Defeatists On Free Republic Who Are Giving Aid and Comfort to the Enemy

He has admitted to more than the bring them on statement. The reason I chose that one is it was early in the WOT effort.

I take no pride in what has happened. But I have grown tired of the anything critical, no matter how factual, causes one to be trashed and accused of treason or worse. It's sad and sickening.

We defeated Saddam and his army but we were left to fight AL Qaeda and their allies as well as Iran, Syria and their allies in Iraq. Defeating Saddam regime was the first step in defeating terrorism in the Middle East and Iraq became the magnet for all the terrorists to come from all over the world to fight us and for us to kill them. Once we defeat them in Iraq, it is over for them for many decades.

Regarding our brave heros there is no question. My reservation is that we are appeasing the current Iraqi government that apparently has significant ties elsewhere. When was the use of significant air power used in this war? Air power can certainly bring devastation to the enemy. As I said before, we are talking about mud huts that is why when an earthquake hits there is much destruction and death.

I think the war was a mistake from the start. I think the way that the adminstration has run the war has been poor. I think the way that the adminstration has handled the public relations aspect of the war has been poor.

Does this make me a defeatist? Or does it make me a pragmatist.

I have always felt that if you decided to go to war, you should prosecute the war to a well defined conclusion.

These guys (the adminstration) are spineless, neutered, and gutless.

The soliders and marines fighting the war are getting screwed, and they are the ones sufferring.

We cannot run away--we have to win. I dont think the people in washington have the stomach to make that happen.

I cannot just drink the koolaid and hope so hard that we end up winning.

Inevitable? Certainly not. But I do think things are going to have to get worse before they get better. It will take two more major attacks on American soil to put this country on the war footing that we should have been on for five years now.

"Oh you are a defeatist and the terrorists love your defeatist attitude when you say that we are going to lose the war. You are the type of defeatists who hide their defeatist attitude under the 'Macho Talk' stuff but at the end all what they say is "that we are losing, we are going to lose, etc...". You are one of them."

Hogwash.
If we do not change strategy and tactics, we ARE going to lose the war. We are already losing the war. It isn't because we HAVE to lose the war, it is because we have leadership that is stuck on stupid. Folks screamed just like you did at anybody who criticized Rumsfeld and his strategy, now he's gone and the PRESIDENT has come out and said what the sensible critics (the ones, like me, who really want to WIN this damned thing because the consequences of defeat are going to be disastrous) said about Rumsfeld.
Bush's "surge" is a joke. What surge? 20,000 troops? We've had more than that in Iraq already. Didn't change the picture. We went in with too few, and we're still pretending we can pacify that country with a tinker. If we're going to do it "surge" then it needs to be about 100,000 troops, MINIMUM, just like the initial invasion needed to be a half-million troops, just like the old bulls in the Pentagon said. Rumsfeld got his way. And was fired, in the end, because he was wrong from the beginning. Bush has now said so. But now we're so politically constrained that we're timid...sending in a paltry 20,000.

And the ONE thing we COULD do to actually WIN: TAKE SIDES?
Our leadership STILL rules it out of the question.

You say I'm a defeatist, and are ready to hang the incompetence of this Administration in its bungled warfighting on me and people like me who have called a spade a spade from the beginning. Newsflash: I didn't plant the IEDs that have blown our strategy to hell. The enemy did. And if we had done it the way folks like me have been saying SINCE DAY ONE, we WOULD HAVE WON a long time ago.

We ARE losing, and we ARE going to lose, if we don't not get unstuck from stupid. That means taking sides in the war. The President says no.

It's the Maginot Mindset. We've chosen the strategy. It's idiotic. It's buffoonish. But anybody who won't say "We will WIN!" using it is the problem?

You make me laugh.

I am not the problem.
Even though you're wrong on the war, you're not the problem.
Bush is the problem.
He's stubborn - which is not so bad.
He was very impressed with Rumsfeld, which was understandable.
But now that he sees Rumsfeld was wrong, and now that he even admits the strategy didn't work out, he STILL rules off limits the ONLY THING that will WIN the damned war.

We have to take sides and pick the winners, and support them to the hilt. It will be bloody and nasty - for THEM - but we will come out with victors in the North and the South, and they'll be dependent on us for a long, long time.
That's victory.

This surge?
It'll spend a lot of money, march troops up and down, get a lot of people shot, and the bad guys, especially the ones we really need to watch: the pro-Iranian Shi'ite factions, will just hunker down and wait.
They know American political will won't last.
And they're RIGHT too. It won't. It already collapsed in November. It ain't getting better.

The bad hands we've dealt ourselves are done. Recrimination is not the way to win now.
But hanging responsibility for the defeat on the people who have been giving you good and straight advice all along?
That's kool-aid drinking lalaland idiocy.

So, you call me a defeatist all you like.
I'm not buying it.
I was right then: we needed to declare war and send in a lot more troops and subjugate the Sunnis from the get go.
Water under the bridge.
And I am right NOW: if we want to win, we have the take the Kurdish and Arabist Shi'ite (government) side in the civil war, and arm them to annhilate their foes. What will emerge will be a pair of allies who will survive our departure.

What YOU are suggesting: rallying behind the incompetent President's incompetent strategy YET AGAIN - THAT is the Maginot Mindset. It's what cost France her life in 1940.

You would've been one of those generals court martialling Billy Mitchell for insisting that airplanes could blow navies out of the water, and changing the terms of a test to prove it. He proved it. He showed the fleet what was going to happen at Pearl Harbor. They court martialled him for insubordination. Presumably, if I follow your logic, had Billy Mitchell just shut up and been cooperative, the Japanese would have lost at Pearl Harbor, because then their planes couldn't have sunk our ships.

Buffoonery.

If we don't take sides in the civil war, we will lose the war in Iraq. If we do, we won't. It's as simple as that.
The PRESIDENT has ruled out taking sides.
Therefore, no amount of happy-camper rah-rah claptrap from our side can save our bacon. The Maginot Line will not save France no matter how many of our own side we shout down for saying so. Even if we all say we will win, we will still lose unless we stop being bone stupid and do what we need to do to win.

It is simple: TAKE SIDES IN THE WAR. And let the IRAQIS do the nasty part, and win. That's it, that's all.

20,000 extra troops?
It will accomplish nothing substantial. Didn't before. Won't now. Playing with toy soldiers in the sandbox gets the soldiers killed, doesn't beat the sand fleas.

I'm not your enemy for saying so.
And there's nothing "macho" about this talk.
It's just the way it is.

You may now cycle the rudder, if you wish, and call me defeatist again. Then I will repeat the way it is a third time. And a fourth, and a tenth, until everybody else stops reading.

If you want to win this war, America has to take the side of the Kurds and the Iraqi Arabist Shi'a. Anything else, we're toast.
That's not defeatism. I've told you how to win.
Clinging to the idiot's game strategy we're pursuing now? THAT is defeatism.
It's Burnsides ordering yet another charge into the guns at Fredericksburg.

I'm no defeatist.
Your way will end in our defeat.
Mine will end in our victory.
The President agrees with you.
So we're SUNK unless he gets smart and does it the right way.

My point has been the things the President has admitted to were things that I and many others were trashed and grated over the coals over. We were told they were not true, that we didn't support the President, while in turn not supporting the troops and on and on and on and on.

Well if they weren't true, then why did the CiC admit they were?

As far as the Bring it On statement....so what? How is that statement continueing to be relevant to today or in the conducting of the WOT in general? Bush was a young president who'd got through hell with not only the 2000 election but also obstruction from the stinkin' RATS every way from Sunday to nearly all his initial cabinet member confirmations....to 9/11.

The President has admitted this statement did not help the situation. That's why it's important. Instead of making the enemy tremble in fear, it gave them a focal phrase to energize them.

Of course at first, we were then admonished that that was good, because it was bringing out those who needed to be destroyed any how. Now it appears that it had nearly cost us and the new Iraqi government civil control of many key areas. But the new position is the CiC has been brave enough to own up to his mistakes.

I guess my question is why the sudden turn of heart? The facts were the facts 6 months ago, 1 year ago or 2 years ago.

Fellow Free Republic members, we are fighting the most important war since WW II.

Too bad we're not fighting the war as if it was the most important war since WWII. Since WWII we have forgotten how to fight a war and we no longer fight towards total victory but some sort of half-assed victory. And that doesn't work. We need a LOT more George S. Patton strategy in Iraq (and against jihadists everywhere) and a lot less George W. Bush stategery.

'Surge' plan put at risk by politics, general says
The Washington Times
14 January 2007

The military architect of the Iraq troop "surge" plan is criticizing the Bush administration, claiming the Pentagon is watering down the proposal for political reasons.
"You cannot try and do this piecemeal. We have to implement the whole package," retired Gen. John M. Keane told the Sunday Telegraph. The former Army vice chief of staff co-authored the "Choosing Victory" strategy paper, the main points of which were adopted by President Bush for his Iraq war plan.
Gen. Keane expressed his alarm after Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates testified on Capitol Hill that the troop buildup was expected to last "a matter of months" -- rather than the 18 months proposed by Gen. Keane.
Mr. Gates also said the full deployment of 21,500 additional troops, announced by Mr. Bush last week, might not be implemented. He suggested that only two or three of the five brigades proposed for Baghdad could be deployed initially, while the rest are held in reserve.
"That makes no military sense, although it might seem to make political sense," Gen. Keane said. President Bush has been criticized in the past for not listening to the advice of his top generals.
"We need all five brigades in Baghdad as soon as possible. It will take three to four months to clear neighborhoods of death squads and insurgents, and at least the rest of the year to establish proper security for the population," Gen. Keane said. "If you only wanted to stage a clearance operation, you could do that in a few months. But if we left then, the militia would just return as they have in the past."

Good morning.
"Only the fool hardy will redouble their efforts and expect a different result."

I don't think I've heard W say anything about the war being lost. The Left and some on the Right say it is, in different ways and for different reasons.

Your last sentence doesn't make sense in the context of your argument. You use the way we are adapting to circumstances, redoubling our efforts, to support your position, then say that it is foolish to expect victory as a result.

jveritas, you have said it wonderfully. Too many Americans do not know we at war. They have no idea of the horror that will be leveled at this country, should we pull out of Iraq. The enemy within will step out and do damage on this country and it's citizens we cannot fathom. I'm glad we have people such as yourself, Jim Rob, Dog, The Chair and many more who know so much more than a lot of us. Do not give up, please continue to keep us informed.

MoveOn.org got fined too! That still doesn't make it right. This is a curtailment of freedom of speech. The laws should never have existed in the first place. This is just a liberal plot to control everything and take away rights.

You use the way we are adapting to circumstances, redoubling our efforts,

Seems like you agree. "Redoubling your efforts" and "adapting to circumstances" are not the same thing. "Redoubling your efforts" generally means working twice as hard doing the same thing. Adapting to circumstances - doing something different - is exactly what I am advocating - we need to be more agressive in prosecuting the WOT in Iraq.

Nowhere in my comments will you find an explicit or implied meaning of "lost" or "losing", you inferred that all on your own because you were overly excited about labeling someone with a different viewpoint as a defeatist.

You've covered lots of ground. Good rant.

Your thoughts on a draft?

Briefly, I believe we should have mobilized manpower and industry in Sept 01. Not doing so told the world we were willing to go to a number of gunfights with switchblades and on the cheap.

Briefly, I believe we should have mobilized manpower and industry in Sept 01. Not doing so told the world we were willing to go to a number of gunfights with switchblades and on the cheap.

Precisely!

BRAVO!

Faith, because the democrats were afraid to defend us against treasoness acts such as those done by Fonda, J. Kerry, ellsberg and a multitude of others of that era, we are, now, not able to convict anyone today for leaking classifoed information, which is detromental to our troops, to the NY Times and their ilk.

Yes, you are right, if we back out of this war, we will pay the same consequence as the Vietnamese and Cambodians did when killer kennedy and his cohorts pulled finances from VeitNam.

I shudder when I think of the level of arrogance and weakness our country voted into place this last election.

Since I know the Middle East very well because I was born an raised in Lebanon during 15 years of civil war and witnessed the horror of terrorism for many years I know exactly what will happen to islamic terrorism once they are defeated in Iraq. Arabs in general are cowards and they will stop fighting once you put enough military pressure on them. Once we defeat them in Iraq, they will continue make all the typical Arab rhetoric that they are victorious and that they won but in reality they will not dare to fight us again and for a very long period of time.

I absolutely agree!

I'll add that people who don't want to listen to others who understand the Middle Eastern mentality and dynamics should come up with their own ideas for victory, period.

Losing the war in Washington DC isn't an option. Only the RATS will want such an option.

I think most of us agree on that, so, why don't we start hearing some other ideas outlining a plan to WIN? By only criticizing the CIC doesn’t cut it in a time of war.

Look to Malasyia and the rural Philipines, the damage and killings that have been going on since, at least 20/25 years by the muslims. We can expect nothing less, should we give up in Iraq.

RE: Fight Iraq

Its mostly police work in Iraq.

Raid a mud hut, take weapons, and arrest the men.

And the Iraqi Army is being trained to take over.

Plus the culture, causes a lot of heartburn, the Arabs have trouble with Logic and the truth.

I wonder how many US troops have died because of the leftards and Democrats feeding them encouragement? Just keep going, more bombs, we will wear down the real enemy for you, the American people. Any guess? How many more will die for the same reason ...