Republicans & Conservatives: Archives

David,

“The British and their allies suffered 57,470 casualties, including 19,240 dead in just the first day of the Battle of the Somme in WWI.”

That’s because their tactics and their commanders were bone stupid, and because of the technology of the machine gun which the Germans used very effectively.

As far as I am concerned, the point isn’t the loss of life. The point is a useless loss of life caused by a bone stupid strategy.

As for the loss of life;
Just how much higher would the casualties be if we went back to the healing methods used in WW1, and WW2?
You guys always want to compare casualties from Iraq to those in the world wars but you neglect to compare life saving technologies that have only come into existence in the last 40 years.

You want to compare, then compare everything.

Your comment:

“What I do want to see is the destruction, annihalation, subjegation or neutralization (politically or militarily) by any means possible of the enemies of the United States and Western Civilization. In the end, what matters is not body counts, but results.”

…shows your lack of understanding of this issue. It demonstrates the inherent problem with the prosecution of this war.

How can you fool yourslef into believing any of these rather EVIL goals are achievable without the region and the WORLD seeing them? How is it that you so completely FAIL to understand that what you propose is a NEVER ENDING WAR?
What you are espousing is nothing short of genocide…worse in a way, because it also requires that the entire western world accept these tactics, approve them and turn a blind eye!

The only thing that pursuing these tragically flawed goals will ever accomplish is the swelling of the ranks of those that hate with enough anger to turn terrorist.

Your post’s shallow mis-understanding only throws light on the republicans’ failure to understand that viiolence has FAR REACHING CONSEQUENCES and that the seeds we sow now will inevitably come back to haunt us.

IF we allow your goals free rein, the result will surely be a faster destruction of America than any terrorist could ever accomplish! The fear espoused by your post and capitalized on by the republican party is also resulting in the destruction of America from WITHIN.

SAVE the Constitution. SAVE American lives. SAVE the foundations of our great nation.
END the war now and IMPEACH Goergw W. Bush and Dick Cheney NOW.

Let me make sure that I am crystalline on this subject. You think it’s okay for us to go in and attack other countries that pose a threat to us, “Destruction of the enemy and the immediate substitution of toppled governments with the best replacements available” are your words, but we shouldn’t stick around to clean up the mess we made? And this is better than the Neo-con strategy…..how? If we followed your ideas, Iraq would be two countries, a Kurdistan in the north and a carbon copy of Iran in the south, where all the oil fields are. This is a good idea? Please, enlighten me as to how this would work out in our best interest.

L

Except for the lack of unintentional humor, the rhetoric in this post is similar to his last, which warned us of the insidious, meretricious, and soul-destroying nature of Liberalism. No compromise, no succumbing to the perils of compassion, no nuance. Enemies, including those weak-willed enough to be seduced by Liberalism, must be annihilated with righteous wrath. Otherwise, you know, our ever-so fragile institutions will crumble.

There are other modes beside the apocalyptic.

I certainly wouldn’t have dismantled the army or attempted to de-Baath the entire government structure from water board to the educational system to the bureaucracy essential to maintain a smooth running nation state. A ‘strongman’ approach should have taken with a gradual institution of democratic principles as time went on and stabilization was ensured. I honestly would have preferred a coup or an assassination of Saddam instead of an invasion, but his reign of terror was so complete that the internal opposition within his own party and government was absolutely paralyzed. Unfortunately, we are now in the position where Iraq need its own Pinochet to get the situation under control and to smash the influence of Al-Qaeda types on the Sunni side and the Iranian backed militias on the Shia side. Time will tell if this comes about.

“The US must therefore avoid further entanglements in bloody insurgencies and should use proxy armies, paramilitaries, civilian contractors, allied clans, native guerillas, tribal militias, local forces, and friendly insurgents to do the dirty work, and absorb the casualties, that we as a nation have basically stated we aren’t willing to suffer.”

The classified sales folks at Soldier of Fortune will be very happy to hear that.

The rest of us will think it’s insane. Friendly militias? Ha! Look how far that’s got us in Iraq! Moqtada al Sadr was a US ally, at the beginning! In fact, aren’t “allied clans, native guerillas, tribal militias, local forces, and friendly insurgents” all different ways of saying the same thing?

As for ‘civilian contractors’ - that’s what the army is. The army is a bunch of civilians who contract themselves out to fight wars.

Ok - “proxy armies, paramilitaries” - and where do we get these ‘proxy armies’? From up our proxy sleevies? Paramilitaries? Who? Where? How?

David, you don’t go fighting a war without putting your own people at risk. That’s a fact. And no random list of buzzwords will change that.

No they aren’t all the same thing. A quick scan of the various conflicts in the world should make that fairly obvious. The US providing political cover, intelligence and funding to the Ethiopian army as they displaced the Council of Islamic Courts in Ethiopia would be an example of a proxy army. The Kurds would be a loose example of tribal forces (possibly more like the Awakening and Sanctuary movements among the Sunni tribes in Iraq). The Northern Alliance would be an example of native insurgents. The US working with the various Somali clans would be an example of ‘allied clans’. Blackwater USA would be an example of civilian contractors. Paramilitary is a broader term but generally means someone not part of an established military. We used CIA paramilitary forces on the ground in the initial push to take out the Taliban (think Black ops if that helps you). The first US casualty in Afghanistan was a CIA paramilitary officer. If you don’t understand the differences in the various conflicts (and the forces involved) around the world feel free to use that fine friend of the Internet researcher; Google.com.

I have no qualms about taking down America’s enemies, but military victory is no simple matter of killing people. Part of our intent in Iraq, and a strategically valid intent at that, was to reshape the government so it wouldn’t be trouble later. The alternative to nation-building in the wake of the war is to allow a failed state to develop.

That would be utterly stupid, considering how much our enemies like exploiting failed states. Of little more intelligence is the notion of fighting by proxies. The real trouble with fighting by proxies is that you get nailed with the responsibility and the messes generated by these proxies, without the benefit of having the control to minimize them.

Let’s make something clear: if we had done our job right in Iraq, we wouldn’t have had a terrorist problem there. Unfortunately, the Neocons had a similar attitude to Mr. Huntwork’s. Unfortunately, things did not go according to plan, and a nation building strategy became obviously necessary.

Unfortunately, nobody had prepared official plans for this, even as a contingency. You see, that was considered defeatism, which conversely indicates that they considered putting all their eggs in one basket an effective strategy, and gambling that nothing would go wrong to be the only confident course of action.

It galls me to read people who call themselves patriots disparage the willingness of our people to rise to such occasions. At the beginning of the Iraq war, if this president had said, I think we need to expand the armed forces to shoulder this greater burden, few would have thought him crazy for that suggestion. Many would have signed up.

The big problem is that few politicians are willing to take the risk entailed by asking people for sacrifices. Bush and the GOP essentially adopted the Guns and Butter approach to fighting a war, in which nobody sacrifices to provision the war, but we rack up the debts and the strain on resources anyways.

Another problem is this arrogant assumption that when this government gets us into a war, we automatically have to support it. This is a Democracy, with civilian control of the military. The President is formally at the top of the chain of command, but he and the others who start wars like this answer to us, and the supporters of this war have done a terrible job of running this war.

Overall, we must realize that war is an entangling state of affairs. Sooner or later things come around. Our policies in the Middle East tolerated outrages that came back to bite us on the butt in the end, despite the fact that most of our involvement was by proxy. Afghanistan itself shows us both the entangling consequences of a proxy war, and the results of dropping such conflicts blithely at the side of the road. We were through with Afghanistan, but as history turns out, it wasn’t through with us.

We live on a globe, and if there’s one thing that’s true of a globe, it’s that what goes around, comes around. In an era where modern travel can take people around the world in a single day, we can’t afford to believe that we can play these games with impunity, or that we even should try.

The Republican approach to war has been hopelessly naive, substituting gung-ho attitudes for a problem solving mentality. They talk about toughing out problems where endurance of the situation isn’t necessarily the key to victory.

The body count in this war is used by liberals like myself for other reasons than to impress people with the number of folks planted in their graves. It is a reminder of how many people have died in what was supposed to be the post-war period, and which instead has become the main body of a war whose poor planning and management is acknowledge even by its supporters. It’s the number of people who will die with this country having found no WMDs in the country it invaded. It’s the number of people who have died in a war that has been utterly counterproductive in its treatment of the problem of terrorism; the terrorists now enjoy more funding, more prestige, more training and have more Americans lying in their grave than if we had chosen otherwise in this war.

How do you ask people to die to save face for politicians too cowardly to admit they screwed up their war, yet too obstinate to back down in the face of a public outraged by the incompetence failures of the war?

David H,
Most of the people being killed by US forces are Sunni insurgents. That is not the same as “terrorists.”

Terrorists target civilians with the intent of terrorizing the population. This publicizes the terrorist cause, and polarizes the population; it forces everyone to choose sides, undermines moderates and those willing to negotiate, and invites repression and violent response. Usually, when we refer to “terrorists,” we are referring to the suicide bombings by Suadi Arabian & other foreign jihadists, as well as Al Qaida in Iraq (which is NOT the same as the Al Qaida of Osama bin Laden).

Roughly 80% of US casualties come at the hands of Sunni insurgents, and most of those are caused by IEDs.

“… An aggressive and ruthless enemy that does not distinguish between soldier and civilian and certainly is not ‘handicapped’ by anything like personal restraint, rules of warfare or the humane treatment of captured opponents.”

False. The Sunni insurgents avoid detonating IEDs that might harm fellow Sunnis. They target US troops. They may be enemies, but they are not terrorists. It would be more accurate to describe them as insurgents using asymmetrical warfare. It has been utterly foolish to expect enemies to obey the rules of warfare by engaging in Third Generation Warfare, as you note towards the end of your article. This is a classic example of Fourth Generation Warfare, and through sheer stupidity & incompetence, we lost this one a long time ago.

Humane treatment of prisoners? After Abu Ghraib (which is only the best known example, because of pictures), we can hardly complain. There are over 18,000 Iraqis taken prisoner (350 of those are foreign jihadists). Saddam Hussein did not have enough prisons to hold everyone we have captured, so more prisons are being built. What does that tell you?

Furthermore, what is the economic cost? What could have been done with those hundreds of billions of dollars? Because all that money has simply disappeared down a rathole. Only the defense industry & corrupt officials have profited to date; and we continue fighting hard to put a lock on the grand prize, incredibly lucrative oil contracts for Exxon, Chevron, BP, & Royal Dutch/Shell.

I have not even attempted to break down the various factions and conflicts. There are four main Sunni insurgent groups, various factions within the Mehdi Army, the Badr Brigades of SCII, the Peshmerga, and more. I saw one article suggest there were at least eight different fronts in the war, and 30 factions involved.

The Iraqi people do not want us in their country. The majority of both Shias and Sunnis want us to leave. And that is exactly what we should do.

David H., I don’t see any reference at the link you cite for the statistics on terrorist deaths, that defines what constitutes a terrorist. Are they just adding up non-coalition deaths and calling them all terrorists regardless of age, sex, or ability to fight?

Your source lacks considerable credibility as far as I can see. If I am overlooking something on Simmins site, please inform me.

I referenced the blogger who quoted a general. You’ll have to speak with the Pentagon about what constitutes a terrorist “regardless of age, sex, or ability to fight”.

Huntwork-
I think you miss a point here: The deaths of the soldiers are a symptom of something else. The memory hole is broad and deep in this country sometimes, but I still remember what this period was supposed to be like in the beginning. This was supposed to be “post-war”.

Only trouble is, we never had the control of the territory necessary to truly end the war, and to achieve our post-war objectives. The Bush administration wanted what it couldn’t have with the strategy it was employing, and the means it was bringing to the battle.

It’s easy for folks to be oblivious on this count. The so-called “post-war” period of the Iraq War basically is the Iraq war now. We can hardly remember a time when it seemed we were in control. That’s how badly wrong the Iraq war has gone.

It’s also easy for the conservatives to call this a part of the War on Terror, and neglect the fact that the terrorists only built their presence in the country after we destroyed Saddam’s security apparatus. There was no sizeable terrorist forces there before then. This was battle field, in such terms, that we chose poorly.

Looking at what has happened with the terrorists, we see increases in their funding, their recruiting, the prevalence of their views, and we see them succeeding in their strategical aims in Iraq. This war may be killing a number of terrorists, but attrition is not taking them out faster than the outrage over our presence is bringing them in.

Moreover, it’s at the strategic end of things that the misunderstandings of the war’s supporters become truly profound, and truly tragic. A war is not simply a fight where the one who kills the most and wins the most battles succeeds. We had goals going in, to stabilize the country, to create a fair and Democratic government, to rebuild Iraq and its economy. We’ve failed those goals.

Having failed them, we’re increasingly moving the goalposts back in order to save face, and claim some kind of success. But still, our policy objectives are not being fulfilled, and at this rate, never will be.

We’ve lost. We applied inappropriate strategies and policies to the war, and failed to meet our goals. Were we doomed to that, do we deserve that? No. Did most Americans want that? No. But it is the situation we find ourselves staring at. We need to find a way to cut this fiasco short, and deal with the consequences. Maybe next time, we’ll be a bit wiser about what kind of policy we employ, instead of trying to cruise along on willpower and body counts.

David H,
For the recent Congressional study:

“One caveat is that studies like this often focus on major attacks, especially bombings, which had some degree of success. But the Lancet study of 1800 households found that 86% of violent deaths come from people just being shot down, and that this sort of violence is common throughout the country, not just in select provinces. Not all of it is political in character (there are Mafia turf wars, tribal feuds, etc., which go along with having a failed state such as that in Iraq). About a third of violent deaths came from US military activities. Since the US has begun bombing Iraqi cities again as part of the ‘surge,’ deaths from aerial strikes have certainly risen, but these probably are not even counted in the Congressional study. Some 500 Iraqis are probably being killed a day in such daily violence, a fraction of the deaths reported by US wire services, though most of these deaths are not specifically “insurgent-” or “politically” derived.”

From www.juancole.com

It gives a much more accurate perspective than counting “terrorist” kills.

500 Iraqis dying violently every day adds up to about 180,000 deaths per year, a number consistent with the Lancet studies.

“The big problem is that few politicians are willing to take the risk entailed by asking people for sacrifices. Bush and the GOP essentially adopted the Guns and Butter approach to fighting a war, in which nobody sacrifices to provision the war, but we rack up the debts and the strain on resources anyways.”
Posted by: Stephen Daugherty at June 13, 2007 04:46 PM

And just who created this apathy and entitlement mentality, Stephen? Who is it that longs to give people everything that they want without working or sacrificing for it only to rack the debts and the strain on our resources since the Kennedy / Johnson years? Bush and the GOP could do nothing in the way of asking anyone to actually sacrifice even from the first death of a U.S. soldier in the War on Terror. The Press was counting bodies before the number reached fifty. They had a media frenzy when the number reached 1,000. Democrats were ridiculing the military and the Administration even before that. I believe the numbers is what this post is mostly about. You really expect the President to ask people to sacrifice in a political climate that has the opposition and its cohorts in the Press counting death tolls even before the first body hits the ground? Get real, Stephen!
The point of this post is to bring to light the exact responses that have been posted here by the left wingers; that Iraq is a bloody massacre when we have only lost 3500 troops in four years of fighting. That is less than the number in one day of most previous wars. Yet, the left continues its rant of, “Let’s throw up the white flag and surrender!” So much for asking for any sacrifices for the freedom of the Iraqi people and Democracy in Iraq. Jack has posted numerous articles on the increases that Bush has made on welfare programs, school funding, International aid, etc., all the while fighting a War on Terror. Yet, the left continues to characterize Bush as throwing the baby out with the bath water. The problem is even when the left gets everything it wants, they still throw tantrums for more. The left actually sacrifice? You’ve got to be kidding. It just isn’t in them! Never has been!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

JD

Can you imagine the response of the modern day Progressive/Liberal mind to WWII?

David & JD,
The response probably would have been the same as the liberal/progressive response supporting the invasion of Afghanistan.

Oh. Yeah. That war.

But it does not fit into conservative revisionism. The largest demnstration prior to Afghanistan consisted of 10,000. The US population, myself included, overwhelmingly supported attacking & deposing the Taliban, because the Taliban harbored Osama bin Laden- remember him? Oh my! How rude of me to bring him up!

The largest demonstration prior to Iraq consisted of a million people. The US population was almost evenly divided. According to polls before the invsasion, 90% of Americans agreed Saddam Hussein was bad news; but only a small minority thought invasion (rather than regime change) was appropriate.

To whip up support, the Bush administration misled, and misinformed, and outright lied to the American public.

That is a demonstrable fact.

So, yes, when the lies became obvious, people became just a tad sensitive to our soldiers dying for nothing.

And it is simply shameful to ignore what has happened to the Iraqis. Over 600,000 have died violently since the invasion, with the vast majority of dying by gunshot. Not suicide bombers. Gunshot. 600,000 lives.

Every week, another two billion dollars goes down the Iraqi rathole. Two billion dollars.

Polls consistently show the same results. The vast majority of Iraqi Sunnis and Shias want us out of their country. A majority of Americans want the same thing.

Do you really think 600,000 have died since the invasion? We’d be tripping over the piles of bodies. Such wild exaggerations and biases ‘studies’ do take away from the true horror and loss of death that is occurring there. The Left loves to throw that number around.

And they accuse the intelligence services of Britain, France, Israel, the US and others of ‘lying’ about the WMD issue. What hypocrites.

At least they have their talking points down. That’s what matters.

David,
600,000 violent deaths as of last year. Of course, there is a margin of error. There is a 2.5% chance, that is, a one-out-of-forty chance it could be as low as 400,000 and a 2.5% chance it could be as high as 800,000. That is based upon the Lancet poll, which uses the statistical methodology developed by the Atlanta Center for Disease Control. The same methodology has been used for other disasters and conflicts and has been proven accurate. The polling sample relied upon death certificates, which were provided in over 80% of those polled.

The recent poll by the Opinion Research Bureau suggested a simlar scale of carnage.

Rather than debate me, spend some time researching the Lancet study and the ORB poll, and draw your own conclusions. Look into the methodology of the Iraqi Body Count number, which only tallies deaths reported in the media that have been translated into English; previous conflicts show media counts significantly underestimate violent deaths during conflict, reporting only 20%, and in especially violent conflicts, reporting only 10% or even as low as 5%.

WMDs? Oh no. Let me guess. You think there really were WMDs? That it was not a lie?

David,
Feel free to quote US government or Iraqi Health Minstry estimates of Iraqi violent deaths. Please use estimates based upon in-country polling or other accepted statistical methodology. It is certainly within the abilities of the Bush or Maliki administrations to provide such estimates. Right?

Go for it. Let me know what you find.

JD-
I freely admit that Johnson screwed things up. Would you freely admit Bush has done the same? When I’ve argued against Bush’s strategy, I basically used the term employed to describe Johnson’s strategy, which I’ve said contributed to the economic downturns of the Seventies.

As for sacrifice? The political climate should be the last thing considered, especially in a time where people obviously wanted to help their country. You folks squandered that.

As for Surrender? Bush did that the moment he invaded without sufficient forces, and he did that once again everytime he said everything was fine when it wasn’t. He wasn’t willing to sacrifice political face to get the right things done. How courageous can you claim yourselves to be if you’re so worried about criticism from the left that you fail to take care of business? How bold and strong is your support for this war if you’re unwilling to actually do what it takes to win? Right now, you don’t have enough soldiers to complete the mission. Offer a draft and take the political hit if it’s so important, if it’s such an existential battle. F*** our political opposition, if it’s so damn important!

If you’re more scared of giving political openings to us than losing a war, then you really have no room to talk to us about sacrifice, much less the ultimate sacrifices your require of soldiers fighting the failure of a war your party’s cowardice has inflicted on us.

Those graphs are based on US government statistics.

David,
Those graphs, based on US government statistics, count “terrorist” deaths at the hands of Americans. They do not attempt to count the number of violent deaths of Iraqis as a whole. Most of our troops die because of IEDs. Most Iraqis die of gunshot wounds. That graph does not count the “sectarian violence,” the conflicts between Shias and Sunnis, Sunnis and Kurds, various factions and ethnic groups, nor do they account for violent crime, which is rampant.

Face it, David. The number of Iraqi deaths is a vital metric. Either the Bush administration classifies it, or intentionally refuses to make the assessment. In any case, David, the administration is misleading you. It is lying to you. Again.

David Huntwork-
The reason casualties get such attention in the media is simple: these casualties were never supposed to happen. End of major combat operations. Ring a bell for you? Landing on an aircraft carrier, President walks out of the plane dressed as a pilot, makes a speech with a huge “Mission Accomplished” Banner…

That was supposed to be that, right? It should have been like that, in fact. Iraq should have remained an occupied territory for a while, and the Presidents plans for that point were to start the withdrawal in August of ‘03.

That same time next year, we would have a country practically in open revolt. Year after that, you would be edging towards civil war, a year later, edgings over- the place is in civil war, or worse than it according to the Intelligence Community.

And all along, your people have said, “victory is around the corner.” One indication of such a victory would be a return to peace in the country, fall in the violent deaths of both Iraqis and our own people.

That’s not really happened. Americans are dying at a rate of over a hundred of month, and our strategies are not meeting the goals offered in late Winter, early spring. The surge, like a number of offensives and defensives so far has been underwhelming in its results.

Defense and warfare are about more than tough talk and appeals to persistence in the service of victory. Such talk has not improved our situation in the Middle East. On almost every front, the trend has been regressive. Taliban’s coming back in Afghanistan. We’re stuck with a war in Iraq that’s doing wonders for the recruitment, training and funding of terrorism worldwide, and in Palestine, our laissez faire attitude towards the Israeli right’s get-tough attitude has done much to benefit Hamas.

Call me old-fashioned, but I think results matter more than rhetoric and incessant second-guessing of what our actions will do to embolden the enemy. We should be open to the means that work and are known to work, rather than artificially restricting our options to just those that fit an ideological bias.

The real question is what kind of a difference have we made, and for what benefit? If we can’t answer those questions without rhetorical gymnastics, we should recognize the policy is failing and change.

“One indication of such a victory would be a return to peace in the country, fall in the violent deaths of both Iraqis and our own people.”
Posted by: Stephen Daugherty at June 15, 2007 11:05 PM

Using that analogy then, Stephen, you admit that Bush has won a great victory at home; no deaths of civilains in America and a return to peace on our shores. Which would you rather have Stephen, 3500 soldiers killed in Iraq in four years, (which was the duty that they willfully volunteered for by the way), or another couple thousand civilians killed by terrorists, as in the 9/11 catastrophy, by Bush adopting the “do nothing” strategy of the previous Administration?

“Defense and warfare are about more than tough talk and appeals to persistence in the service of victory. Such talk has not improved our situation in the Middle East. On almost every front, the trend has been regressive.”

Are you talking about the Bush Administration or the previous Clinton Administration here? Seems tough talk is all we got from Clinton, and the Middle East situation sure took a downturn while he was President, now didn’t it? Just who do you think inspired the terrorists to continue their more and more aggressive patterns of attack on Americans abroad and on U.S. soil which led to 9/11? Your Democrats are the ones who simply wish to go back to tough talk policies. In the meantime, while their “dancing with Syria and Iran”, they’ll be disbanding Guantanamo. ending funding for terrorist surveillance at home and abroad, gutting the Dept. of Homeland Security, and criticizing anyone who thinks that an overwhelmingly strong Department of Defense is our nation’s best offense. It is quite a sham when the Democrat’s entire agenda of defending this country is contingent upon the cutting off of funding for its Defense Dept. operations. What an ingenious plan, (supported by nearly every Democratic Presidential candidate. You want a strong Defense Dept., cut their funding! Absolutely brilliant!

JD

JD-
We had eight years between the 1993 WTC Bombing, and 9/11. It’s been a little less than six years since 9/11.

If Iraq is preventing terrorist murders here, it’s only because it’s giving them their fill over their, letting them kill Americans with a homefield advantage, with the bonus of using Iraq to increase their funding, their recruiting, and the acceptance of their beliefs.

That’s not what I call winning. Winning would have been denying Iraq to al-Qaeda altogther, and failing that, kicking their asses out before their terrorism destabilized the country into ethnic strife. Winning would be seeing HAMAS’s influence wane, made irrelevant by a successful peace process. Winning would be reducing Iran’s influence in the region, and the influence of the hardliners in the government, not increasing it.

I’m not saying you’re not winning because I’m afraid of these people. I’m saying it because if you look at where we were in 2001 and where we are now, things are now worse. If you don’t measure winning and losing by real world results, what can you measure them by?

If you want to talk about tough-talk policies, Bush’s will give you plenty to talk about.

He’s talked tough about Iraq from the start. Haven’t won yet.

Talked tough about the Palestinian territories. Now worse people are in charge than before.

Talked tough about eliminating Iraq as a terrorist haven, managed to let what wasn’t one become one.

Talked about how the surge would turn things around, how we wouldn’t allow any more backsliding. The only thing the surge is doing is getting more Americans killed, and its more than two-thirds behind schedule

He talked tough to North Korea, ridiculing the past approach to them. Now he’s employing that very approach.

As for your list of things we will do, I can only shake my head at it. We would like to pretend that we can do what we want without involving Syria and Iran in negotiations. That, though, is highly unlikely, just from a geographical standpoint.

The prison at Guantanamo is boondoggle and an embarrassment. Probably seemed cool at the time, but you even have Colin Powell saying he would shut it down tomorrow.

Terrorist surveillance will go on under Democrats. Nothing more needs to be said about that until you come up with some actual evidence that what you said even comes close to a mainstream Democratic sentiment.

The Homeland Security Department is joke right now, an Alphabet soup recipe cobbled together in haste from existing agencies. Katrina demonstrated it’s weakness in full bureaucratic splendor. All that said, the place doesn’t need a gutting, it needs an Extreme Makeover.

As for an overwhelmingly strong Defense Department? We’re sure funding the hell out of it. But are we winning? The place is badly in need of it’s own reorganization and repurposing. We are suffering the consequences of not heeding Eisenhower’s words about a Military-Industrial complex, where the priorities and profits of defense contractors lead, rather than fall in line with the priorities of our defense.

Our soldiers are suffering because we’re wasting billions of dollars on systems useful only for fighting the wars of the past, while we spend far less on the unglamourous, but more and more crucial human element. We got to start doing better than that. As long as every defense contract is considered in sacred cow terms as crucial to our defense, we will not do the prioritization necessary to support the kind of wars we’ll need to fight in this new century.

Besides, how long can we sustain our level of spending? How does making our defense budget unsustainable help in our defense. Throwing money at problems is not necessarily the answer.

JD,

Iraq is a bloody massacre when we have only lost 3500 troops in four years of fighting

Of occupying Iraq, not fighting.
As shown by those graphics, the US deaths at combat are low in percentage. Meanwhile, the “ennemies” are fighting, no doubt.

US soldiers are not fighting in Iraq since 4 years. They’re occupying it, trying hopelessly to rebuild it to its pre-war state. At least. Since 4 years.

4 years. And still no free-iraq-operation-look-WMDs-there! victory in sight.

And the positive is that *ONLY* ~3500 americans died, along several thousand of iraquis, civilians included.

Your positive point is “it could have been FAR worst!” ?

Woa.
Now that’s a point.

As the author of the terrorist Death Watch, and the source for Jules’ information about the press conference, I’d like to make a few points.

I have consolidated all the related graphs and info at:

http://northshorejournal.org/index.php/losses-in-iraq/

You will find a link there to several U.N. definitions of terrorism. The Sunni thugs meets those definitions. And, please take some time to study the events in Iraq a little better. U.S. troops are not the primary targets for IED. For every American killed, there are a dozen Iraqis.

Someone brings up that old WMD canard. We’ve found over 500 weapons so far, and all of the reports on WMD, the UN and our reports, all state quite clearly that Saddam was engaged in an active program of hiding research, producing banned systems and purchasing banned equipment. You must recall that all Saddam had to do to remain in power was to account for the missing materials and allow the UN inspectors freedom of movement to verify the information.

The Lancet studies have been thoroughly debunked. As just one example, the second study reported that 95% of the deaths they were told about had death certificates. Rather than a WAG about civilian deaths, why not just inspect the existing death certificates?

I would also point out that for 600,000 civilians to have died, something like 2 million would have been wounded. In other words, over ten percent of the population of Iraq killed and wounded. Just exactly where did they all go?

Removing Saddam was the morally correct thing to do. We had every legal right to do so, based on his many, many violations of the orignal ceasefire agreement. We now have a nation, Iraq, that has held 3 nationwide votes with huge turnouts, has a functioning army and police force that outnumbers 2:1 the non Iraqi troops in country, and that has local and regional governments in operation.

For the history impaired, the United States changed its form of government twice within ten years of declaring independence. It suffered at least two rebellions, had its capital captured by enemy troops twice, had two major and several minor wars, had tens of thousands of citizens flee the country because they feared for their lives and property at the hands of free Americans, all in the first 38 years of independence. Our beginning was pretty rough. All in all, I think the Iraqis are doing ok so far.

Chuck,

Liberals love to throw this 600,000 figure out there every time the discussion comes up about Iraq. But, that figure has been around for a long time now. You would think that it would be revised to at least 700,000 or 800,000 by now since the war is getting so much worse according to Harry Reid and the rest of the Democratic Senators.
The breakdown of this is that even at 600,000, the Iraqi people would have to lose 410 civilian Iraqis “every day” to amass these figures in four years of fighting. When you consider and delete the relative calm for months after the initial invasion that daily figure would have to climb even higher. It is impossible for the insurgents to have killed that many Iraqis on a daily basis with IEDs since our initial thrust was over in a very short period and with the purposeful intent of sparing Iraqi civilians. That figure would mean that the Iraqi people are dying at 400 or more to only two Americans daily in Iraq. I agree that such figures (ruled as death caused by war) are just absurd.

JD

What is the point of this post?

Do you not remember the quote of Ho Chi Minh?

“If we lose ten, or a hundred, for every one American, we will win.”

DO you really think that ANYONE in Iraq who oppose our occupation are counting the numbers? Do you imagine they care?

How ‘bout Bin Laden? Do you think HE is keeping track of casualties?

The mere fact that you ARE is sufficient indication that those opposed to us ae winning. They are winning because we are counting what and who we are losing. Life MATTERS to us, so those for whom the level of desparation so great that life is much cheaper…ARE WINNING!

You post is only a demonstration of the TRUTH of that. Nothing more.