Posted on 06/22/2007 10:15:52 AM PDT by Chi-townChief
The vice presidency, John Nance Garner is alleged to have told his fellow Texan Lyndon Johnson, isn't worth a bucket of warm spit. A lame-duck presidency isn't worth much more. While George W. Bush was traveling through Europe on what should have looked like a triumphal journey, back home, Republican senators were burying his immigration reform bill and the secretary of defense was confessing that he could not reappoint Bush's handpicked chairman and vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Does Bush comprehend that the public and Congress are repudiating him? His jaunty swagger on the shore of the Baltic Sea does not look like a man with his back to the wall.
The appointment of new military leaders may represent a dying gasp of the Iraq war, though, as Navy Adm. Michael Mullen, Bush's choice as new chairman of the JCS, suggests it may be a gasp that goes on for 10 years. Neocon commentator David Brooks argued on PBS the other night that the new leadership will be able to sell a new strategy in September when it becomes evident that the "surge" of troops into battle has been less than a complete success. He described this newest of plans -- what others are calling Plan B -- as one that the next president would be able to support, hinting that the next president would have no choice but to accept it when he takes office.
Plan B will involve "a draw-down" of troops before next year's elections, the concentration of American forces in "forts" (a string of Fort Apaches?), and preparations for a "long war" like the one in Korea. Americans would no longer attempt to police Baghdad, and there would be fewer casualties. If Plan B is a "success," Bush can stumble out of office in a year and a half with another "mission accomplished" and the claim that he had won a victory in the "war on terror."
Plan B sounds like another cockamamie scheme cooked up by the neocons. The Democrats in Congress will tear it to shreds. Their presidential candidates will repudiate it. The public will be profoundly skeptical. There is no reason to believe that it would work any better than previous brilliant strategic schemes. Nor will it diminish the public demand that the United States get out of Iraq immediately.
A new president, even if he is a Republican, will find it very hard not to respond to such a demand. Indeed, the conceit that an unpopular -- and increasingly despised -- lame-duck president can control the decisions of his successor is the most arrogant assumption yet of an administration that has lived off arrogance.
There is also a moral issue. A war that was unjust at the beginning because it was based on deceptions does not become any less immoral because it ends slowly.
Besides, if one believes the current polls, the three finalists in November 2008 will be liberal Democrats -- indeed, New York Democrats. Sen. Hillary Clinton is a real Democrat, and Mayor Rudy Giuliani and Mayor Michael Bloomberg are both liberal Democrats who masqueraded as Republicans to win a place on the mayoral ballot that they could not win in a Democratic primary. (The polls also show that any of the Republican candidates, real or fictional, would beat Clinton.)
Bush has made such a mess of the country (the passport foul-up is Hurricane Katrina written small) that such a comedic end of his years in the White House is not impossible. It may be time for Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia to prepare a court decision to cancel such a crazy election and declare Vice President Dick Cheney president for life.
agreel@aol.com
I guess the difference between then and now was that no one ever said we "lost" World War 2 just because the postwar situation was less than perfectly-peaceful, free, and idyllic.
But nowadays, in order to "win" a war we must make the postwar situation completely violence-, crime-, and unpleasantry-free. If we don't, we "didn't win", or "lost the peace", or even "lost".
But of course, this standard of "winning" is impossible to meet, which was my point. According to this standard, we didn't win World War 2, or any other war.
Bereft of ideas and incapable of self-doubt, leftist commentators such as Mr. Greeley mistake their own vanity for sincerity, and promote their childish hatreds as though they were brilliant insights. And I'm sick of reading them.
Dear "Macaca" Lover: Here's all you need to know abo ut him click here (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rumsfeld_Doctrine)...BTW, it is "Rumsfeld" not "Rumsfeild"...of course, in your case, it is probably spelled "Rumsfuhrer"!
Ask libs if they want the surge to work or not. Their answers are very telling.
Meaning that we don’t want to lose the gains we made to the terrorists. The Iraqis are free now and will stay that way.
The Surge is working, contrary to your ignorant ranting, because Rummy IGNORED you and your good buddy John McCain and did NOT “Americanize” the war in 2004. He hung tough in the face of your sort of xenophobic ignorance and bigotry and insisted that the Iraqis be forced to step up to the plate.
Where Rummy failed was in thinking he could hold off the DC Idiot’s choir long enough for the Iraqis to develop their military/security forces. Unfortunately he failed. The strength of the Domga Uber Alles crowd in DC was too strong. So we pulled this PR stunt. We “Surged”
You know what the “Surge” does? Of course not, cause you would have to actually finally learn something instead of just chant your ignorant slogans. The Surge takes an Iraqi brigade, and tags an American battalion on to it as a training force.
See it takes time to develop junior leaders and NCOS. And because of the idiot choir of Know Nothings on the Right and Surrender Now Appeasement Monkeys on the Left in DC, we are trying to force grow those leaders in a short term cycle.We are giving them Americans to service next to them as an example on how to do it right.
As every American officer in Iraq keeps pointing out to you idiots. Our forces are backstopping the Iraqis. WE are not in the lead now .
The reason the Iraqis have the forces to TAKE the lead is because Rummy ignored the idiot choir in DC ranting about “boots and on the ground” and refused to Americanize the war from the start.
So the reason things are going so well is NOT because “We surged” but because we finally got the numbers of Iraqis trained and ready to take the field in the lead. When it was an “Americanized” war in Anbar, we were LOSING because NONE of the natives would work with us. So we were getting shot at from all sides. NOW, with the Iraqis taking the lead, as even YOU admit, that whole dynamic has changed over the last year. Why? Because the locals will work with the Iraqis against Al Qeda. They would NOT work with us.
So rather then cling to your 1950s era political dogmas, TRY finally learning some FACTS about Iraq.
Ah, you refer to the Communist takeover of Eastern Europe, and it’s subsequent spread.
Well, you’re wrong. If the Second World War showed anything, it was that the Soviet Union (like Nazi Germany before it) was able to spread it’s system by the simple expedient of being in control of a patch of ground. In other words; you’re system goes as far as your armies can advance it.
Dislodging the Soviets from Eastern Europe at the time would have been impossible by American military power (even in combination with out Western Allies, and before you ask, the monopoly on the atom bomb would have made very little difference). I’ve written extensively on this subject right here on FR in the course of numerous “They should have let Patton do his thing” threads. (For your education, see:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1622901/posts
Unless you’re one of spanalot’s disciples (I noticed you pinged that thread too), you might learn something.
History has shown me as correct - Patton has nothing to do with this. Otherwise, we wouldn’t still have substantial forces in Europe and Asia 60-plus years after.
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