The war on terror, so far…
Aug.14, 2007 in
Politics
I don’t want to get too political on this blog, but I thought this article was too good to pass up:
Just sayin’…
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August 14th, 2007 at 3:43 pm
Reads like it was written by an out of work 18 year old. Name calling and Comedy central level analysis. Yawn.
Just sayin’.
August 14th, 2007 at 4:14 pm
Yeah, it should be morbidly humorless like Bill O’Reilly!!! ;-)
But seriously, folks…did you disagree with any of his points?
August 14th, 2007 at 5:33 pm
I wouldn’t know – I don’t watch O’Reilly. Anyway, I disagree with almost everything he wrote.
The only “war” we’re losing is the war for minds in the media. The heart that drives the anti-war movment isn’t a disagreement with our strategy. It’s politics. Democrats opposing Republicans.
Everything else is distraction, and the writer has either fallen for it, or is participating knowingly.
I especially love how he pretends to insult the reader as complicit slackers who don’t care enough to do something about “Chimpy Bushitler.” Readers of this website are hardly likely to be of the pro-war demographic.
August 15th, 2007 at 8:38 am
Democrats vs Republicans – that’s demonstrably untrue. Polls show that support for the war hovers somewhere in the 30% range, and while Republicans generally support the war more than Democrats do, there are plenty that don’t. This isn’t mere politics any more.
http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/07/23/poll-american-support-for-war-inches-up/
Iraqis themselves aren’t very optimistic, and I’d consider their opinion even more important.
http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/iraq/2007-03-18-poll-cover_N.htm
“Everything else is distraction”? Wow. After half-heartedly invading Afghanistan, where our true and immediate enemy resided, and failing (to this day) to capture the mastermind behind the 9/11 attacks, you think it was a good tactic to invade Iraq, a country that, while run under a deplorable dictatorship, presented no imminent threat to the US? Is it just mere distraction that I think it was not a good strategy to pursue?
The O’Reilly crowd says, “Do you want us to win in Iraq?” To which I respond: “Win what?”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d0nD_iNPalY
I’m sure remember that back in the day, I supported the invasion of Iraq. I had reservations; I thought that tactically, we should focus more on securing Afghanistan and, if we were going to invade more countries, we could choose better targets than Iraq. But what the hell – we were going to dispose of a horrible dictator, always a good thing. And, he had WMDs that presented an imminent threat. You supported it too, and we argued together against others on the Seahawks newsgroup.
Boy, were we ever wrong. Why can’t you admit that? It was great that we deposed Saddam Hussein, sure. The world is a better place without him, generally speaking. But it’s been a mess ever since! There were no WMDs. There is no defined mission. If you still support the war, tell me: what is the mission? What would constitute “victory”? How do we “win”? Define it for me, because I can’t see what it is.
I liked this article precisely because it was written with a sense of humor. I’m tired of deadly serious “news”. But he makes good points throughout: the war’s objective was too broadly defined, we have not finished what we started, and the administration was too eager to believe whatever it wanted, regardless of the evidence.
I am not “anti-war”. I support fighting terrorism. But that makes me all the angrier that we’ve gone about the war the way that we have, and it should make you angry too, because if the objective is to fight terrorism and we both support that, we’ve done an abysmally poor job of it. The Taliban is resurging in Afghanistan, a condition I find inexcusable. We have made little progress in eliminating Al Qaeda. And worst of all, we still have not captured Osama bin Laden, our #1 target. This is a job I fully support, and it’s been a job poorly done. Bad tactics, bad strategy, bad execution. What the hell are we doing in Iraq? What a horrible distraction that’s turned out to be.
Lastly, his point that the problem is partly us is correct. Support for the war is low, but still somewhere in the 30% range. So, millions of Americans still think Bush is doing the right thing in Iraq, which I think is sad, since he so clearly is not. Yeah, we’re stuck there now, that’s true. Just plain pulling out isn’t a very good option. But that’s the problem – there are no good options. And in the meantime, our true enemy is not being depleted or harmed at all, and we’ve made no progress towards defeating them.
This isn’t just Democrats versus Republicans. For example, I’m neither, so that certainly isn’t the case with me. And, I support military action against terrorism. I think we should rededicate ourselves to conquering Afghanistan once and for all, completely eliminating the Taliban and making THAT the stronghold of democracy in the Middle East. Then, move on to targets that are actual hotbeds of terrorist activity – Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Libya, and others. Make them comply with driving out terrorists, or face our wrath. But that’s all rendered impossible by our commitment in Iraq, a country that had few if any ties to terrorism pre-invasion. And we’re stuck.
What’s to like about any of that?
August 15th, 2007 at 2:43 pm
I’ll get to this in a bit when I have time. Don’t what you to think that I’m ignoring it.
August 15th, 2007 at 2:48 pm
Since you requested it on the newsgroup (and I finally succumbed), I didn’t figure you would. ;) Take your time, I’m patient (and I wrote more than I thought I would).
August 17th, 2007 at 1:22 pm
I care little for the results of polls. Polls had Kerry winning the last election handily. Public opinion is about as easily swayed as the stock market, and with the media has been working hard to direct public opinion for a long, long time. You and I could argue about the purpose behind this activity, but the fact remains that every day you get largely one side of the news. On television, newspapers, and in magazines. Every single American casualty is detailed and lamented. Every single roadside bomb gets frontpage mention on CNN.com. There is plenty of good going on in Afghanistan and Iraq, but it gets a fraction of the coverage that the bad gets.
I call it the “Daily Drip.” Over time, is it any wonder opinion polls are where they are?
When I say “It’s all political”, consider the source of the reporting. Consider the bent of the editorials. It almost doesn’t matter what the President stands for, opposition is ready to counter.
It happens in the NYTimes. It happens in our humor on Comedy Central. It happens in cartoons.
The Anti-War crowd is really the Anti-Bush crowd, and always has been.
“Everything else is distraction”? Wow. After half-heartedly invading Afghanistan, where our true and immediate enemy resided,”
I disagree that we “halfheartedly” invaded Afghanistan. The campaign was brilliantly executed, and the Taliban have been driven from power.
“and failing (to this day) to capture the mastermind behind the 9/11 attacks”
I don’t know if Bin Laden is hiding in a cave or a bloody paste underneath a pile of rocks right now, but the War on Terror is not a War on One Guy. It never was. It wouldn’t have ended if he died on the very first night of bombing, and it won’t end if he’s captured tomorrow. This is another part of the article I disagree with. The author goes to great lengths to compare the WOT to other historical wars between states, when in fact it’s nothing like that. It’s a war of ideology, and one that will take great fortitude to win. We’ve incurred 3-4 thousand military KIAs, and I’m not going to minimize that. But I do want to say that the way the media behaves over every single KIA leads me to believe that we would never have won WWII given the situation as it now stands. There were a score of individual days that were many times more brutal that what we’ve sustained over the last 4 years.
“you think it was a good tactic to invade Iraq, a country that, while run under a deplorable dictatorship, presented no imminent threat to the US?”
I thought the argument for attacking them was sound. We believed they had WMDs, and wanted to take them out BEFORE they presented an imminent threat. I also believed that the strategy to establish a friendly democracy in the middle east was the one way to defeat this ideology.
I knew it was going to be tough.
I knew that it was a non-traditional conflict.
What I didn’t count on was the media’s effectiveness in eroding support at home.
“And, he had WMDs that presented an imminent threat. ”
Again, the idea was to attack BEFORE the threat was imminent. The President said specifically that the only final proof would come in the form of a “mushroom cloud”.
“Boy, were we ever wrong. Why can’t you admit that? ”
Certainly, it turned out that he didn’t have the WMDs that the world thought he had.
“But it’s been a mess ever since! ”
Not sure what you were expecting. A clean conflict of some sort? I’m sick to death of the short attention span/instant success demands of the left, but I’m not surprised.
“There were no WMDs.”
I think we’ve established that. That doesn’t invalidate it as a reason. It was a legit concern at the time.
“There is no defined mission.”
Disagree. The mission was to depose Saddam, recover the WMDs, establish a free, democratic Iraq.
“I liked this article precisely because it was written with a sense of humor. I’m tired of deadly serious “news”. But he makes good points throughout: the war’s objective was too broadly defined, we have not finished what we started, and the administration was too eager to believe whatever it wanted, regardless of the evidence.”
Here’s where I have a problem with the strategy of the President: Public Relations. He has demonstrated vision and courage. He was willing to head down a tough road when the easy way out would’ve been to lob a few rockets and call it a day. Instead, he opted to attempt to rebuild the middle-east forever. Courageous. Tough. Visionary. And wide open to political criticism.
The President isn’t a great public speaker, but there are plenty of people who are. The public relations program for this war has been pathetic. There has been zero in the way of effective counter for the “daily drip” of bad news. We’re kicking Al Qaeda’s ass every day, but the media is kicking ours every bit as severely. Militarily, the bad guys have no chance, but when the tide of public opinion turns, we lose.
“The Taliban is resurging in Afghanistan, a condition I find inexcusable.”
This “resurgence” is overblown nonsense. Every now and then a handful of Taliban kidnap a cameraman or set a roadside bomb. We hear about those. We don’t hear about the times that the desperate idiots try frontal assaults on our bases and get wiped out.
“We have made little progress in eliminating Al Qaeda.”
I don’t know where you get that. That’s impossible to know. I do know we’ve killed many thousands of Al Qaeda members in Iraq and Afghanistan.
And worst of all, we still have not captured Osama bin Laden, our #1 target.
Excuse me for “Laughing out Loud”. Osama bin Laden is an important figure for a variety of reasons, but he’s not the be-all-end-all of this war.
“This is a job I fully support, and it’s been a job poorly done. Bad tactics, bad strategy, bad execution. What the hell are we doing in Iraq? What a horrible distraction that’s turned out to be.”
I’ve defined the mission. A democracy is an example. It’s also everything that Al Qaeda hates. That’s why they’re fighting us there, and that’s why we’re killing them there.
“This isn’t just Democrats versus Republicans. For example, I’m neither, so that certainly isn’t the case with me. And, I support military action against terrorism. I think we should rededicate ourselves to conquering Afghanistan once and for all, completely eliminating the Taliban and making THAT the stronghold of democracy in the Middle East. Then, move on to targets that are actual hotbeds of terrorist activity – Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Libya, and others. Make them comply with driving out terrorists, or face our wrath. But that’s all rendered impossible by our commitment in Iraq, a country that had few if any ties to terrorism pre-invasion. And we’re stuck.
What’s to like about any of that?”
I find it hard to believe you… You think Iraq was a waste of time, but you’d support taking on Syria? Libya, as a result of the move into Iraq, has moderated it’s behavior and destroyed it’s WMD program…that’s probably the worst possible example you could name.