Posted on 08/16/2008 10:31:53 AM PDT by 82ndABNOfficer
IGOETI, Georgia -- Russia and its allied forces today destroyed a key railway bridge linking war-weary Georgia's capital to the Black Sea coast, effectively severing all east-west transportation routes within the small country, the Georgian Foreign Ministry announced.
(Excerpt) Read more at latimes.com ...
Maybe we already have...
1) An opportunity for those nations, in the middle of the islamic world, to develop constitutional republics and freedom...which is an example to the rest of the region and the bane to the Mullahs and Ayotollahs who want to rigidly control their people.
2) He has set up fly traps where the enemy terorists have been drawn of necessity to fight our forces and keep them from accomplishing number one. In so doing the infrastructure and leadership of the terrorists have been decimated, and their footsoldiers have been killed by the tens of thosuands...which has completely hampered them from bringing the fight back here to the US.
In doing this, if you would look at a map for a moment, the US has completely hemmed in the #1 sponsor of terror in the world, Iran. This is no accident. In using the Persina Guf and Arabian Sea to support or activities in Iraq and Afhganistan, the Mullahs are cut off from the sea, they have US forces to their west and US forces to their east. Again, this was no accident.
Now, it is true that we have a large part of the electorate in this country, and it is tragic really, that are so hooked on the social progams and handouts that the Democrats offer, that they are opposing the effort in the middle of a war. But this same situation was vetted in the last election and the majority of Americans came down on the side of fighting these wars and defeating the enemy...which Bush has gone forward with.
Now we face, in essence, the same challenge and opposition, and I believe it will come down the same way.
The US is winning this war and Bush has been correct in his strategy. I believe history will remember him well for that, as the one who through his vision and tenacity brought the opportunity for the blessings of liberty to tens of millions in the middle east. No one else has done that, while at the same time taking the fight to the Islamic Jhadists.
To best exemplify my own feelings on the matter, and I believce many other Americans, let me share with you a conversation I had with a Frenchman at the US memorial at Normandy about a year and nine months ago.
I was in France to pick up my son, who had just served a two year mission for our church there. We had been all over the country for a week visiting every place he had served. We were leaving the next day and took that day before to visit and pay our respects to the fallen American heroes of Normandy. My interest was more than passing, I had lost an Uncle, my mother's only brother, over Germany in the war on a bombing mission after the D-Day invasions.
As we were walking, two Frenchmen came by. We were speaking english and they stopped and asked if we were Americans. My son responded in fluent French and the two of them, my 22 year old son and this fiftyish Frenchman spoke for a few minutes.
At the end, the Frenchman turned to me and asked in English if my son would probably be going home to an American that had changed somewhat since he had come there. He said,
"Perhaps your son will find that President Bush is not held in such high esteeem anymore when he get's home because of his war in Iraq?"
I asked him if he wanted to know my thoughts on the matter, and he said yes.
I said to him,
"You know, my son and I are hear to honor the ten thousand dead Americans who are buried in that field over there who came here and died liberating your country...and I do not think at the moment that that has anything to do with George Bush or Iraq." I then told him,
"I'm not finished. Do you suppose that if you, here over sixty three years later, a frenchman who by your won admission respects and is grateful for the sacrifice of young American who gave their blood and their very lives to liberate your country from tyranny...I say if you can be grateful for their sacrifice here on this spot in France, do you suppose that fifty or sixty years from now there will be Iraqi's who are just as grateful for the sacrifice of American blood and lives to liberate them from a tyrant in Iraq? Do you?"
It got quiet. The Frenchman had nothing to say and myself and my son quietly excused ourselves and went on our way to sit by the graveyard for some time, contemplating these issues ourselves.
I believe that is the correct perspective from which to view what President Bush has done.
Ping!
well said
It’s like trying to make deals with Democrats...hmmm...
The Russians would definitely counter attack. If we supply them with missiles, and I think we should, we need to send them over in the thousands. Hand one to every soldier.
The question our president must consider is whether saving Georgia is worth war with Russia, possibly nuclear.”
Hardly. The question goes not to the US President, but the President of Georgia and his people. They will fight for their democratic sovereignty when bullied by the Russian hegemon. Of course this wont escalate to nuclear war, but it sure coudl escalate to the biggest Russian blunder since their Afghan misadventure of the 1980s.
“The Russian imperative in keeping a military threat from its back door is the same as ours was in October, 1962.”
Hardly. the Russians incited this mini-war with the specific goals of bringing former USSR back together, bit by bit. Its a re-imperialism agenda.
“We Americans are too often guilty of thinking of wars as events that we participate in in foreign countries, but we have to consider the reality of fighting the next one in our own front yard.”
We are all georgians now. If you think about what would WE do if a country invaded our land ... that’s what the Georgian Govt and people would do. Defend it at all costs.
Reality was, he wasn't, and only a few who had access to privileged intelligence, were confident he was, whilst Iran, N.Korea, Russia, and every Country with a fundamentalist Islamic subculture was either developing them, or planning to use their existing ones against the West, Blair and Bush were intent on removing, ironically, the only leader in the middle East who counterbalanced the effects of global jihadis.
Reality was, Saddam had WMD desires and programs in the pipeline and a $10 billion corrupt slush fund due to oil-for-food kickbacks.
Perception has a way of feeding reality, and the perception that a WMD guy like Saddam could get away with pursuing WMDs without any consequences (even if his WMD program was weaker than the world thought) would have fueled a WMD arms race among rogue nations, an arms race that was ongoing in 2003 (Libya, Iran, RPNK, Syria, etc.) We would be defense against an enemy that we were unprepared to deal with on the levels necessary to stop them. The word 'impunity' on their side and 'paper tiger' on our side comes to mind.
Blair and Bush were intent on removing, ironically, the only leader in the middle East who counterbalanced the effects of global jihadis. - That has to be one of the most fatuous misdirections ever told against the Iraq war. Saddam supported terrorists. He counterbalanced nothing except democracy, human rights and sanity in the middle east.
I think your post is excellent. The bear has bitten off more than he can chew. Bush is still President of the United States. And Putin may just have given McCain’s campaign some steroids.
Putin has bitten off more than he can chew in Georgia, his army is ineffective and undisciplined, and Bush will not waver in supporting Tbilisi.
God Bless You.
“Regarding the comments of the French pewople you spoke to, I’m not surprised that was the response, My Country has been torn beyond all recognition by Liberal student leaders, their philosophies and the associated dismantling of our history, culture and way of life.”
This sounds not much different than what has gone on in USA, in academia, in hollywood and the media, which has mostly been ‘lost’ to the secular socialist multi-culturalist ‘culture. America as a whole hasnt succumbed mainly because of a larger reservoir of independent-mindedness, religiosity, and (for lack of better word) cultural diversity across 50 states, that recognizes the socialist rot for the poison that it is.
It’s important that the rot be recognized for what it is. I think conservatives in Europe can and should appreciate America more, for managing to grapple with it, and also should recognize that the very stereotypes the Euro elites use to bash Americans (”cowboys” ‘religious nuts’ and ‘greedy capitalists’) are PRECISELY those forces that impede the Socialists.
In other words, to use Bush’s words “They hate us for our freedom.”
“
Luckily, opinions seem to be changing in France and elsewhere in Europe, when we travel just a few Km from Avenue des Champs-Élysées and the Arc de Triomphe, one can see the forced immigration no go areas in Paris, it’s a real ghetto, and it’s these areas where the threat of the future may grow from.”
Once you come face-to-face with the one lie the socialist elites are telling you, you may wake up to the fact that EVERYTHING the socialist elites are telling you is a lie.
I hope someone in Europe wakes the hell up. Its about 50 years too late, but better late than never.
“Of course this wont escalate to nuclear war,”
Really? We have diplomatically challenged Russia in its own backyard; a military intervention would leave the Russians no alternative to war, and only their restraint would preclude a nuclear response. We have moved assets and US personnel to Georgian soil on a declared ‘humanity’ mission, but the implication is not lost on the Russians. Many of the old guard KGB believed the USSR could survive a nuclear war, and Putin is old guard KGB. The Russians have taken a considerable risk to deny us the strategic advantage of an ally on the Black Sea. The stakes are too high for us to act on a presumption that they would be willing to fight a limited war on what Russians consider to be theirs by right.
1) Go into Afghanistan and defeat the Taliban and disolodge and destrou Al Quida. He got two of those three done and the third is a work in progress.
2) Go into Iraq and defeat Saddam and his potential for the next sanctuary and creating the fly trap I spoke, and thus completing a three way encirclement of Iran. I believe at this point he has almost completed that job now, and successfully though there was difficulty along the way.
3) Take down Iran.
I agree that with more support from the Eurpoeans he could have, and perhaps should have anyway, been in the process of taking down Iran. But I believe that in order to most effectively prepare for and accomplish number 3, he had to do 1 & 2 first anyway.
I wouldn't presume to say only a few. There were certainly enough to cause consternation, and with Judith Miller and her "inside info" and constant harping on the issue the fear which would have continued unabated to today would have paralyzed geopolitical progress for the US as well as for other democratically-minded countries. In addition, other rogue nations would have been emboldened to reject inspections just as Saddam was doing.
With these factors in mind, of course Saddam was up there in contention as the most dangerous rogue state. IMO when Saddam kicked out the inspectors he earned his doom. And with that event on top of the shooting in the no-fly and the abuses of the oil-for-food there was plenty of reason for invasion, which IMO has reduced the number of terrorists and terror-minded states world-wide.
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