Posted on 07/23/2003 8:36:55 AM PDT by Theodore R.
Will we stay the course in Iraq?
Posted: July 23, 2003 1:00 a.m. Eastern
© 2003 Creators Syndicate, Inc.
After the suicide bombing of the Marine barracks, Ronald Reagan made a cold-blooded decision. Concluding America had no vital interest in Lebanon, he cut his losses and withdrew the Marines.
It was a rare failure of Reagan foreign policy.
Neoconservatives condemn him for not sending an army back into Beirut to deliver street justice and show Islamic radicals that the American Superpower could not be assaulted with impunity.
Reagan's decision, say the neocons, convinced radicals that America lacked the courage and perseverance to be master of the Middle East. Clinton's pullout after the "Blackhawk Down!" firefight in Mogadishu, Somalia, they say, confirmed the radicals' perception.
Where the Russians had fought in Afghanistan for a decade, the Americans had cut and run after the first bloodlettings. This, say the neocons, led to Osama's murderous miscalculation of 9-11.
Their argument cannot be dismissed. It is the whimpering dog that gets kicked. But there is a counter-argument. Neither in the Levant nor Somalia was there a vital U.S. interest. Whether Christians, Muslims or Syrians controlled Lebanon, whether Mohammad Aidid or some other warlord ran Somalia, did not imperil U.S. security.
Reagan's liberation of Grenada did affect vital interests. It swept a Soviet pawn off the board, exposed Moscow's impotence in the Caribbean, humiliated Castro and delivered a psychological blow to the Sandinistas in Nicaragua, who now knew that, should the Americans come, no one and nothing could save them. It was a victory in the Cold War, our war.
Which brings us to Iraq and predictions we may have to stay on and fight a guerrilla war for five or 10 years. Has anyone really thought this through? Has anyone calculated the probable price in billions and blood to bring "democracy" to Mesopotamia?
Certainly, Iraq is not Vietnam, where we lost 150 soldiers a week for seven years. Our casualties are coming at the rate of one a day. But media coverage is beginning to resemble the Vietnam of our nightmares.
The 24-hour-a-day cable TV networks are providing instant coverage of every sniper attack or ambush that kills an American. Cable TV also offers a daily forum for debate between those who want to persevere and those who say we should never have gone in.
That daily barrage of negative news and commentary about Iraq is already having the impact years of negative news and commentary from Vietnam had on the home front and troop morale. In the 10 weeks since the president made his Top Gun landing on the USS Lincoln, which was flying the streamer "Mission Accomplished," America has begun to sour on the war.
Newspapers and networks are saturated with stories of soldiers being ambushed, wounded, killed; of troops anxious to return home; of Shiites turning against the occupation; of rising costs and falling support for President Bush. A growing minority now says the war was a mistake and we should never have fought it.
Anyone who thinks Americans will stoically accept this for five or 10 years, or even two years, does not know this country. If TV coverage continues of Iraqis confronting U.S. troops, dancing around burned U.S. vehicles, demonstrating for us to get out, Americans – an impatient lot – will be only too happy to accommodate them.
President Bush has a grave problem. To date, no Saddam tie to al-Qaida has been established, no weapons of mass destruction, nukes, nuclear facilities or Scuds found. And Gen. Franks' planning for war appears to have been as brilliant as the planning for peace was botched.
No one seems to have prepared, or prepared us, for the kind of bloody long-term commitment we now face, and Americans will not accept that commitment unless told why. And why should we? If Saddam and his WMD were ever a threat, they surely are not now. Americans need answers to these questions.
If the Iraqis want us out, why stay? If it was necessary to go to war to disarm Iraq, why is it necessary to remain, now that Iraq is disarmed?
How is the War on Terror advanced by an occupation that inflames the Arab world and leaves 150,000 U.S. troops exposed to daily attacks? Were we misled into invading Iraq, to place our soldiers in a killing field of our Islamic enemies?
President Bush may reach another conclusion, but he had best think this through – as he and his aides did not, before they went in. For even a superpower must be mindful of the card shark's counsel in Kenny Rogers' "The Gambler."
"You have to know when to hold 'em, Know when to fold 'em, Know when to walk away, Know when to run."
We lost 3,000 people on 9/11/01, due to our lack of focusing on the Middle East.
This too, though oil is the overriding interest.
And how many Iraqis exactly were involved in 9-11?
Absolutely not. Which is why the @sshole who decided to put U.S. soldiers at risk by assigning them to guard banks should be fired immediately and prosecuted for dereliction of duty.
Just fast forward in your mind what a fix we would be in if the nut cases took control and cut off oil to this country.
OK, so then it is all about oil after all?
Correction -- We lost 3,000 people on 9/11/01 due to our lack of focusing on the United States.
Any U.S. response to 9/11 that does not include the sacking of every incompetent bureaucrat in the FBI, CIA, INS, etc. is both inadequate and misdirected.
Any U.S. response to 9/11 that does not include the sacking of every incompetent bureaucrat in the FBI, CIA, INS, etc. is both inadequate and misdirected.
So basically what you are saying is that there is no danger of any radical islamic or radical dictatorship in the Middle East developing WMD.
Am I right?
Gee Pat .. kind of like what you are doing
How so? How would focusing on the United States prevented bin Laden's forces from attacking us again?
Since??
He hasn't learned anything period
Wrong. We lost 3,000 people due to our lack of focusing on America.
Wrong. We lost 3,000 people due to our lack of focusing on America. IMO Pat was the only one vocally concerned about 'borders' and immigration. Pat's the only one, who had the guts to say that groups who want to come here and not assimilate, or are incapable of assimilation, should not be allowed in. They could be better helped in their own country. Why import problems? Pat also said we should have a immigration moratorium to properly 'assimilate' those who are here.
Pat was/is right most of the time.
The irony of the situation in Iraq was this -- the U.S. probably had a far better chance to control the development of WMD's in the Middle East when Saddam Hussein was in power than it does now.
When the first Muslim showed up in flight school and said he wanted to learn to fly but wasn't interested in landing a plane, even a second-grader would have told you that something wasn't quite right.
For the U.S. to wage war in the Middle East to "combat terror," while at the same time allowing nearly unfettered access to this country by people all over the globe, is the height of idiocy.
India also has had it's own nuclear program for almost 30 years now.
That keeps Pakistan in check, IMO.
But you didin't answer the original question, do you think it's okey dokey for pre-saddam Iraq and present day Iran pursuing a nuclear program.
And Ashcroft has been tryong to crackdown on such practices, even with the onslaught of criticism from the press and demos.
Remember these terrorists got their "training" on Clinton's watch.
The way I see it, there's not much of a difference between pre-Saddam Iraq or present-day Iran pursuing a nuclear program and any other nation in the world pursuing a nuclear program.
"While the war party spits out tired insults about Gallic Weakness, Paris seems to us a wise ally, trying to prevent an old friend from acting against her deeper interests."
Why did we ever think he was a conservative?
Fingerprinting Muslim immigrants at airports is one thing. Anyone who is intent on doing harm to this country will not be deterred from doing so just because his fingerprint is on file at FBI headquarters.
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