlessly re-arguing the rationale for the war—which is all the Democrats have offered.
HH is a Republican cheerleader, who, in this instance, asks the wrong question because he doesn’t understand the column, IMO. The policy challenge is to get Iraq right going forward, and not to argue over who gets to say “I told you so” after the fact.
And if anyone tires of the ill-used Vietnam analogy, just wait to see what happens in Iraq if we depart prematurely. I believe there are many Americans who so truly hate the projection of military power that they hope for a repeat of the “killing fields” that might forever sap the will to militarily intervene ever again.
But don’t count me among them.
In fairness to Jonah, although I don’t agree with him here, there are as many ways to fight a war as there are reasons to go to war. He’s merely saying “causes and effects” haven’t aligned and that’s reason to question the wisdom of the war.
Despite what the Anti-War Creeps say, Bush, Blair, and Howard had a legitimate casis belli viz Saddam. Hell, the whole world did even if they refused to act on it. But they also have a very noble vision for post-war Iraq that hasn’t actualized yet and it leaves them open to criticism, some of it deserved.
One major problem I’ve encountered in the last five years in arguing with Lefties is that they tend to see conservatives as the Left views all groups; undifferentiated and monolithic. Yet there are conservatives who were against the war in Iraq for a variety of reasons just as there are liberals who support it. The Left believes a myth that there was no debate from 2001 to 2003. There was but it was all on the Right.
I personally supported and continue to support the war and it’s aims. I’m extremely proud of our troops and allies and mourn the loss of great young men and women. If I was younger and fitter, I’d gladly join up to serve alongside the good vets who comment here. But that doesn’t mean tactics can’t be thrashed out as we proceed.
Victor Davis Hanson has demonstrated that our “Western Way of War” allows us to make important adjustments that ultimately result in victory. I earnestly hope and pray that our leaders, political and military, see their way clear to victory.
And a bunch of people, not just farmers, were saying: ‘Maybe there is something in this climate change thing.”
‘
Why is it that I read what “not just farmers” are saying when I have not heard one farmer saying it. Anyone heard Australia being described as “a land of DROUGHT and flooding rain”? That was well before all this Global Warming propaganda came out.Yes a lot of Australia is in drought and for those in their fifth or sixth year they definitely need help to carry them through this tough time but to jump up yelling global warming is bullshit. We have had droughts before and we will have droughts again. The most important thing is to try and be prepared for the next dry spell; e.g. BUILD MORE DAMS!!! Instead of this we have governments talking about windfarms (biggest load of crap I’ve ever heard), cutting down on CO2 output (because then the rains will come tumbling down) and sending more stored water down rivers for “environmental flow” that would have already run dry if not for evil dams. Aaaahhhhh!!!
O/T Mountain cattle and other members of Push for the Bush (not referring to George) protested outside of Labor MP Ian Maxfield’s office over being pushed out of National Parks by pro green policies. All Maxfield could say was
the Liberal Party was behind the PFTB group, which met at MLC Graeme Stoney’s house last year.
“It does appear that this is a Liberal Party dirty tricks campaign,” he said.Best way to ignore voters in a democracy is to state it is a dirty tricks campaign by another party; bingo problem solved.
I understand what Jonah Goldberg was trying to say, but after reading what he said at The Corner, I’m trying to understand why he said anything at all. Yes, the aftermath of the war could have been handled better. Yes, it is a horrible mess (as the aftermath of any war always is). But you can’t go back and change the past. He says since we ARE in Iraq now, we should stay the course. Well, yes, that’s pretty much a given, and even not many Democrats (at least the semi-sane ones) can argue with that. So why agonize over coulda woulda shoulda? It just muddies the waters, IMO.
#14 “...are we to abandon the Kurds to their fate after helping them to a measure of freedom?”
Paco, you have articulated my greatest fear—and, if realised, my greatest shame.
I have been contemplating adding a sign off to every post I make on the internet, and have decide to begin now.
ARM THE KURDS!
Posted by MentalFloss on 2006 10 20 at 07:56 PM • permalinkAs I’ve said before, we need a better class of pundits. Goldberg and the NR crowd are wimps who spend too much time on the whine-and-cheese circuit. I stopped paying attention to any of them with the exception of Steyn a while back…which means they’ll probably drop him soon.
Posted by richard mcenroe on 2006 10 20 at 08:07 PM • permalinkThere is a good article in The Australian today on the droughts in Australia. It is worth noting the farmers don’t mention Global Warming the only person to mention it is the journalist and then as “climate change becomes the nation’s preoccupation.” Quotes from farmers are more enlightening as to their opinions.
Still, he remains optimistic. With the benefit of a long memory, he remembers the dust blowing off Lake Hindmarsh in the 1940s and the good years that followed, as good years invariably have. “I’m a firm believer this will come good again,” he says. “I’ve seen all this before.”
He glances down at what remains of the sorghum husks poking up through the dust. “A bit of rain,” he says, “and it’ll come back”.
But talk of Jeparit blowing away in the drought is “bullshit”, he says.
“We’ve got a lot of fight left in us. All we need is a bit of rain.”Does Jeparit have a future? “My bloody oath it does,”
Now could all those who keep using farmers for their Global Warming rants shut the F#$% up!
With that in mind, why not make the battlefield Iraq?
But I though this was about
WMDdemocracy for our Iraqi friends? But really we’re setting up a military base to keep Iran in line? And what about the Iraqis? Do they get a say?I would have thought that if there were a democratic government in Iraq that the first thing they’d do is tell the occupiers to get out now.
How ironic that we’ve turned Iraq into a play ground for Al Qaeda and the Mahdi Army.
Oh and Riverbend is posting again.
Burbank said “the military DID essentially win in Vietnam, it was only the political manoeuvring afterwards that allowed a successful North Vietnamese invasion to occur.”
He’s only kind of right. Colonel Harry Summers Jr, author of a fascinating study of the strategy of the war, records this 1975 conversation with a NVA colonel:
American: You know you never defeated us on the battlefield.
North Vietnamese: That may be so, but it is also irrelevant.
The US won the war militarily (and won at Tet, too), despite fighting it basically with both arms and a leg tied behind its back. The NVA had since the early 1950s been using Chinese territory (its main training schools were in China) as well as Laos and eventually Cambodia to train, hide, base and channel troops and arms.It never admitted to this (till near the end). And the US administrations were constrained by fear of political backlash to go along with the pretense.
The US also left North Vietnam inviolate (except for brief bombing campaigns vs Hanoi in 72 which were loudly protested by the usual suspects. Their cessation btw was interpreted as a sign of weakness and lack of resolve).
The US put zero regular troops across Vietnam’s western and northern borders, while at the height of the war the NVA had four full Corps in those zones, along with a vast transport network, food and arms caches, and heavy artillery, which enabled them to launch increasingly heavy attacks on US/south vietnamese installations. All the US felt politically able to do was bomb (which had to be done for most part in secret) and conduct small (also secret) raids into the huge NVA “safe belt.”
Yet despite these politically imposed handicaps the US was winning. As for the fabled VC guerrillas, by the time US left, according to Chalmers Johnson, “black-pajama southern guerrillas had been decimated.”
What tipped the balance finally was politically molded public opinion. Leftwing activists (wth vocal support from media) in the US and globally convinced people the war was unwinnable. (Iraq, anyone?) That not only increased the self-imposed handicaps but eroded the US WILL to keep fighting.
The Tet offensive 1968 was a massive tactical failure in which the communists squandered 100,000 men, almost half their fighting strength for no clear gain. The way Tet was portrayed was the last straw in this process… Cheered on by people like John Kerry and bienpensant lefty encomiasts of the North Vietnamese, the US congress virtually cut off funding to the South and the troop drawdown accelerated—and the incursions by the NVA became bolder.
Tipping point—South unable to sustain the war by itself… end of war.
Result: millions of Vietnamese tortured, killed, brutally “reeducated” in the aftermath.
Acknowledgment of responsibility by media, leftists: nil.
Sorry for long post, Andrea and TIm… won’t do it again.
Posted by arrowhead ripper on 2006 10 20 at 08:42 PM • permalink21 Saltydog: It is this half-fighting that has put off people. It is not winning. It is pretending that you can conduct a “sensitive” war, with all of its proportionality, etc”
See interesting item of Ralph Peters couple days ago.Posted by arrowhead ripper on 2006 10 20 at 08:49 PM • permalinkI would have thought that if there were a democratic government in Iraq that the first thing they’d do is tell the occupiers to get out now.
Well, you aren’t the sharpest knife in the drawer, bongoman, so erroneous conclusions like that are to be expected. Good thing most Iraqis are a bit more sensible and less knee-jerk anti-American than you.
Bongoman-WMD is the argument for the war beloved by idiot lefties like yourself because it doesn’t require them to answer the difficult strategic or tactical questions about how to prosecute the war. Count among the biggest mistakes made the absence of a more forceful argument by the administration about why Iraq is an important battlefield regardless of WMD.
Tonight I went to see our local HS play and during the invocation the minister referred said that “our fighting men overseas are involved in an apparently worthless cause.” A little background about our local HS-it was named in 1973 by a vote of incoming students as “Freedom High School-home of the Patriots”. I have always believed that this was those students expressing their disapproval with the Vietnam war protesters, their way of taking a stand.
Same song, different singer, different age with the speaker tonight. A new HS is scheduled to open next year, but students were not allowed to choose the name this time, I wonder if they would have made a similar choice if given the opportunity.
bonjour triteness, I have a dvd that covers many of the same issues you have discussed, “No Substitute For Victory hosted by John Wayne”. This documentary interviews soldiers, pilots, newsreader Lowell Thomas and others as to how the politians were stopping them from winning Vietnam. One pilot speaks of watching North Vietnamese massing across the border but not being allowed to fire upon them.
The dvd is worth checking out and for those of my age and younger it shows that many Americans did want to finish the job in Vietnam.
You guys who back this war in Iraq are pretty stupid.
People who regret backing the war are stupid and pathetic.
If after watching the US Marines raise the Stars and Stripes over Umm Qasr only to have it pulled down by the politicians and still think you will “win”........well good for you.
But don’t rubbish the fools who come to the realization, 3 years later, that the war is “lost”.
That right is reserved for myself and anyone who was against the war before it started. Not to mention the rights of the dead and thier families to seek recompense.
Posted by Marky Mk IV on 2006 10 20 at 10:11 PM • permalink#35, Thank you for that link. It states exactly what I’ve seen and heard from my friends and family in the military—most of whom are becoming more and more frustrated with what is happening. I am particularly happy to see someone point out the patent immorality of fighting a war with half-measures, and hopes of the good auspices of the enemy. It is a fairy tail that puts men in harm’s way and then ties their hands so that they are not able to do everything required to protect themselves. It asks for sacrifices, not for ones own country and loved ones, but for the enemy and those who support the enemy (whether that support for the enemy is passive or active is immaterial to the boots on the ground that is killed or injured). That is immoral in the extreme, in my book. It was immoral in Viet Nam and it is immoral here.
It is time we fought this war to win. We can build bridges afterwards, when the enemy has learned to understand the full consequences of war and is ready to learn how to live without it.
Bongoman, Paco tell ‘em true words. Bongoman like tree sloth: hang around, do nothing, look at world upside down. This bad for Bongoman. Blood run to head; sure, plenty room, but by ‘n by make ‘em Bongoman dizzy, make ‘em lose grip, fall from tree. Bongoman maybe think him fall, that ok; tribe take ‘em up, work ‘em joojoo, make well. Maybe Bongoman get surprise, maybe tribe use for alligator bait, or use ‘em trolling for piranas in canoe.
And mark more true words, Bongoman: river bend where land is strong.
Saltydog thinks it time he fought this war to win. Good idea. First define what “winning” looks like and maybe we can work out a plan?
Posted by Marky Mk IV on 2006 10 20 at 10:31 PM • permalink#41 Marky Mk IV,
There is no doubt that trolls and other assorted creeps like you will be around for a long time, offering Revisionist interpretations ala The Dunning School , of Saddam’s overthrow and the struggle to establish a functioning Arab liberal democracy in the Middle East.
You are a parasite feeding off the sacrifices of your betters. Eat sh*t and die.
So victory in Iraq is really just a form of “forward defence”.?
I don’t buy it.
It looks like you Yanks choked on the first bite of the Axis of Evil cherry.
Posted by Marky Mk IV on 2006 10 20 at 11:25 PM • permalinkThe mistake was, and still is, Bush’s claim that “this is not a war on Islam”.
We will not get anywhere until there is an all out ideological war on Islam, where it is exposed for what it is, getting beyond all the appeasement and associated old baggage of colonial ‘racism’ guilt.
Plucking out a dictator here and there, and bumping off a few ‘wayward’ islamists has been proven fruitless, because they failed to address the underlying reason WHY these guys are able to thrive there.
... first bite of the Axis of Evil cherry ...
Anyone have an Incoherent-shroom-haze to English dictionary?
Posted by Crispytoast on 2006 10 20 at 11:42 PM • permalink48
Well our “forward defenCE”, could look something like Hiroshima or Nagasaki, but that would make you and your ilk, call the yanks, murders or genocidal maniacs…don’t you think?
Were I in charge, there would be much rubble in the nations you seem to hint at admiring….the dust would settle and a slightly altered genetic being would eventually inhabit those places, that had just become ash.
Hey, lets face it old boy, they get radiated every day from that damn sun Al Gore keeps bitching about. Nothing wrong in speeding that process up, in my eyes…:).
Now that’s winning to me, but whining from you.
And here is where I would start, one of the heads of a multi headed mother.
Tehran, then on to Damascus, rendezvous with the Israelis, you know.Classic military MacArthur, Patton and Sherman (correct me if I err 91B30, Texas Bob or whomever)...all with new toys that go boom, as Bette Midler warbled, from a distance. Cut one head of the multi headed son-of-a-bitch off, at a time.
We get what we want, they get there wishes…virgins and the 8th Century. I think it’s great, what about you?
91B30. You define victory in Iraq as what i would call fighting in Iraq.
Well….enjoy your everlasting victory.!!
Posted by Marky Mk IV on 2006 10 21 at 12:08 AM • permalink#47.
I am all for your “struggle” for democracy in the middle east.
Is that the same as being for Hamas, Hezbollah, The Muslim Brotherhood and Sadr?
Posted by Marky Mk IV on 2006 10 21 at 12:17 AM • permalinkFighting in Iraq is preferable to burning skyscrapers any day of the week. Ah, but I suppose that military geniuses like our new troll think that Afghanistan would make a preferable battlefield.
Despite the fact that we can only reliably resupply forces there by air.
Despite the terrain which esseatially means that we can’t bring many of our assets to bear on the enemy and where we would not have the advantages of pressuring our other enemies from a clear strategic position.
I’ll bet that Mk IV would’ve been asking what victory over Hitler would look like in early 1941 or what victory over Napolean would look like in 1807.
Well Marky Mk IV you have to fight in order to win and while I might not be able to say exactly what victory looks like, I know pretty clearly what defeat look like-it’s what the lefties advocate. As long as that is the choice I’ve got, I choose to continue the fight.
What a big dick you have El Cid - a true keyboard warrior!
Would you like to suck it, bongobaby?
I’m betting you would…and have others…just a gods plenty of times…in fact, I betcha your keyboard is sticky now.
What’s that seeping from your mouth?
I mean come on…that’s how diseased people such as your self, spread.
Never been to Baghdad bongoman, but it you google 91B30+tim+blair+iraq and go to the first link you will find posts by me describing my time in Iraq (FOB Bernstein near Tuz Khurmatu).
You can choose to believe that that is deep cover on my part just so I can embarass you right now, or you can wipe the egg off your face. I really don’t care one way or the other.
Now piss off.
“Well….enjoy your everlasting victory.!!”
Of course, we will. No matter how much the leftys rant and rave, guys like Abu Abbas, and Uday Hussein are permanently dead, and that’s as everlasting as it gets.
Posted by Dave Surls on 2006 10 21 at 01:19 AM • permalinksaltydog wrote:
What is it with trolls? Do they do nothing but surf around looking for some place to spew their ignorance? What a waste of bandwidth.
Part of the usual amateur psychological warfare program. Declare defeat and doom over and over and hope people start believing it.
Posted by Patrick Chester on 2006 10 21 at 02:35 AM • permalinkSee how it all goes wrong when you make more than one post bongoboy? Take a tip from Miranda Divide and stick to the drive-bys.
#63 It’s not the presumptuousness that is the problem so much as being a dick-wad.
Posted by Margos Maid on 2006 10 21 at 02:52 AM • permalink“The Iraq war was a mistake.”
You’re certainly entitled to your opinion, but for Americans like myself (i.e. Americans who aren’t leftist traitors), a war to exterminate the Baathist regime became imperative the day that Iraqi-backed terrorists started murdering Americans like Leon Klinghoffer (Achille Lauro piracy) and Rajesh Kumar (Flight 73 Karachi highjacking).
A mistake? The mistake the United States made was in not destroying the Baathists, and the Palestinian terrorist rats (mainly the PLO factions and also HAMAS) they supported, back in the 1980s. Once the Baathists are crushed and a slew of them killed (done) and the Palestinian rats are wiped off the map (still working on that one), then the mistake will be rectified.
At least as far as Iraq goes. There are other issues that need to be resolved (like Iran/Hezbollah, for example).
Posted by Dave Surls on 2006 10 21 at 03:24 AM • permalinkIt is my belief that the main motivation behind our current (and seemingly futile) grand strategy of Counter Insurgency and over reliance on “kinder gentler” war fighting is due to our current military leadership having been developed during these last few decades. All through these decades runs a constant “theme”.
The citizens will be feckless, fickle, unreliable, easily swayed by enemy propaganda (no matter how empty or dumbass) and will aggressively work against their own military.Much of our current military leadership fully understands that the citizenry that’s supposed to “have their back” is at least as dangerous as the enemy they’re standing against in the field.
There is no hope of a grand strategy of comprehensive Counter Insurgency as the primary method of war fighting doing anything other than ensuring that the war never ends. On the other hand, it also is the only real option for commanders that fear being hauled up on the gibbet for simply trying too hard to win an actual fight against the enemy.
I was gonna post this yesterday, but got caught-up in something at work.
A referrendum could be useful because it could allow us to redefine our relationship with Iraq. Instead of stewards of Iraq, we should be a benevolent presence protecting it’s borders from outside military threats. What I figured we would have done a couple years ago was base all of our ops out of 5 bases. One would protect our diplomatic and reconstruction operations in Bahgdad. Three bases would be in the Shia east and south. The fifth base would be in the west, on the souther border of Kurdistan…. You see where I’m going with this.
Bush’s policy of “Stay the couse” might be the right thing to do, but it isn’t the right thing to say in public. Flexibility is a key asset in war.
The biggest mistake the US made vis a vis Iraq was allowing Saddam Hussein to remain in power after we drove Iraq out of Kuwait. He had to go, as did his evil spawn. Period.
I’m with Richard. I spend very little time at NRO anymore. They’ve become a bunch of hysterical little old ladies as witnessed by their frenzied reaction to Dubai Ports, Harriet Miers, Katrina and the list goes on. Just the other day I head that Rich Lowry (and others over there) would support a federal program to fund marriage counseling in the ghetto. WTF?? And, IMO, Kathryn Jean Lopez deserves very low marks for her stewardship.
The Steyn/Hewitt conversation, which I heard live, was terrific.
Posted by Kyda Sylvester on 2006 10 21 at 01:40 PM • permalinkActually, our biggest mistake in both Iraq and Afghanistan is in allowing political/national borders to define the battlespace.
The issue in Iraq can not be settled without first the full reduction of Syria and Iran and the breaking of Saudi Arabia and Egypt.
Afghanistan can not be settled without first destroying the “tribal” area of Pakistan and a full “house cleaning” in the former USSR states that are now islamist leaning.
This is a global war against a global enemy but we’re stuck trying to fight it on isolated regional models due to our military being rightfully and rationally afraid of the traitors behind them.
Grimmy-that’s probably true, but we are going to need a much bigger Army to make it happen.
It was probably a mistake not to ask Congress for a declaration of war after 9/11. Declare war against “terrorism” like we did against “piracy” under Jefferson, but make sure that you get that piece of paper because without it the administration won’t have the freedom to act as it sees fit in prosecuting the war. You also can’t have a full mobilization of the reserves without a declaration of war and without doing that you aren’t going to have anywhere near the manpower to do what you suggest.
Even if we do, the jihadis are still going to be able to fight a low intensity effort against us throughout much of the Moslem world for years to come.
Iraq at least allows us the opportunity to exert pressure on Iran, Syria and Saudi Arabia-although I wish we would try something a little more aggressive, like blockading Iran.
“Marky Mark” is a recurring retard who gets webmail accounts just so he can sign up here and leave his childish insults. He has once again been banned, and he will continue to be banned every time he signs up. I suppose each hiatus between sign-ups indicates a time served in some maximum security facility somewhere when the public libraries whose computers he infests discover he’s using them to troll blogs and look at kiddy pr0n.
And finally, bongoman has been banned, for pointlessly insulting El Cid. Just think, bongo (if you can)—if you had managed to hold on to your temper just a little bit you’d still be able to educate us drooling warmongers.
Posted by Andrea Harris, Administrator on 2006 10 21 at 09:07 PM • permalink#79, 91B30:
I fully agree with what you say about the declaration of war being a necessity.
On the needing of a larger army, I tend to disagree.
We have a destructive capability inherent in our military that is still unknown and unseen to the world at large. No other force in human history has the means and ability to devastate its enemy as we now have.
The only reason we seem to need so many troops is because we are too afraid to wage a war as war should be waged. The only purpose for waging war is to utterly defeat an enemy.
Since we go in with this “kinder gentler” bullshit all the time now, we end up having to drag the actual fighting out to ever greater lengths.
If the enemy had been treated as an actual enemy and totally crushed, then there’d be next to no “insurrection” now.We could land a couple of divisions on the western coast of Turkey and work our way east to as far as our logistics train can reach and defeat any possible combination of enemy in such a way that those left behind would be completely amenable to “go along to get along” as long as we promised not to hurt them any more.
When dealing with either sociopaths or psychopaths, kindness is weakness and gentle folk will be defeated, if only through being worn down over time.
Currently, that is our fate.
By playing it out this way, we are only acting to ensure that eventually, the only choices left will be our own defeat and submission, or full and total defensive genocide.
Grimmy,
Unless you are talking about using nukes, I think you overestimate even our military capabilities.
Air power can destroy infrastructure or play hell on conventional forces, but Haji isn’t going to fight conventionally and doesn’t care very much about infrastructure. Air power is of limited utility against insurgents-there is a role for it, but it is secondary to boots on the ground. Supply routes have to be held, retrans points have to be secured, FOBs have to be established so that logistical patrols can refuel, get chow or rest.
We could have reduced Fallujah to rubble in April 2004, but Haji would probably have regrouped in the thousands of smaller villages that dot the countryside and the treasonous media would have portrayed it as a “war crime” (since they seem inclined to do this in any event maybe we should get our money’s worth out of it). Anyway at least some of the bad guys think that getting killed by us is their ticket to paradise, so they will probably keep coming-at least now we can kill them. Destroying the “will to fight” of rational actors like governments is a lot easier than destroying the “will to fight” of those who hear the call of jihad.
Now I think we could have done ourselves a big favor by continuing our offensive on into Syria in 2003 and we should definitely be taking a harder stand against Iran. But I am seriously disappointed that the administration hasn’t increased the size of our military-if for no other reason than the simple military dictum of “it is better to have it and not need it than to need it and not have it”.
91B30
Where you and I tend to differ, it seems to me, is on the baseline concepts of how war is supposed to be fought.
It is my understanding that war is an effort directed against an entire population, not simply against those that are holding weapons at that exact moment.
For an enemy to be defeated, the entire population must have been subjected to the destructive elements of the war.
War should not be waged just against that part of a society that is “military” but against the entire spectrum of that society.
Also, the fighting does not stop unless and until that enemy is proven to no longer be willing or able to behave belligerently.
And we do have that capability inherent in our military, we are simply too afraid to unleash it.
Matter of fact, most of the “modernizing” currently going on is in reducing our destructive capability and realigning more along a policing and “community outreach” format.
That, of course, is driven by our citizenry’s inability to deal with hard reality and is a guarantee of future wars being drawn out in endless unworkable half-step measures that are as much about appeasing an enemy as about confronting an enemy.
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I don’t much care for people like Jonah who wouldn’t know what day it was if it jumped out of their cornflakes, but that is a terrific conversation with Hugh Hewitt and Mark Steyn
Mark’s book is not stocked by retailers but look at where it’s at on the list of best sellers
People are not silly and stupid and will not abide by this bookshop censorship