Denver’s Lillian Norgren—in what can best be described as a perfect storm of half-baked anti-war talking points—sends the following letter to the Rocky Mountain News (“Forget a ‘win’ in Iraq, let’s get out—now!”):
I think it is way past time to cease the endless prattle about how to ‘win’ this fiasco in Iraq. Let’s remove our troops, not send more in!
Question: What is there to win in Iraq? If we “win,” do we get to keep Iraq, or do we have to share it with the imaginary “Coalition of the Willing”?
I would like to have our co-commander-in-chief, Dick Cheney, answer my questions since the C.I.C. himself is vitally busy promulgating strategy—after four years without one—to competently prosecute a senseless war in which United States alone has lost more than 3000 soldiers, with more than 12000 maimed, and possibly as many as 100,000 innocent Iraqis killed.
It’s time to bring the troops home, give Iraq back to the Iraqis (albeit without a leader) and fire Halliburton—now! We certainly hanged Saddam Hussein posthaste, and I suggest we use that same alacrity in leaving Iraq!
So. Does anyone here seriously doubt that Ms Norgren would classify herself as “liberal”? And yet, look at the litany of anti-liberal sentiment in the contours of her James Baker-esque vomitus:
There is nothing to win in Iraq (if we aren’t going to act as imperialists or colonialists and take over the oil fields / lucrative date and fig industry), because the freedom or wellfare of Iraqis is hardly important, especially when there are people still smoking in Denver County!; “we” (meaning Bushco and Halliburton—certainly not Ms Norgren, god forfend!) created in Iraq a “fiasco,” but now we must cut and run, “posthaste,” and leave behind the very “fiasco” we helped create. Why? Because what’s in it for us to try to improve the dire situation in Iraq (if you happen to accept that question-begging characterization to begin with, which I do not)? After all, “we” already have freedom and a stable democratic republic, bracketing for the moment Chimpler’s campaign to shred the Constitution, and his theft of the last two presidential elections—so why not let the wogs fend for themselves!
At the heart of such arguments is a disturbing (though not always so repulsively transparent) appeal to “America First”—though the America people like Ms Norgren wish to put first is one that not only shouldn’t project its power overseas, but further, would be best served by being humiliated and beaten and stripped of its hyperpower status, the upshot being that it would be forced simply to join in with the rest of the world’s griping despots.
You know—DEATH TO ISRAEL!
So much for last great beacon thing, eh Ms Norgren? I mean, you got yours, right?
The irony being, you can bet your ass this is the kind of chick who goes around harrassing people who buy their dogs from breeders, or who don’t recycle.
All of which leads me to a longish excerpt from Victor Davis Hanson’s recent NRO piece, which does a nice job of laying out exactly what is at stake should we not pursue a “win” in Iraq—as well as highlights just where on the political spectrum self-styled liberals like Ms Norgren really fall these days:
Most Americans accept that if the United States cannot stabilize Iraq, and, in frustration and acrimony, withdraws in defeat, crises follow. The only disagreement is over how bad they will be.
Some point to the aftermath of Vietnam and, mirabile dictu, think the world eventually went on pretty much the same. In this rosy view, the preordained end of the Cold War made the communist postwar Vietnamese increasingly entrepreneurial, and thus more pro-American than friendly to their erstwhile Chinese patrons.
Others, more soberly I think, recall instead in the interval the million-plus of boat-people, exiles, the executed, and detained  and the aftershocks that killed millions more in Afghanistan, Cambodia, and Central America, once it was established that the United States would not, or could not, thwart Communist aggression. The Iranian hostage-taking and the rise of radical Islam itself were predicated on the idea that a post-Vietnam America would not intervene against terrorists, whether in Tehran or Lebanon. And Vietnam, of course, today is no South Korea, as millions there without freedom could attest.
[…]
Be that as it may, we sometimes forget that there are also more insidious ripples that can emanate from Iraq. I can think of three for starters, all with post-Vietnam echoes.
The first will be the effect on the Democratic party itself, now riding high in its antiwar invective. Yet for a quarter century after Vietnam its antiwar hysteria warped its stance on issues such as the military, retaliation abroad for attacks on America, and the use of force in general.
Jimmy Carter’s paralysis during the hostage taking, the sending of Ramsey Clark to beg Tehran for a reprieve, Bill Clinton’s half-hearted responses to the attacks from the first World Trade Center to the USS Cole, all this, rightly or wrongly was seen as the legacy of the party that had imploded after Vietnam.
Now again we have gone from sizable majorities in the Congress warning about Saddam all during the 1990s and voting to remove him in October 2002, to essentially a single Joe Lieberman sticking through the messy reconstruction. Instead Howard Dean’s once-pathetic yeehawing has now infected the likes of Senators Boxer, Durbin, Kennedy, Kerry, and Rockefeller, who have respectively rebuked Condoleezza Rice for childlessness, compared our troops to Pol Pot, Nazis, and terrorists, assured that our soldiers are no different from Baathist killers at Abu Ghraib, and suggested that things in Iraq were once better under Saddam.
All that may, like Vietnam-era street theater, play well to the media. But eventually Iraq, also like Vietnam, will be over  while the protocols and culture of hysteria and derangement, like low-lying marsh gas, will linger and smell. A Henry Jackson or JFK would have had nothing to do with a Michael Moore, who now has entrée with the Democratic elite. If the Republicans were once embarrassed of the Buchanan Right, and the Democrats of the Cindy Sheehan Left, now the Democrats have apparently both of them in their antiwar camp […].
[…] Before Iraq, wild-eyed reformers talked of a new military paradigm of sanitized war, following from wins in Afghanistan, Bosnia, Kosovo, Panama, or Serbia. Bombing from on high with GPS ordinance and a few paratroopers or special forces were the supposed future  not old fashioned, everyday artillery, armor, and infantry.
That either/or dichotomy was, of course, absurd. But if we withdraw defeated from Iraq, like it or not, there will be the charge made that the United States should not commit sizable Army and Marine forces abroad on the ground  period, under any circumstances, at any time.
Vietnam and now Iraq will substantiate in greater detail what we tasted in Lebanon and Mogadishu  the impossibility of using large conventional forces in chaotic conflicts that will inevitably turn asymmetrical and terrorist. In that regard, an army on the shelf will fossilize, as we lose confidence that it can ever achieve anything worth its losses. Generals will promise victories in the sort of rare conventional wars they can easily win, and decline the more common messy ones they cannot.
In contrast, stabilize Iraq under horrific conditions, and the world is reminded that there is nothing that a brilliantly led and highly trained American infantry cannot accomplish. Win in Iraq, and there will be fewer future calls on the Army and Marines to repeat their victory; lose  and there will be far more need to do what they cannot.
Third, there is a weird furor growing, on a bipartisan basis, at the Iraqis in general and the Arab world in particular. Prior to Iraq, there was some American guilt over past realism, whether stopping before Baghdad in 1991, playing Iran off Iraq, cozying up to dictatorships, or predicating American Middle East foreign policy solely on either oil or anti-Communism. Read the liberal literature of the 1990s and it was essentially a call for what George Bush is now doing  and being damned for. Then the liberal bogeyman was not Paul Wolfowitz, but Jim Baker (“jobs, jobs, jobsâ€Â/â€ÂFâ€â€- the Jewsâ€Â). Now the latter is the model of Republican sobriety.
Arab intellectuals and much of the Western Left once decried Bakerism and called for a new muscular idealism that put us on the side of the powerless reformers and not with the entrenched authoritarians. But if we fail in Iraq, then again, fairly or not, the verdict will be far more sweeping than simply the incompetence of the Bremer proconsulship or the impotence of the Maliki government.
Rather, the conventional wisdom will arise that an infantile Middle East ipso facto  whether due to Islamism, tribalism, gender apartheid, sectarianism, engrained dictatorship, or corruption  is simply incapable at this time of consensual government. Anyone who seeks such reform, whether in the Gulf, Palestine, Lebanon, or Egypt, is to be written off not only as naïve, but as reckless as well. A Libyan dissident, a feminist writer in Egypt, or an Iraqi intellectual who decries Western indifference to their plight or American tolerance of regional dictatorships will be told to quit whining and get a life, by a been-there/done-that American public.
Both carping hothouse Arab intellectuals and Western liberals should be put on notice of this change to come. However imperfect, however flawed, however improperly explained our efforts in Iraq were, they nevertheless represented a costly American about-face to offer something in the Middle East other than theocracy or dictatorship  something we are not likely to see again in our lifetime.
Democrats and liberals should likewise realize that for all their hatred of George Bush and the partisan points to be gained by coddling up to the libertarian and paleo-conservative Right, George Bush’s embrace of freedom was far closer to their own past rhetoric than almost any Republican administration in history. And such an effort to foster democracy was in the long run smart as well, since ultimately a free Iraq would be the worst nightmare of the Islamic jihadists  as we read repeatedly in the rantings of Dr. Zawahiri.
In short, the next Democratic president who wishes to do something about the genocide in Darfur or another mass murderer in the Middle East, will find no support from Republicans, or  in no small part due to liberals’ slurs against the war they voted for  from the country at large.
[all emphases mine].
So congrats, Ms Norgren.
You’re going to get exactly what you wanted should we not finish the job in Iraq.
Just please, don’t presume to think yourself “liberal”—at least, not in any sense that hasn’t involved a practically Orwellian feat of wishful rebranding.
No need to read over one paragraph. Just another leftie wanting to stick their head on the chopping block.
“give Iraq back to the Iraqis (albeit without a leader)”
Do I detect some regret in that parenthesis?
Ah, who cares. Give her a break, Jeff. Remember: She’s for Peace. That’s what counts.
I snorted water out my nose at the “Fire Halliburton” bit.
Yeah. I just used her as an occasion to excerpt the Hanson piece.
Ric (somewhere) made the America-First argument better than I did. When he shows up later this evening, I hope he’ll recall where he put it and give me the link, so I can append it to the post.
Beautiful, just fng beautiful. You know she almost had me there until the true contempt in her heat rang out with “fire Haliburton” . How does that saying go? Give them enough rope……
And what is really generating this rage for peace? Hatred, just pure hatred for everything Bush…..
Just for shits and giggles, this was in the Glenwood Springs Post Independent last week:
In a way, it’s regrettable that she won’t get to see America defeated. Imagine her at the mercies of the jihadis. What would she say?
I didn’t mean it? I’m on your side?
What passes through the minds of these creatures? Does she believe there are no consequences, or that she is immune to them?
No. She just knows that George Bush is doing what needs to be done to protect her, so it’s safe to show her outrage over the ways he’s chosen to do it.
Ironic, isn’t it?
John Podhoretz over at the corner provides this link to a column by Andrew Klavan. His point about Hollywood missing an opportunity to tell the truth about the war is probably no blockbuster relevation, but I really like this line:
Comfort fantasy, indeed.
Yes.
Here’s the algorithm:
1. America bad.
2. America in Iraq bad.
3. America leaves Iraq.
4. Iraq good.
5. Ponies for everyone.
Remember P.J. O’Rourke’s line: “Liberalism is the philosophy of the spoiled brat.”
Someone has to be the adult and keep watch for non-pony things in the world.
You just stay home and fume Ms. Norgren – nobody is asking you to do anything. We’ll cover the fighting for you.
However, should we leave and the place drowns in blood – I suppose you will sponsor and house a Marsh Arab or Kurdish family in your own home, yes?
Jeff, sorry man, but she totally pwned you there. She had 63% more speaking truth to power than you did, nearly 75% more stickin’ it to the man, 91% more smashing the capitalist war death kill machine, and, for the coup de grace, represented (Oberlin Students fo Peace in da housizzle!) with nearly 500% more sentences that ended in exclamation points, showing she really, really cares, or at least cares more than you do, you sick, callous conservative fuck. Er, I mean, she cares more than you do you sick, callous, conservative fuck!!!!!!!!!!! (Can’t skip the exclamation points… now where’s the tag for bold face and ALL CAPS?)
Next time, you need to stick to the usual business of shilling for Bush you shameless kool aid drinking Bushbot, and avoid trying to argue with letter writers to the editorial pages of the, um, what was that? Yes, the Rocky Mountain News. Yep, stay aware from the pages of the Rocky Mountain News because they are totally pwned for .
Jeff,
It would certainly seem to me that adding more troops is indicative of losing. No matter what the objective of the military and the Bush Administration, this seems obvious. So rather than argue about democracy, civil war, oil wells and the rest of it, U.S. troop numbers on the ground are the easiest measure of winning or losing.
Careful, stevie–your biases are kinda hanging out there where the kids can see them.
Yes, and if your car is struggling uphill, whatever you do, don’t give it more gas. Because it would be a capitulation.
Adding more troops = losing? You sure it can’t mean expediting the winning so that the Dems whining over at the kiddie table don’t start throwing their cake?
Wishbone,
I’m not trying to hide my biases. I’m saying that whether you think that Bush is trying to create democracy in Iraq or create an oil industry or all points in between and around that, if he has to send in more troops, he is losing.
Remember, kids, Rethugs are too stupid for nuance. It’s all black and white; you’re either with us or against us. Only the Sith think in such absolutes. Etc.
But, uh, increasing troop levels always equals losing.
When the going gets tough, the realistic just lie down and curl into a fetal position.
Dan,
If your car is struggling up the hill to the point where you need to give it more gas than you are losing the uphill battle, right. At some point you floor it and if you aren’t getting up the hill, you have lost. Once you get over the hill, you could pull back on the gas, but it ain’t looking good.
Jeff,
For starters, I’m seeing more and more Republicans throwing cake at the moment. Now, if I had said 3 years ago that the sign of winning would be for us to pull back the number of troops, then I’m betting most of you would have agreed with me. What exactly changed your minds?
… assuming your premise is true… OOH OOH. We figured out the difference between cause and effect?
Dan,
I’ve made this point before, but I am not fighting in the war and I don’t have any close friends or relatives fighting there, so why would my motivation for pulling the troops have anything to do with my own courage?
Seriously though, steve, you’d get much, much nicer reactions from us if your debate tactics… tactic in the singular I should say, involved something… ANYTHING other than derailing topics with tedious sophistry so you can say “OMG LOL HYPOCRISY I WIN THE DEBATE BY DEFAULT”
OHNOES,
I’m not sure what you mean.
What’s your point xpat? Are you trying to float the concept more troops = losing just so you can say “neener, neener, neener”? Do you know what losing means?
Let’s take a look at this incident. Had the U.S. and Iraqi forces lost this battle, aside from you gloating on the comment board on protein wisdom, thousands of pilgrims would have perished. Would that be something you’d be proud of? Thousands die! Bush looks bad! Yeah, that’s the ticket.
Incorrect statement: “Because we reduced troop levels, we are winning!”
Correct statement: “Because we are winning, we reduced troop levels.”
It wouldn’t be, in this theoretical 3 years ago universe or now, to anyone here a ‘sign’ of winning. Signs of winning would involve things like actually winning. It’d be a result of winning…
OHNOES,
I’m not sure whether getting nicer reactions is my goal. I like the idea of healthy, friendly debate and I’m trying to find a way to do that, but I can’t just worry about whether people are going to call me names if I say this or that. I don’t really think that I derailed the subject. I do tend to pick one aspect of a long post that I think is the most worth discussing and the topic was “winning” in Iraq. It’s very difficult, particularly when you try to answer several posts, to focus on several topics at once. I’m not a multi-tasker.
“War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things. The decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks that nothing is worth war is much worse. The person who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing which is more important than his own personal safety, is a miserable creature and has no chance of being free unless made so and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself.”
Then why do you give a shit how many troops are in Iraq? Why are you yammering like this? Do you actually think you sound smart? Have you pointed this thread to women and have they blown you?
Mishu,
Well, that isn’t a conscious motivation, but that doesn’t rule it out, I suppose. What I’m trying to do though, is cut through the ambiguousness of whether we are winning or losing based on subjective criteria and proposing something extremely objective and hard to spin one way or the other. I’m sure others might suggest other criteria, but I just think it is the best one.
Ha, Ha. Ojala!
So, June 5, 1944. # of US troops in the Northwestern European Theater of Operations=0.
June 6, 1944, # of US troops in the Northwestern European Theater of Operations=~40,000.
May 8, 1945, # of US troops in the Northwestern European Theater of Operations=~500,000.
Conclusion based upon extremely objective and hard-to-spin criteria: The US lost World War II in Europe.
Of course, one might point out that it is precisely such “extremely objective and hard-to-spin criteria” that created the “four o-clock follies” during Vietnam (you know, the standard by which all American wars are judged), courtesy of body counts and numbers of strategic hamlets established. And that this was something the Army finally realized didn’t apply in an insurgency.
Mishu,
I just showed the thread to my wife (who told me it’s ambiguity, not ambiguousness), and I’ll put your question to the test. I’ll keep you posted…
OK, steve–humor me–let’s say we’ve lost. And we leave.
What happens then in your universe? I’m really curious on this point.
At some point you floor it…
Ah-HA! I knew it! Steve says, “More dumb bombs!” “Nuke Mecca!”
This sounds like someone is channeling Peter Sellers in “Being There”
Lurking Observer,
There were other easily observable criteria in WWII (and troops from a lot of other countries besides the U.S.). The primary one being actual territory controlled by either side. In this war, which is really an occupation, that isn’t possible. If you disagree with the troop number criteria, offer something else.
Lurking already did an able job pwning this point- but I’d wonder…if we all of a sudden pull troops from Iraq and reposition them here in America, does that mean we are losing America. Are you, in a sidelong manner, agreeing with President Bush that we’ll either fight them over there or fight them over here? Or are you of the Monkyboy school that China could land in LA at any minute?
Or are you hoping to follow the John Murtha plan and move the troops “just over the horizon” to Okinawa. And if so, what do you have against the people in Okinawa that you wish them to lose…whatever?
Or-and maybe this is just a combination of cold air and a box of Malbec- does context matter?
Steve G,
That is a good point. In my defense, I didn’t start the analogy.
OK, steve–humor me–let’s say we’ve lost. And we leave.
What happens then in your universe? I’m really curious on this point.
Wishbone,
When you lose, you don’t have any control over what happens. To the victor goes the spoils. I don’t anticipate good things, at least in the short run. I’m guessing at some point, things will improve after we leave. By the way, really the only card we have to play, in my opinion, is the likelihood of chaos after we leave. Really, at least two years ago we should have been working out an exit strategy and talking with Turkey, Iran, the Kurds and the various sects within Iraq to try and broker some sort of compromise that might limit the bloodshed. In my opinion, that could possibly still happen if a real effort was made…
I see that this discussion is morphing and, like I said, I’m not a multitasker.
Oh, so troop numbers all of a sudden aren’t criteria that are “extremely objective and hard to spin one way or the other”?
Now, it’s territory controlled?
But Steve-XX, you’re the one claiming that troop numbers are “extremely objective and hard to spin one way or the other,” and therefore an appropriate means of determining winning and losing.
And, to paraphrase Democrats, it’s not my job to come up with a solution to the quagmire you’ve landed yourself in. You tell me what constitutes “extremely objective and hard to spin one way or the other” criteria, since that’s what you were claiming to have produced, when you so definitively stated that increasing troop numbers meant we were losing (no qualifiers included).
Turing word: federal
There were more federal troops under arms, and more in Southern states in April 1865, than there were in April 1861. Therefore, the North lost the Civil War.
Okay,
I concede defeat.
(See, it’s not so hard).
Well, of course you don’t need to worry about getting called names. These are the internets, after all.
But, seriously, every post from you, it seems you are only trying to parse a description of the situation in a way that scores points. It just gets tedious and somewhat demoralizing that the only opposition debate we get over here is either of the Retardo variety or more interested in drawing twisting analogies than direct engagement on issues…
Either a) we have lost or b) we have not. It’s a dichotomy–not a continuum, steve. As we clearly still have influence over events, I’d say it’s “b”.
Your unwillingness to recognize that the consequences of failure reach far beyond Iraq is disturbing. Cavalierly waving off the aftermath is nearly identical to the inattention of the administration to “the Fall of Baghdad + 1” (a cardinal sin according to most in your camp). In fact, I’d call it full-blown intellectual hypocrisy, steve.
Now, please provide your location so that I and my fellow victorious jihadis may come and saw your head off. And perhaps also seek to convert your wife and children.
After all,
Now, perhaps if, when you first commented along these lines, you’d thought through the likelihood of chaos if you lost, I and my fellow soldiers of Allah wouldn’t have to do this. Really, at least two comments ago, you should have been working out an exit strategy and talking perhaps with mishu, OHNOES, Jeff, myself, and the various sects of Protein Wisdom to try and broker some sort of compromise that might limit the bloodshed. But you didn’t negotiate with me or my brethren.
Such shortsightedness! But, as a consolation, I’m guessing at some point, things will improve after we’ve finished sawing off your head and converting your children.
Note: The above is intended as a form of satire and should not be interpreted as an actual offer/threat to engage in jihadi-style beheading.
Unlike what confronts the folks in Iraq and elsewhere, lest we lose.
Lots of other countries? Like whom?
In that case, we win hands down.
An occupation where you give the indigenous army guns and teach them to fight?
I’ve never heard of such a thing!
I’ll pick Iraqi economy growth, new construction and number of Iraqi battalions at Unit Readiness CAT 2 or 1 as my measures. So far, so good!
As far as more troops = losing: Not quite.
We were trying to draw down and stabilize Iraq, but filthy leftists decided it wasn’t fast enough so Bush, as usual, caved to the dirty international left and is trying to speed up the time table.
So, congratulations, you got more troops sent over by being another droning voice of defeat and impatience. in the chorus of filthy leftists.
Following the defeat of Germany, the U.S. started moving thousands of troops to the Pacific theater in preparation for invading Japan. Without the miracle of the atomic bomb we were surely destined for defeat as evidenced by the War Department’s decision to increase the forces in the Pacific Theater.
Following the invasion of South Korea and the dire situation at Pusan, reinforcement and relief was the least desirable option. MacArthur’s reckless invasion at Inchon would have ended his career with the ignominious defeat sure to come but for the incredible luck that the Communist forces were taken by surprise.
I just wanted to make sure we’re all aware of these facts.
My favorite part of the Bush era “Haliburton Story”, is how the press, especailly, ignores the fact that Haliburton has ben around for decades, and has always operated as they do now.
I don’t remember Clinton taking shit for the exact things going on then as are now.
Biz as usual for the left and MSM…
Easy for you to say, you’ve had more practice.
What’s up with you warloving Reichtaxcutters? Lillian is 10 times the patriot that Jeff “Sure, I’ll Collaborate with the Nazis if it’ll get me out of Auschwitz and better-tasting Kishka” Goldstein will ever be.
Every week I have to give 2 of my food stamps to help pay for Dick Cheney’s limo rides to the cardiologist. Yet, I, who served my country by spitting on the troops in Vietnam, Grenada, Gulf War I and July 4th 1997-2005, almost had to miss Jane Fonda’s spoken word treatise on geopolitics this weekend in DC. My papier mache of Shrub giving head to Condoskeeza’s aborted child almost didn’t fit into the Prius I stole.
Thomas Jefferson would be proud that his imperialistic Articles of NeoConFederation are being used to wage war in Iraq just to give the Federal Reserve a better deal on Xyclon B!
I’m sick of Bush wrapping himself in the flag and saying he represents me. I am bound by no country and I take orders only real Statesmen like Tim Robbins and Jamil Hussein.
What did Saddam ever do to us? I mean, it’s been what, like, 3 years since 9-11. Get over it. Bush and his Big Oily cronies have been practicing genocide against anyone who isn’t Skull and Bones.
I stand proudly with Lillian and Cindy and Mumia. Bring home the troops now and make sure they’re bearing free health care when they come back to the United Stakkkkkkes of Heteronormative Halliburton!
I know everybody else has already beaten this dead horse, but I just can’t help it…
This is why everyone in Russia west of the Volga speaks German to this day, right?
Ojala means “God willing,” not “I wish!”
Have you sen all those people Wal-Mart keeps hiring? They’re definitely losing. And did you notice how K-Mart had all those layoffs a couple years back? That’s success, friends.
Liberalism is standing on your head and telling the world that it’s upside down.
For perspective, I’ll throw this out there, from an outstanding Iraqi blogger:
Alaa has been blogging from Baghdad since November of 2003. He supports the war, supports the Americans, and has been very fair and realistic of his assessment of the situation on the ground. The surge is necessary. It’s not a sign that we’ve been doing well in Baghdad; we traded Baghdad for the provinces. Now we’ve got Al-Anbar more stabilized, but Baghdad has suffered in its place. In retrospect, was it a mistake to pull so many people out of Baghdad to secure Al-Anbar? Probably. The capital should’ve been our priority. The surge is definitely NOT a sign of victory. But neither is it proof positive of evidence of Bush’s incompetence. To bring out the old complaints…you take a biased media and a bunch of liberals aiding and supporting the enemy in every possible way, and what can be expected? Every time we get the enemy on the run, disorganized and demoralized, a US newspaper publishes a secret defense program, blares a warning for a false incident with the Koran in Gitmo, or an idiot Senator whips up the fury over our “impending defeat.” Mistakes happen in war. If liberals had ANY interest whatsoever in winning this, they’d know that. The fact that the enemy knows and says they’ve got a friend in the American left is more damning than anything else I could say.
The happy-dancing of the leftists in the end zone over the US “defeat” is disgusting on a level unrivaled in recent history. What liberals are incapable, apparently, of understanding it that a nation doesn’t go to war with any assurance that they’re going to fucking ‘win.’ They go because they have to and they fight until they can’t fight anymore. They fight until the enemy unconditionally surrenders. Not detente or mutually assured destruction or truce. They die or we die. There hasn’t been a war in American history, aside from the incomplete misadventures of the last forty years, that we went into knowing we’d win. Winning was never a foregone conclusion.
I don’t know how many terrorist attacks it’ll take before they figure it out, but I can take a grim satisfaction in knowing that liberals in their cities will be blown up first. The scope of liberals’ illusions will only be equaled by the size of the explosion when they’re shattered. Fight the terrorists in Iraq and commit to getting the job done, no matter what, or resign yourself to death on your own shores and in your own cities. There is no option C.
The problem lies in the fact that stevexx doesn’t *want* to crest the hill. He’d much rather throw it quickly in reverse, and careen back down the slope, wrecking the car and probably killing a couple beagles on the way.
Naw, a Perfect Storm of Talking Points would use 100,000 as a base, or even something higher, rather than as an admittedly-uncertain high-end.
I’ve seen idiots claim as many as a million; on questioning, of course, no reasoning or documentation could be produced.
I honestly suspect that people just double the highest number they’ve heard as an estimate and use it as a confirmed floor.
Ooooooo, can I play Iran in the movie and nuke steve?
See, steve, what happens if we lose a war? Who fills the power vaccuum?
A) The Persian Hysterocracy
B) The homemade Saudi Religion of Perpetual Insanity
C) A little from column A and a little from column B.
And they will fill those mad clown-shoes for the foreseeable future, cause, they have been around for the last twenty and seventy years, and there is no one around to make them collapse within the next twenty to seventy years if we bug out of the arena.
Does Iran/Saudi Arabia have nukes and ICBMs now?
Wait.
SteveXX, others:
“Winning” is a snapshot, point condition applying to a specific instant in time and space. If a condition occurs at the end of hostilities and is general in its scope, then it is a very significant indicator. Otherwise, it is merely a data point.
There is, notionally, some amount of time before and after the snapshot during which one can assume a reasonable likelihood of correlation with conditions at the specific point in time and space in which are mentioned above, but it is not a certainty.
Had one taken the instantaneous snapshot after any one of a number of battles, you would have a relatively poor indicator on the final outcome of the conflict.
To assert loss while troops are being deployed, in advance of the actual battle, is somewhere between Anticipatory Schadenfreude and alarmist panic.
BRD
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