"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.
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.
And that is why you are a defeatist who is giving an aid and comfort to the enemy. When a terrorist read your statement he will feel comforted and aided and want to fight more, kill more, and destroy more because he knows that people like you do not have the nerve to fight. As I said before, may defeatists hide under the cover of “Macho Talk” but in reality they do not have the guts for a long war and they want to cut and run. Even in your post you said that “let the Iraqis do the nasty fight” because you are not willing to fight, as I said before we are in Iraq not just for the Iraqis, we are mainly there for ourselves so we can destroy terrorism and protect our freedom and our way of life.
Some may be stuck on stupid, but my little tentative hypothesis is that you are stuck on steriods.