Posted on 04/04/2006 3:27:12 PM PDT by jmc1969
The fatality figures in Iraq are perhaps telling a story, which would be that the war focuses progressively on internecine killings. The American death rate for March was 31 fatalities, a gruesome toll (one per day), yet the second lowest since the invasion was launched three years ago. Over approximately the same period, nearly 1,500 Iraqi civilians were killed, according to the American military, a significant increase over recent months.
One asks then: Is the furious resolve of the insurgents altering in focus? Has the enemy reckoned that the problem in hand is not Americans, who will be gone, roughly speaking, tomorrow, but Iraqis whose ethnic identities will remain the same when the grandchildren of both parties will be eyeing each other?
The rate of these killings reduces but is not concomitant with any reduction in U.S. strength. It is brought on by (a) the reduction in U.S. exposure, and (b) insurgent concentration on non-U.S. targets.
But ask then: Is this reduced exposure a part of the U.S. battle plan? We have not in recent months seen any hard U.S. assaults on hard Iraqi targets, in the class of Fallujah in the fall of 2004. Can we assume that such hard enemy nests aren't there, holding out? Or rather that the U.S. army command is less bent on smoking them out?
If there are (one speculates) 15 areas of Iraq in which the insurgents are embedded with special defensive ingenuity, the commanding general can elect to dispatch bombs and artillery, always with some care for collateral damage done to innocent civilians. But that approach, a platonic alternative to sending in a battalion with instructions to root out the offenders, means a diminished exposure of American soldiers to high-cost engagements.
To reason that this is happening is deductive: fewer casualties, fewer engagements. However, fewer engagements should presume an enemy diminished in size and potency. But to say that runs us into the corresponding figure, of 1,500 Iraqi civilian deaths. Somebody is killing those people, and the whole idea of the U.S. enterprise was to shield the Iraqi population not only from the depredations of Saddam Hussein, but also from successor killers. Manifestly this has not happened, if the killing proceeds at so high a rate.
I have myself concluded that our Iraqi mission has failed.
You stand corrected and should also be embarrassed, sir.
I'm afraid his judgment may be going the way Goldwater's did in HIS old age.
"What kind of know-nothing BS are you peddling?"
"know-nothing BS?"
Liberating FIFTY MILLION PEOPLE IS NOT A FAILURE!
now what kind of "know-nothing BS" are you peddling? LMAO
"embarrassed?"
the only person who should be embarrassed is Buckley! LMAO
Or chickenshititis
He's no idiot. I think he's tired.
"Heh -- good one, Tall."
simple minds are easily impressed.
now this was a better one.
"I voted for GWB who wore the uniform, served and did not disgrace his uniform by lying about those of us who did serve in Viet Nam."
He's done some good. National Review is a decent publication. But I don't consider him the conservative icon many do.
You might be right I see him as tired.
Gruesome? Bill Buckley use to be a wordsmith. Not anymore.
Hey Bill, you want gruesome. In the battle of Iwo Jima, over a 36 day period, 7,000 American military were killed and 19,000 wounded out of a force of 77,000. The Japs suffered 21,000 dead and a 1,000 captured, out of a force of 22,000. That's gruesome Bill.
If your aren't a liberal at 20 you are heartless.
If your aren't a conservative at 80 you are senile.
What was the death rate in country when Saddam was murdering over 1/2 million of his own?
Buckley was a WWII vet, then he reenlisted as a CIA agent during the Korean War.
For more than 50 years he was the leading agent of conservatism in America, founding the flagship publication for conservatives, The National Review
He even managed to get the finest conservative TV show ever created on PBS. During the sixties he was the only conservative media presence I'm aware of. I still subscribe to National Review.
I think I can survive one disagreement with such a figure every few decades.
The war in Iraq has gone on for a very long time, and still one can't drive from Baghdad to the airport without an armed guard. There's nothing to like about this war, nothing to like about the Wilsonian rhetoric the president now employs to justify it, and no reason to honestly believe that, once we leave, backward looking Iraqis won't simply put a match to the constitution and push the country into chaos.
Unlike Buckley, I haven't totally given up on this effort --- yet. But, if I ever did, I no longer try to persuade myself that the war, and all that's come with it, is truly in the best interests of the United States.
Mr. Buckley's analysis of the situation in Iraq is that of a clown. That is the bottom line. Regardless of his respected past.
Complete foolishness is what he is peddling to the point of absurdity.
"The war in Iraq has gone on for a very long time...."
The definition of a long war has changed in proportion to the attention span of many Americans over the years.
Who do you think the new Iraq is going to be hunting down with their agents in Syria, Iran, and elsewhere after the situation is stabilized. I will give you a hint it is not Americans and these people are the whole point of the War on Terror.
Iraq hates al-Qaeda far more then Americans do.
Agreed. See reply #15.
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