The Washington Post characterized President Bush’s words for the press pool as “impassioned,” causing Townhall’s Mary Katherine Ham (guest host of Vent yesterday and today) to quip, “What, not cuckoo or angered-by-his-utter-defeat-and-imminent-demise?”
You can watch the video of Bush’s remarks here.
As you’ll see, Bush remains (as is his signature stance) determined and resolute, but for some of the GWOT’s most stalwart early supporters, steady conviction is no longer enough. What they want to see is action—and for many, the US / Israeli capitulation to Hezbollah via the UN cease fire agreement, coupled with Iran’s blustery and confident intransigence, is sending all the wrong signals.
Well, unless of course you’re one of those who is actively cheering on a US/Bushco failure so that we can return to those pre-911 salad days, when history ended and Presidents played the sax and mixed in a hummer with their US/Chinese diplomacy.
Here’s Allah’s take:
It ends with a question, the answer to which is in serious doubt even among righty bloggers. Foremost among them is Moran in this widely-linked piece which says it’s time to crap or get off the pot. The Commissar and Rusty are dejected too, as, of course, is the high priest of civilizational pessimism, Mark Steyn. Watching the clip, one gets the impression that Bush thinks staying put is, in itself, a form of victory instead of a mere precondition. His resolve is admirable, but it would be a lot more admirable if it applied not just to things we shouldn’t be doing, like pulling out, but to things we most assuredly should.
I’m not quite so pessimistic as Allah, et al—but I do agree that we don’t appear to be doing what we need to be doing to win the GWOT, though as I said last week, I think Bush’s use of “Islamic Fascism” was a nice (belated) move in the right direction.
It could simply be misplaced faith and optimism on my part, but I feel like there almost must be things going on in the background that we’re not seeing. Otherwise, I’d be despairing, too.
Because if this is it—if all we can manage politically at this point, even with someone as stubborn Bush in office, is to declare victory by staying the course—then our adversarial press and the cynical opportunists on the left (with an assist from the nativists on the paleocon right) will have shown the world that America is indeed the weak horse, crippled by its own inner tensions and power struggles, and by the soft transnational leftism that, by controlling the narrative and sowing seeds of manipulated dissent, pushes us ever closer to its goal of turning the US into a kind of European satellite nation and prevents us from committing to the kind of difficult, long-term projects that may just affect the kind of change necessary to stave of an otherwise inevitable worldwide conflagration brought about by an emboldened and resolute Islamism.
And I’m just not ready to live with that.
****
See also, McQ, Mark Coffey, and James Joyner. Lots of calls for Rumsfeld’s ouster—a position I don’t happen to share, but one for which the arguments are worth considering.
I don’t know if the WOT IS winnable in the traditional sense of declaring victory and then sending everybody home.We’re going to be at this awhile.Until radical Islam moderates into a more benign form.I think for that to happen we are going to have to stay in their faces.
The question then becomes, will they run out of martyrs before we run out of will? I’m not hopeful.
TWwill Juan. Will you shut the fuck up already!
Let’s all bear in mind that 99% of the people of this country have not been asked to do squat to support the war. This pose of being “worn out” psychically is truly a sign of late-stage degeneracy.
Snap out of it, people! I’m talking to you Rick Moran.
Bear in mind that insurgencies on average take 10 years to defeat. We’ve got about seven more years to go, unfortunately. The only question is whether Iraq will be more like Turkey or more like Pakistan when that day arrives. I think we can rule out Iran.
Also, I think if one reads the whole press conference transcript, Bush understands clearly that tranquility is a precondition to stability. But WTF is he supposed to do to make these idiots who used to kill people for Saddam stop blowing things up?
TW: quality How about some quality thinking for a change and a little less whining?
I won’t argue that it’s pain but what we are seeing really is the extension of the two political mindsets in play in Iraq. Liberals love their social services and plans because they think the government can better take care of those who can’t care for themselves. We in turn have ended up with welfare and social services that enable people to be reliant on the government. Conservities want a restriction of civil services. They believe in helping people just enough for them to help themselves and then move on without government assistence.
In the end, I think it’s better to teach the Iraqi government and army because they are going to have to be independent from us to garner the respect of their own people and their neighbors. Although that educational process is slow, we have to realize that part of the problem is religion.
Democracy in this country is, regardless of the atheistic desires, based on certain Christian moralistic concepts. So democracy in a muslim nation is going to look and function differently. They will have different desires for their rights and tolerences of free speech or dissent.
Likewise, their military is learning while underfire. Ours is trained in a enviroment where danger is present by mistakes can be learned from. Their mistakes cost lives right then.
So while it’s not an easy task or a fast task, it is the right way to go about it. The Iraqi people are better off being in a self sufficient society where they are governed fairly without our external input. It will go a long way toward showing the middle east that we don’t always “prop up” despots.
However, I would rather see us turn Imperial and simply make them a vassal state than to leave and allow a civil war. That would be a damaging and destructive plan that would hurt everyone. So either we do this right and teach them so they can take over or we simply occupy in force and bend the people to our will, but anything else will cause a total mess of epic proportions.
That was the neocon line back then. I don’t know about you, but I thought it was BS. and I hope we never go back to that. Something tells me that our punditocracy will move on to some other BS, but not the past BS.
People are really mad that France won in Lebanon. But whose fault is that?
I think a Cold War analogy isn’t inapt. It took decades for the Free World to “win” the Cold War. And there were some real low points in that struggle too. I expect the same with the GWOT. Its not a perfect analogy, but it serves some purpose.
That said, what I want to know from the disheartened is: what’s their plan? All I ever seem to hear from the Rick Moran types (no offense) is MORE TROOPS! But that’s not a plan. That’s a tactical decision. What are those troops going to do? Where? How? To what end?
I know what the Derbyshire types want. The “nuke ‘em from orbit. It’s the only way to be sure” crowd. But for those who still think the most secure, humane end to this conflict is through rough democratization of the Middle East, but think Bush has lost his way? Fair enough, but lets hear something substantive. “More troops” is not a plan.
I believe Bush recognized early on that feeding into Radical Islam’s ‘America is the Big Satan’ conspiracy would have crippled any chance for change.
tw: a light shines at the end of the tunnel.
I think it’s high time we reevaluate what the GWOT is all about and what the general strategy is in fighting it. I blogged about this recently. Just like 9/11 should be revisted by every citizen of this nation weekly to remember what we’re up against, we should also revisit the overall strategy for winning with war and the incredible amount of patience we’re going to need over the next decade.
I would posit that the cynical media and political opportunists who want our defeat will only want such until THEY are back in power. Then it will be all about winning – or running. I am about 51% even a Dem President wouldn’t do a Murtha at this point. The whole stance is a pose, a posture to beat wildly at the current party that holds the Executive and the majority in both houses of the Congress. Once holding the steering wheel o’ State, it becomes alot harder to simply do things “smarter” or “better” without some visible results to show.
The only reason I am at 51% is that there is always a 49% chance that we get Jimmy Carter version 2.0 = A new malaise! A new retreat from helping any friend, resisting any foe!
And despair not – by staying the course we are doing plenty. Ask RTO what we are doing for the Afghan National Army. The same is being done with the Iraqis. Things slowly get rebuilt, people get trained, equipped and responsibility gets turned over to the host nation (in both cases). Your biggest clue is the shifting media memes – away from US casualties back to “civil war” in Iraq, and “increased violence” in Afghanistan (if the enemy dies in droves, yes, I guess the violence is “increasing”…)
So far, since 9/11, the Islamists have to content themselves with claiming victory by avoiding complete annihilation at the hands of the US, Israel, etc. Of course, right now the heaps of Talib dead might argue that even now they aren’t managing to do that little.
The only big assed joker in the deck is Iran – and right now they really seem determined to piss in the eye of even the Euros and their pals the Chinese and Russians. Telling the UN to sod off, shooting up Romanian oil rigs and general being butt-heads ain’t making them look too good right now.
Chin up everyone. Get that game face on and lets keep going!
I certainly hope that there’s more going on behind the scenes than is now apparent. And I’m not prepared for a pullout. What kind of message would that send?
I don’t think more troops is the answer, or ever was. The problem it what we do with the troops we have. And we’ve definitely make mistakes: Not killing Muqtada al Sadr being a prime example
FA: I love you. Marry me.
I’m in absolute agreement. We have to take the long view and–most importantly–we have to maintain faith in our values. We’ll beat ourselves if we slip into cultural degeneracy. Some people on the right are being infected by the despair of the left. I refuse to succumb to that despair.
This is a test of character. It’s time to straighten our backbones and act like men. If we’re not prepared to fight for our freedom, we don’t deserve it.
Plus, it’s worth noting that the war in Iraq is, like Israel’s war with Hez, a proxy war with Iran. That’s become increasingly clear over the last week or so. One day our efforts will coalesce and we’ll have a united front against Iran.
Retreat is out of the question.
What is wrong with just telling the Iraqi government that we have done all we can do and that it is up to them, withdraw to camp victory and Kurdistan and see what happens? Do those that advocate cut and run really think that the civil war that will likely occur won’t really happen if we can’t see it on nightly TV?
How long has this been the case? Cuz it used to be about al-qaeda, sunnis and regime dead enders. But recently I heard talk that most of the deaths occuring there were due to shiite death squads. Is this what you mean by proxy with Iran?
In the meantime we need to set up a supply line thru Turkey (a quid pro quo for restraining Kurd ambitions).
Not doing enough in the war on terror? Are you people serious? Saddam Hussein gone, taliban gone, Moammar Khaddafi gone, A.Q. Khan gone. Syria and Iran are on the ropes(That’s right, the mullahs are on the ropes not the other way around). Our special forces and marines are hunting down terrorists and training the locals in places like Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore, the Phillipines, Niger, Mali, Chad, Mauritania, Senegal, Tunisia, Morrocco, Algieria, Iraq and Afghanistan to name a few. We are off to a good start in this long war.
I ran across a link while browsing the other day that led me to Solzhenitsyn’s speech at Harvard in 1978. Here are a couple of lines: <blockquote>A statesman who wants to achieve something important and highly constructive for his country has to move cautiously and even timidly; there are thousands of hasty and irresponsible critics around him, parliment and the press keep rebuffing him. As he moves ahead, he has to prove that every single step of his is well-founded and absolutely flawless. Actually an outstanding and particularly gifted person who has unusual and unexpected initiatives in mind hardly gets a chance to assert himself; from the very beginning, dozens of traps will be set out for him. Thus mediocrity triumphs with the excuse of restritions imposed by democracy.
Nostradomus could not have more accurately predicted 21st century American politics.
1979. Precisely.
Next.
How long has this been the case?
Does the phrase Tehran Embassy Hostages tickle any neurons? Iran’s been at war with us for almost 30 years.
I meant how long has it been a proxy war with Iran in Iraq, as that’s what we’re talking about. I dont think the 79 date works for that.
This sort of defeato-con talk is only emboldening the enemy. AQ reads blogs you know!
I stumbled across a chillingly apropos quote from, of all people, Robert E. Howard on this very subject.
Oh, and everyone—ignore the talking telephone pole.
As Bush said yesterday, all of these things are connected. It is all the same war. It has been for years, and we cannot afford to lose it. Fortunately, there’s no reason that we should, barring a failure of will.
“The Same War” Michael Ledeen article putting it all together.
Iran supplying missles to Al Qaeda for use in Iraq.
A suggestive article at IraqtheModel about Iran’s overall plan for the region. A search for the word ‘Iran’ on his site would no doubt be interesting.
I’d also do a search for the word ‘Iraq’ at Regime Change Iran for more.
A Washington Times article from 2004 indicating that Iran has been sending fighters in to Iraq for at least the last two years.
It’s been there in front of us the whole time, but we’re only just becoming aware of it. Tons of other examples abound for those who are interested in seeking them.
Technically, Verc is correct: 1979, but we never gave it any credence. In 2003, we won the Iraq war handily. Unfortunately, we have been fighting an ‘undeclared’ Iran since then.
And joe lieberman too. Who will be the unfortunate soul that inherits Rummy’s legacy?
That link said it came from Iran, but not that it went to Al Qaeda. just so you know.
We’ve had a proxy war with Iran since 1979.
Deal with it, actus.
I do not see Bush ousting Rumsfeld. I do not see him giving his enemies the satisfaction.
ahem sez:
I think we’ve been well aware of it for years but we (Administrationwise) have been reluctant to call it what it is for fear of the immediate and inevitable explosion of the “BUSH LIED!!!” gang into media friendly histrionics.
Which just goes to show you that if Rove knew what he was doing we’d have found plenty of WMD’s the first week.
Did the link mention the 300 aQ in Iran comfortably not dead or in jail? Hmmmmm.
I believe you. Its just that my leaders kept telling me that in Iraq we were fighting regime dead enders. So I wanted to know for how long the proxy war in Iraq has been going on. It looks like its been for a while, but in varying levels of intensity.
No but it did mention insurgents, which I don’t confuse with “al-qaeda.”
actus, you’ve got everything you need to be a successful attorney, but make sure you get a decent lawyering wardrobe, okay? You need at least one good 100% polyester suit if you’re going to go to court. They fray at the elbows and knees easily and look shabby within a week. No designer clothes. No matching ties. No new shoes. I’m serious. Wear your good clothes away from work.
Whatever you do, don’t look better than anyone sitting in the jury box or your client will fry.
Now, run along and don’t say I never gave you anything.
Oh I don’t plan on being in court. But I do plan on making sure that I don’t make up whats in a citation.
Too late, actus, you’ve already been caught doing that.
Better said without citations.
I used to hope that, but have been disabused of that notion.
The idiots are in charge. The nature of politics attracts the curds of the crop, as it were.
Nobody ever does.
Does a fella name of Saad bin Ladin ring a bell?
actus: You’re really an ass sometimes. Try reading closer.
From IraqtheModel:
ALCON:
Stop ramming your heads against the Telephone Pole.
I actually think Rumsfeld will stay on as Sec Def because he is a good Sec Def. Odd reason, huh?
Thats a different link than the telegraph story. That one says iran is giving things to al-qaeda, but not the telegraph story. A source that says what you claim. Thank you.
If Nasrallah can proclaim “victory” in Lebanon when half his men were killed, most of his missiles and bunkers will need to be replaced once the UN comes in to help and the IDF is still in control in South Lebanon, can’t Bush be considered to have achieved at least a little victory when Saddam is out of power, a million Iraqis have returned home and Iraq is in much better shape than before the liberation?
Or are losses victories when Muslims lose? And victories are losses when Republicans might get the credit? Racists.
It is an odd reason, Major John. It has absolutely nothing to do with Washington politics and everything to do with Rumsfeld’s performance as Secretary of Defense.
Bush has a tendency of not caring what Washington politico/media types think – which likely drives them bonkers as fragile egos hit the pavement.
Mr. Speirs, if all of Hezbollah was killed and Nasrallah strapped to a katyusha and sent back to Syria, they would still claim a victory because all acheived glorious martyrdom.
Reality won’t call it a victory, but the middle-east and the Islamofascist mindset are well-tuned to denial. Everything is a glorious victory, no matter how badly they get walloped – it is always a glorious victory.
I would’ve thought that it’s self-evident that lots is going on behind the scenes. Ten British planes are still intact, for instance… But it seems to be axiomatic to the other side (the other side of our side, that is, not the actual enemy) that the Bushies can only do one thing at a time, typically accompanied by malapropisms and unfashionable accents and of course ineptness. Texans everywhere but Austin are laughing. Big obnoxious Texan laughter.
(I love Texas. I was in it but not of it, but if I ever wanted a people to adopt me, it would’ve been Texans. As the bumper sticker says, “I wasn’t born in Texas, but I got here as soon as I could.”)
That general (simplistic – which always cracks me up, considering it’s from the “nuanced” side of the aisle) attitude comes through in actus’s stuff herein too (hi, actus, welcome back): if every person fighting against us and the Iraqi government in Iraq isn’t getting a paycheck from Iran, why, how can the war in Iraq possibly be a proxy war with Iran? Common goals, actus, common goals. Remember WWII, and how the US and the USSR were actually on the same side? Until the war was over?
Actually, the question was how can it be a proxy war with iran when we were supposed to be fighting regime dead enders.
I’ve always been amazed at the lack of understanding that US foreign policy is not a game of checkers, America red, axis of evil black.
It’s more like a game of three dimensional chess. Every move has layers of strategy with implications in every corner of the world, from trade with China, maintaining a positive influence in Russia, having access for medical concerns like bird flu and AIDS in Asia and Africa, export of American commodities like agriculture goods, import of American needs like oil, and the implications to the economy of both if shipping and transport are threatened, compliance with previous treaties and obligations with a hundred different nations, and the list goes on and on.
I think it’s incredibly niave to say Bush should be doing this or that, when most of us have scant understanding of the complexity of the game, and no vision of the shady third dimention of clandestine international intrigue.
For myself, I remain undismayed, retaining my faith in the steadfast determination and vision of the Bush administration.
As a side effect, I’m much more calm and relaxed than most seem to be these days.
“It could simply be misplaced faith and optimism on my part, but I feel like there almost must be things going on in the background that we’re not seeing. Otherwise, I’d be despairing, too.”
Who out in the civilian world knew of Ultra in WWII, or Bletchley Park, or the Manhatten Project? If you think you are seeing everything then you need to reassess your place in the universe, pronto.
Yeah, we know, actus. The Krankheit Anchor: pick a moment in time, characterize the situation, and That’s The Way It Is, World Without End, Amen.
And you get to pick the moment, right? F* you.
When we first went into Iraq, there wasn’t much resistance. (There was a lot of opportunistic cowboying.) As the days went by the irredentists got their acts together and started resisting. Meanwhile Zarqawi and Co. started importing jihadists. For a time, the Waha’abbists were the big end of the “insurgency”, with the Ba’athist revenants as muscle and intelligence.
Both quickly learned that they couldn’t do significant damage to the American troops, and that (e.g.) female MP troops were perfectly capable of dumping their dicks in the dirt, so they shifted over to civilian harassment, beating up schoolteachers, blowing up street markets, and similar courageous actions. Both the Waha’abbists and the Ba’athists are nominally Sunni, so most of their victims were Shia.
This frightened and angered the Shias, so they started putting together militias and death squads. Political action and propaganda from the Americans and the new Iraqi government drove a wedge between the Ba’athist revenants and the Zarqawi crowd, with the result that intelligence on Zarqawi and his people was available and acted on. This was at least partly so that the Sunni who were not Saddamites could look at Shia and say, “Tweren’t me, brutha. Them over yonder.”
Because Muqtada al-Sadr basks in the glow of his famous (and highly competent) daddy, his bunch became the nucleus of the Shia resistance to the resistance. And because Mookie is a damned fool, that served as the entering wedge for Iranian operatives. The Iranians had been supplying, e.g., weapons to the Zarqawites and Ba’athists, but were kept at arms length by religious antithesis, rather like us providing P39s to the Russians in 1942. Mookie, lacking the savvy of al-Sistani, the political acumen of his father, and the brains of a dingo, accepted the camel into his tent, expecting to ride it.
Which brings us pretty much up to date. The Waha’abbist Islamists are reduced to a minor rump by Shi’ia opposition, Coalition and IS gunshots, and the disgust of their putative allies, the Sunni of Iraq. Most of the true irredentists are dead or imprisoned; the remainder are running on inertia, and many of them are coming over to the Government side, lured by concessions and pushed by the Shi’ia death squads. What’s left, now, are the Iranian provocateurs. That doesn’t mean there are no Waha’abbists or Ba’athists still active; it means they aren’t a significant force, and the Iranians are.
This, too, shall pass. Recall that al-Sistani came to Iraq in the first place because he thought Khomeinei and company were a bunch of murderously counterproductive loons—he’s just this >< close to turning Sevener, is my guess. Iraqis are Arabs. Iranians are not. As the Americans gradually reduce their on-the-street presence everywhere except Anbar province, the next few months will see a remarkable rise in sales of canvas and quicklime.
There will be more bombings and more death-squad actions, ultimately leading to the Iraqis making the same decision about the Iranians as they did about AQI—these people are not us. In the meantime people, incliding American, Coalition, and Iraqi soldiers and a lot of Iraqi civilians, will get killed, reinforcing the point. What’s needed now is to keep on keepin’ on, hunting down bombers and defusing death squads, one neighborhood at a time. No glorious setpiece battles, no visible checkpoints of success, just slog through the sand dunes.
Which is to say: things change, and will keep changing. Right now we’re in a low-key proxy war with Iran, and Iraq isn’t the only front in it—the Army of God and the idiot Syrians are equally involved. Six months ago we were primarily dealing with AQI and their Sunni fellow travelers. Six months from now it will be something else. What? If I knew that I’d be working for Rummy.
Regards,
Ric
I move that those who do not ignore it, use the above from Ric Locke as the sole response to anything it says.
Ric,
Damme, sirrah! That was a remarkable summation. Would you care to give a boot up the arse of a couple of S-2’s I know?
Its just that my leaders kept telling me that in Iraq we were fighting regime dead enders.
No they didn’t.
They said we’re fighting remnants of the army of the former regime and any other islamic extremist sect(and there are dozens) that can make it into the country.Why are you lying?
Rusty,
actus doesn’t lie. He (?—for convenience) merely demonstrates the quality known as “selective attention.”
It is a fact that, during the early days of the Iraqi action, the role of the native irredentists was downplayed, partly because we didn’t have good intelligence, partly because nobody wanted to be playing Mooreon. And it’s a fact that, once AQI was reduced to its current ghost of its original self, that the irredentists were played up a bit as evidence that we’d managed to push the Waha’abbists into the background.
Actus merely takes the statements, part propaganda, part ignorance, part bragging, and selects the most-nearly hopeless interpetation possible. Don’t be disturbed unduly. It’s depressing, but it’s also as predictable as sunrise. You get used to it after a while.
Regards,
Ric
For the same reason that the Cold War was the Korean War, Vietnam War, dozens of serial wars in Africa, Grenada, Nicaragua, the Cuban Missile Crisis and subsequent revolutions in Latin America, Africa, Asia, and on and on and on, ad nauseam.
Of course, actus, the entire rest of the class can chew bubble gum and walk at the same time.
Keep the fuck up.
Iran is just baiting US into doing something rash, something “hasty”. Inevitably, irrevocably, we will give it to ‘em.
I hate to bring up comparison to another war, but isn’t Iraq more like El Salvador than, The Land John Kerry Subdued? It was a bloody civil war intermixed with a couple of superpower proxies. Peace was negotiated in 1989, when the Soviets were crumbling. So do we need to bleed Iran and Syria dry, too? If so, maybe “staying the course” is the best course now that the initial mistakes have already been made.
Just a thought.
The initial stage of the western war in Europe, after the invasion of Poland in 1939 up to June 10, 1940 was called the “phoney war”.
England used that time to build up their air force and recruit an army. france… well, they bought a lot of lattes and studied up on their useful German phrases – but they still had a larger army with more armor and were fighting on their home soil when June 1940 rolled around. The United States instituted a draft, began reorganizing industries to war footing, and made crucial lend-lease agreements with the UK that proved pivotal in the early days of the war.
Germany had technical superiority in armor and type-aircraft (but no strategic bomber force) but lacked in surface navy tonnage and radar technology. Hitler had more combat-ready divisions than anybody but france.
Germany did not have a large enough population to fight a war of attrition across continental Europe, as had been proven in the first world war. Nor did it have economic or raw material resources to fight a prolonged war.
The Ummah combatant force, even if assumed to be one percent of the world Muslim population, numbers near one hundred million. That number is spread across the entire globe. Economically, the combatants are subsidized by the demand economies of the nations they seek to overthrow. International tension = uncertainty = speculation = spikes in commodity (read “oil”) prices = more resources for the Islamists to translate into operational capability.
Islamist command and control is concentrated in a few nation states. Economic support is much more decentralized – often emmanating from within target nations under the guise of charities.
The Phony War of 1939-40 stayed phoney long enough for democratic nations to take concrete steps to weather the coming conflict.
Where the fuck are we, exactly, in our own Phoney War? Here at home we teeter on the edge of giving the legislature back to the Left and are still bothering to waste time and resources at the UN. Europe deadlined Iran on nuke enrichment, effective today, and got in reply a cheery “we’re ready to negotiate now”.
You cannot negotiate with tyrants. You cannot win without identifying the enemy, then closing with and ultimately destroying him. We are trapped in this phoney war… and the enemy is the force using it to their advantage.
The landscape at the end of this war is going to make pictures of Berlin in 1945 look like postcards from Cancun. New York, Tehran, London, Hamburg, Dearborn, Paris, Mecca, Riyadh…
Get your pictures now, so you can show your kids what those places looked like before the war.
TW = “reached”. We have reached a cusp.
Patricia,
If I were not already married, the Baba would be looking for your address.
Regards,
Ric
Jeff, my head hurts. I know, I’ve got to learn to work harder and get my synapses cracking at twice the speed; but, Holy Nelly that 11-line sentence you cranked out, starting with “Because if this is it….” and ending with “….an emboldened and resolute Islamism” requires some serious cogitation.
I’m going to try it out again in the morning, but gimme a hint. Does it mean we’re pretty much screwed?
For the record, I consider this worry just another 8/22.
Ric…who is the Baba?
Yeah. Rick, and furthermore he knows it as well.He just wants to know how well constructed our arguements are. However he is predisposed to disregard any arguement anyone who is conservative is apt to use.He isn’t interested in truth. Which may be fine for a trial lawyer, but wars aren’t fought by trial lawers. He’s just a young pup and has a lot to learn.
Re; Patricia. I’m married too, so is Ok if I just look up her dress? Nothing wierd though.
Jeff, my head hurts. I know, I’ve got to learn to work harder and get my synapses cracking at twice the speed; but, Holy Nelly that 11-line sentence you cranked out, starting with “Because if this is it….†and ending with “….an emboldened and resolute Islamism†requires some serious cogitation.
It probably doesn’t help that Goldstein, who will gladly tell you that he is The Smartest Man in Colorado, used “than” instead of “then” in the third line.
Funny, I don’t recall making that claim, Harry.
But thanks for the proofing catch all the same.
So iran was funding Saddam’s regime dead enders? Thats a pretty shocking revelation.
Recently something came out about how about 60% of deaths are from shiite groups. Which I take to include iranians. Which means there is more than just them left.
So the idea is that the residents of Sadr city are going to turn on the militia that protects and runs their city? Sounds plausible in theory.
It’s not been a pacified country, if you will, but in a country where regime dead-enders are still violently trying to stop progress.
Sure you can. Nixon went to china, and look at how wonderful things have been since then.
crippled by its own inner tensions and power struggles
Oh hell no. Don’t you dare try to lay this at the feet of the left. Crippled by an administration that is hell bent on chasing an imaginary dream that is categorically impossible in the real world.
They listen to no one….not even the “boots on the ground.”
I’ll be more than happy to stack up everything I’ve written since September of ‘02 til now against your stuff… lets see who has been more accurate in their analysis, eh?
If not simply answer this question: “What exactly are the conditions that would render the ‘War on Terror’ complete?”
You’ve been sold a rhetorical war and when you were given a turd-sandwich you went back for seconds and thirds.
Don’t you dare try to make it seem like everyone on the left is anti-war.
And there are plenty of “boots on the ground” here and elsewhere who tell a different tale than the one you and your compadres are spinning.
The war on Terror will be complete when Islamic fascists either no longer have the will, the desire, or the means to affect catastrophe against our civilians on a grand scale.
To go about reaching that goal, we can either try to sell the nations in which they thrive on freedom and democracy, or we can wage perpetual war until they are ground into dust.
Which would you prefer?
Or are you just upset that you believe I’ve misindentified from whence some of the seeds of dissention have been sown?
Only the islamic ones? Ok.