Posted on 08/04/2007 8:35:32 AM PDT by SevenMinusOne
Nice to hear that one soul there feels jihad is over, but don’t kid yourselves.
It’s also true that the Iraqis of all stripes are pretty fed up with those butchers in Al Quaeda. They have finally figured out that they’ll kill anyone, anywhere. Fine.
Don’t extrapolate that to a sudden decrease in violence. Where US or other allied troops pull back/out, things degenerate fast. Troops are still dying. My son’s battalion lost 8 men in two weeks recently. Tell them that; tell them how it’s going so well and that jihad is over.
It’s a whole lot different when it’s your boots on the ground, seeing guys in your outfit being blown to red bits. Tends to give one a different point of view vs. what we think or feel or see in the safety of the USA.
When we pull out of Iraq eventually, all hell will break loose. There are far too many grudges/age-old conflicts in that culture that we simply cannot erase. They may be somewhat squashed while we’re there in force, but as we saw with Saddam’s regime’s demise, once the bootheel comes off, they fight each other like cats and dogs. Doesn’t mean our guys failed, folks. It just makes one wonder what the ultimate point here really is.
The utlimate point is to destroy Al Qaeda and defeat both Syria and Iran in Iraq. The terrorists chose Iraq to be the center front of their war against us and it is in Iraq were we are annihilating them.
We are not fighting in Iraq for the Iraqis, we are fighting for our freedom and our way of life and those of our children, grandchildren, and for many generations to come.
What will happen if we leave before we achieve victory?
The terrorists whether they are Al Qaeda or the Iranian and Syrian terrorist regimes or a combination of all of them will not only control Iraq but the whole Middle East and with it come consequences to the US and the West that is worse the most horrible nightmares we can imagine. The islamic terrorists will be emboldened beyond imagination and they will have millions of recruits and volunteers ready to fight and destroy the world to establish their seventh century islamic society and Caliphate. The islamic terrorists will use the hundreds of billions of dollars from oil revenues to conduct terrorists attacks that are hundreds of folds more horrible, more deadly, and more destructive than the 9/11 terrorists attacks, including the use of nuclear weapons. They will also use the oil weapon to blackmail the Western and the world economy and bring it to its knees.
If some terrorists dwelling in camps in Afghanistan with a limited budget and few volunteers were able to do 9/11 terrorist attacks, killed 3000 people and caused one trillion dollars in economic losses, imagine the incredible horrors that the terrorists can inflict on us if they control the whole Middle East and it vast revenues.
We cannot and must not leave before we win.
You're obviously a very nice and very well-intentioned, if idealistic, person. I appreciate your kind words and prayers for my son and his men.
I'm compelled to ask: Define "victory". I'm a former Academy-trained military officer myself. This is a crucial question in any military endeavor, not a sarcastic question in the least.
I submit to you that no one in the Chain of Command can do it. Not one of them, up to President Bush. Not one.
That cannot be done purely through force of arms and boots on the ground.
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