Posted on 03/31/2008 2:15:02 PM PDT by blam
Jeepers. I thought that dear old Gertie just sharpened Winnies pencil- you know, the one he used to carve up the Ottoman Empire.
First of all, we aren't fighting Al Qaeda - we are at war with islam. Second: How's Al Qaeda doing around the world lately? They have taken some hits but they are still growing in numbers. What government is in power in Iraq simply isn't germane. You have to look at the bigger picture. Do you understand what I'm talking about when I suggest Iraq is, on a strategic scale, only a fortification? And a bloody expensive one.
“First of all, we aren’t fighting Al Qaeda - we are at war with islam. “
No, we are at war with al Qaeda and we’re not at war with Islam. As much as al Qaeda and the left attempt to propagate this lie, that America is waging war on Islam, this lie is undermined by the fact that we are allied with other Muslims against al Qaeda.
“They have taken some hits but they are still growing in numbers. “
Last I heard, 3/4ths of their leadership was either dead or captured.
“Do you understand what I’m talking about when I suggest Iraq is, on a strategic scale, only a fortification? “
A democratic Iraq undermines the recruitment propaganda that America is waging war on Islam.
You need to read the koran. You need to understand what is happening around the world. This is so much bigger than Al Qaeda. Al Qaeda is nothing. Start googling on Africa and islam or Asia and islam.
Recruitment propaganda is not needed. That is a specious concern.
This is so not about one group within islam.
Seriously, you need to read the koran.
Rule one when fighting insurgents - he who controls the hearts and minds of the population wins. Strong points surrounded by a hostile population base are not effective. They are doomed to failure.
Study Malay (the British campaign), Vietnam, and the Soviet/ Afghan war.
I haven't seen an affordable or realistic proposal yet to turn the hearts and minds of what is now a large percentage of the world's population.
The only solution I see was posted earlier by someone else. Bomb their military to dust. If needed, bomb their infrastructure to dust. Again, if needed vaporize their population centers.
I don't see islam backing off this time unless we kill 100 million muslims.
I don't see the west doing any of this. It seems rather inconceivable but I see us headed into a second dark age.
It's a lovely world.
So we stabilize Iraq. Please tell me how that is going to make the slightest bit of difference in what is a global problem?
They have won already, but are more magnanimous than you give them credit for.
The Kurds, as usual, will get screwed.
The Kurds are doing pretty well for themselves, and have demonstrated they can take care of themselves.
The losers are the Sunnis. They were a minority before siding with the terrorists and starting the insurgency. After all their fighting they are about half the population they were, and those who are left are ready to strike a political deal for whatever they can manage - which won't be much but will be more than their population percentage will warrant.
You have an entire population of Sunni muslims, at the heart of the Middle East, who will for generations proclaim their utter hatred for terrorism and the US as an honest broker. You have millions of Shia and Kurds who will testify to the US as a liberator. The way we have defeated al Qaeda and the JAM in Iraq is precisely by winning the hearts and minds of the populace. You will have a functioning democracy right in the middle of Arab central that will put the political heat on the dictators and kings of the region. OBL recognized that the fight for Iraq was existential. He has virtually admitted defeat. You, however, seem not to be able to take "yes" for an answer :^)
Actually you’re right in that these sorts of problems are issues that span decades, if not generations. You’re also right that as in the Cold War you have a domino effect as well as key nations or fortifications as you called them (i.e. Germany, Thailand...etc). However, where you’re wrong is in the assumption that we or the entire West has an option, we don’t. You’re also incorrect in assuming Iraq is the entire focus of our attention or that this war is purely being fought with the war fighter, it isn’t. This will go on for many years, it’s transnational but there are key nations involved, and it will be fought on many planes not considered battle-space by the layperson (i.e. IO/Media, economic, etc).
It is the belief that these events in time and space can be separated and like Grenada, Cuba, Vietnam, Thailand, Angola, Afghanistan, Korea, the Berlin Airlift, our spy wars in Germany or even the Greek civil war are all separate, they’re not. There was a common thread that ran through all these events, you had the Soviets and the US/West battle it out in some fashion in what is mistakenly called the “Cold War” (an oxymoron). These were proxy wars.
Like the anti-war protesters in the late 60s and 70s, people don’t ask themselves where those MIG21s, SA2 and 3, RPG7s, radars etc come from. They don’t think about what happened in Laos or Cambodia when we left, or even who it was that tried to pour into Thailand, which thank God held up, or the entire region would have collapsed. The average American does not even take note of Soviet bases popping up in Vietnam nearly months after we left, with their largest Naval base outside the Soviet Union being in Cam Ranh ( http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/1964253.stm ). To the American anti-war protester, there were no connections, and many of those even after the fact don’t see it. Ironically, the anti-war pundit today attempts to champion Vietnam as his battle cry, and the only similarities between Iraq and Vietnam are those fools in the media, our politicians that pander, and the self proclaimed intellectuals who think they are profound by being against the war and separating out Iraq or Vietnam from the larger picture.
We have limited resources. We can only do so much at once and it’s not us that the finger should be pointed at. We have post WWII always carried a disproportionate weight compared to nearly all other allied nations. There are many today in the West who essentially are “hiding out,” trying to do as little as possible, avoiding the price economic, political, and in security/blood by taking no action. It is those who suck on the teat of modern Western society and globalization but do nothing for it that should be ridiculed (i.e. Hungary, Germany, Norway…..). From free open water ways they do nothing for and those ships carrying BMWs travel on, to secure open air ways, access to strategic resources needed for a technology and industry based society (Cesium, Uranium, Gold, Platinum, oil…..), regional stability, safeguarding of intellectual property……. some in the West simply want to take advantage of it all but do nothing for it! We are once again in a leading role in the West; paying more, bleeding more, and of course being called names by the open minded who take their freedom and way of life as a simple birth right. We as a nation are doing our part, we always have.
“I don’t care. I don’t want to spend the money or blood.”
What is the alternative?
There were those years past who said, “I’d rather be red than dead.” Here’s a good quote for you, “rather live on your knees than die on your feet.” Those were people in the 60s making such statements in face of another threat.
It has given me a nice morning chuckle.
Ummm your grasp of history is flawed. The only thing keeping the bottle on the toothpaste tube are coalition forces.
“The Kurds are doing pretty well for themselves, and have demonstrated they can take care of themselves.”
The Kurds are completely surrounded by highly hostile forces. Without our direct supprot the Kurds will be put on their knees. Again. They don't have the resources to do much other than die well.
Your grasp of history is flawed.
“They were a minority before siding with the terrorists and starting the insurgency. ”
This hasn't got an effing thing to do with “starting the insurgency”. This isn't conventional war and isn't even conventional unconventional war. It is a religious war - islam against infidel and islamic sects against each other.
It is tribal, it is regionally political and it is geopolitical. Where do you get this stuff - from the Bush Whitehouse? The fighting will never stop there if we leave, unless one side absolutely brutalizes the other, and will only (mostly) shift to another theater if we do not.
It is NEVER going to be a nice place. It is NEVER going to be civilized. You are pissing in the wind - while wasting someone else's blood and all of our treasure. Even if we are successful in making them nice and democratic it will have NO effect on jihad worldwide. Feel good liberalism at its finest.
The Soviets were nothing as a threat compared to islam.
Second, just because I don't want to waste resources in Iraq doesn't mean, at all, that I'm suggesting we give up. Read my other posts.
Wars are won by will and money. Both are finite resources. We are stuck in Iraq - we cannot pull out now. But it is a total waste of treasure.
The West isn't going to start killing millions of muslims so that is out as a realistic option. The only way out of this that I can see, and I may be biased because of my background, is to:
1. Covertly attack the religion itself. Reagen was superb at this. Get them to fight each other and drain their resources. Discredit the religion, especially in the 3rd world.
2. Get away from oil dependency. The accumulated treasure of the West is flowing into the ME. We are funding our own destruction.
3. When it can be “publicly” justified, blow the hell out of an islamic nation every once in a while. Just don't hang around with the naive idea that you are going to engage in nation building.
I can see that you may be wrong, but you are never in doubt. Happy trails.
I'm not calling for a total withdrawal from Iraq but why don't we consolidate into a few super forts in Kurdistan and in Basra, an important port. Other than that, why should we continue to bleed for barbaric and savage Arabs?
Just imagine if a foreigner comes in America and disband our police forces overnight?
Gangs like MS-13, Bloods, and Crips would cause mayhem in the streets.
I don't know; I certainly wasn't one of his advisors.
If we kept it intact and told them that there's the new sheriff in town, they'll be able to keep violence under control.
Hindsight is always 20/20, I guess. It' hard to say, though. Al Qaeda sent its A-Team in here right away and that may have happened anyway.
Do you think it will be cheaper to wait and fight them here?
I mean, we did not really have a plan to combat an insurgency once it appears. The only one who had an idea was General Petraeus and we'll see if it's not too late for him to salvage what's left in Iraq.
But you're in the country experiencing it all so your words carry more weight than mine.
When Bremer reversed policy & announced re-Ba’athification on TV (in 2004 I believe?), the Shi’a freaked out & the uprisings began in earnest. They saw it as a repeat of the British turning over the country to their Sunni oppressors. The average Shi’a was still wary of al-Sadr until then, but he took that opportunity to be the one who stands up for them.
Iraq is part of a chess game that involves Iran, Syria, a larger GWOT, and of course Iraq itself. You have to look at Iraq in the macro and from a systems sense, not from the petty and micro perspective which the anti-war pundit does. The layperson does not look past the horizon, and when we began massive investments already in 2000 for missile defense, many questioned this too. In 20 years when Iraq pays dividends few of the pundits who like those in the Cold War hung on the fences of our military installations in Germany screaming “Rather red than dead,” will remember their words.
Iraq is an opportunity and an investment, not a liability. We planted our flag in the middle of the Islamic world, with the shrines of Mohammed in Karbala. Like a bug zapper, Iraq is a giant magnet attracting all the vermin we want to kill. We built the meat grinder we want. That’s how you take the fight to the enemy!
Iraq weakened by eight years of war with Iran, Desert Storm, and 12 years embargo was a great opportunity. We have a long standing relationship with the Kurds post Desert Storm and they played a valuable role in taking down Iraq as well. We had cause to go after Iraq, and after 911 things changed. Iraq has a people that at least historically more world open and with a more educated populace (Comparatively in that region), so they might be more receptive to democracy. Imagine what a successful Iraq long term means for Iran? As Iraq comes on line, they expend their resources doing our bidding just to survive as a republic and democracy. They essentially expend their people and money to fight our common enemies and threats, such as the insurgents and Iran.
In the game of polemics things get turned on their head. Success is turned to failure; the reasons for the war are turned against it……. No, our reasons for war were good, the execution is good, and Iraq has every possibility of a positive outcome. The threats in the GWOT and to Iraq are by those in the West and US, who don’t see the threat at all. The threat is from within, by our media, the political process and opposition politics, etc. They can’t stop us from winning, we have to convince ourselves to quit, and that’s how we loose.
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