Posted on 12/09/2006 12:31:19 AM PST by JohnHuang2
When pressed for details on how to conduct the War all they need do is loudly harrumph and boldly intone, "implement the ISG Plan, 100%, ASAP"!
They don't need any ideas of their own. In fact, other than "quit", they have no ideas. But the lengthy platitudes and pretend solutions listed by the buffoons at the ISG will do perfectly to fill the dead air and make them look "smart" - especially as the MSM thinks it is the greatest plan since the 9/11 Commission disaster!
In the meantime, those wanting to proffer actual solutions on winning the War will be voices crying in the wilderness. And if/when we fail, they will sanctimoniously scream and point out it is "Bush's Fault", as usual.
Quite honestly, I don't think can win with these people constantly bashing holes in the boat on our side. We can't bail and plug them fast enough. Something is going to have to give if we are to prevail!
Gritty. The MSM carefully take note of every drop of American blood that is spilled and express doubts about American victory. It attracts young Muslim fanatics like honey draws flies.
Iraq is like a "roach motel." The roaches are attracted by the scented glue inside. They get stuck and they die. Terrorists are attracted by the scent of American blood. Thousands of Muslim radicals from all over the Middle East and Europe are being drawn to Iraq and they're being killed and captured by the thousands.
If we weren't in Iraq, those Muslim radicals would be coming to America and planning a thousand 9/11 attacks.
And thanks for the invite to a very thoughful and appreciated posting
(Also Hugh Hewitt's commentary was great.)
Hugh Hewitt is a war-mongering RINO.
ISG scathing reviews PING
"War, and warlike statecraft, is a hard business, and though this is supposed to be a report dominated by "realists," there is nothing realistic in failing to spell out the bloody deeds, grim probabilities and dismal consequences associated with even the best course of action. Indeed, some parts of the report read as sheer fantasy -- Recommendation 15, for example, which provides that part of the American deal with Syria should include the latter's full cooperation in investigating the Hariri assassination, verifiable cessation of Syrian aid to Hezbollah, and its support for persuading Hamas to recognize Israel."
Another commentator spoke disdainfully of bringing in the israeli-palestinian situation, as if we could untie the gordian knot of Iraq by solving the rubik's cube of the israeli-palestinian conflict.
Definitely a lack of ralism from the ISG. There are no easy answers here, but a wrong answer, easy or hard, wont help.
Thank God for the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the National Security Counsel who have a different view of things or the whole world would be run on the concept of mega dollars for ex-politicians and old rich farts.
The ISG's focus is an easy quick fix, not a lasting solution.
Concur. But I bet you've missed several of the most valid comparisons, several of which you probably would not care for one bit.
Are you familiar with the Islamist terrorist attack known as the Broken Hill massacre? This war has been going on for quite some time, and the enemy knows it.
Some folks could set it a little more precisely: 05 June 1968, others date it to the 1964 formation by the Arab League of the PLO, or to then US SecState Dean Rusk's 30 March 1965 policy letter response to it. Also pivotal was Nassar's speech to the United Arab Republic National Assembly March 26, 1964:
Israel and the imperialism around us, which confront us, are two separate things. There have been attempts to separate them, in order to break up the problems and present them in an imaginary light as if the problem of Israel is the problem of the refugees, by the solution of which the problem of Palestine will also be solved and no residue of the problem will remain. The danger of Israel lies in the very existence of Israel as it is in the present and in what she represents.
You could also set the origins as having their roots in the Arab defeat in the June 1967 *Six Days* War, or in the publication/availability of Egyptian Muslum Brotherhood dissident and Quranic scholar Sayyid Qutb'b Milestones along the Road, which laid out a plan to remake government and society entirely along what Qutb believes to be Koranic grounds; essentially the Muslum Mein Kampf.
But there were many similar incidents prior to the Pearl Harbor raid. Japanese aircraft sank the gunboat USS Panay im Chinese waters in 1938; and two US destroyers were torpedoed by German U-Boats in October and November 1941. The second one, USS Reuben James, sank with substantial loss of life.
And also: the Treaty of Nonaggression between Germany and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics between the German Third Reich and the Soviet Union, signed in Moscow on August 23, 1939. Followed by the Soviet Union's invasion of Finland with a force of a million men, November 1939, reinforced to a million and a half. Four months later, the half-million survivors returned home with a new appreciation of the capabilities of Finnish troops in the defensive role.
The followup was the Munich Agreement Münchner Abkommen 29 September 1939:
My good friends, for the second time in our history, a British Prime Minister has returned from Germany bringing peace with honour. I believe it is peace for our time. --Arthur Neville Chamberlain
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