Posted on 09/25/2003 1:16:08 AM PDT by swilhelm73
I am baffled by John Corry's claim that the neocons were "wrong" about Iraq. Virtually everything they said has come true, and continues to come true.
1) The Iraqis, on the whole, did indeed welcome us as liberators. The fact that you could get as many soldiers killed policing Watts as you could in Tikrit doesn't seem to me to equate "failure" of the slightest kind. It means that in any occupation, there are dangers.
2) We just passed a week in which there was not a single American death. That was followed by a couple, then by more days without any. The ratio of deaths-per-day has now grown to deaths-per-every-four or five days. And it will continue to move in this direction until Iraq looks like the DMZ in Korea just after the armistice. By the way, a little research would show that the airborne units policing Austria in 1945 lost 30 men in 31 days, or, about the same numbers was we lost in the first month of the Iraq police action.
3) Ah, the WMDs. First, I think there will be a report before long that will categorize plenty of these things found inside Iraq. The fact that there were thousands of gas suits, hollow-tube artillery shells, and strange stuff in the Euphrates River all suggests that Saddam had the stuff, and not long ago. But I think it also likely that much of it was shipped out to Syria in the months before hostilities. Remember, the crux of this was vials and small boxes, plus mobile labs, not acres of pre-made gas in storage barrels.
4) Overall, I don't think any military person with any sense (this, obviously, eliminates Clark) would have thought what we did in Iraq possible, especially with such few losses and with such good results. Corry has been watching too much CNN. Maybe he ought to read some of the letters from Marines that I've seen. -- Larry Schweikart Professor of History University of Dayton
Does it make much sense for a man to complain of the evil "neocon" invasion of Iraq while at the same time applauding a man for his brilliant military campaign in a completely unilateralist, Congressional-less, UN-less, totally unrelated to U.S. security bombing of Kosovo? Sure, our soldiers are getting hurt in Iraq. But Wesley Clark wanted to use ground troops in Kosovo. In bashing the neocons on Iraq it appears that Corry gave wholesale approval to something worse-- the unhinged, arrogant bombing of a country that had nothing to do with U.S. security.
Is that how far "neocon" critics are going to go? Because if Corry were acting on his principles, he'd hate Clark every bit as much as he does the neocons that started a so-called quagmire in Iraq. While Corry can scoff at Bush's logic for invading Iraq, it is a logic that makes infinitely more sense than our adventure in Kosovo. But that somehow makes Clark a hero.
Corry needs to try thinking clearly once in a while and refrain from letting his hatred of the "neocons" get the better of him. He seems to write only to bash "neocons." That's pretty childish. -- James Yerian Athens, Ohio
I would argue that the ones that complain of the "evil neo-con invasion" are actually a different breed of conservative than the neo-cons (the author can call them paleo-cons if he must affix a label). As such, they oppose, on grounds that have nothing to do with the party of either President, both the actions in the Balkans and the Middle East.
The bases of the objections would be the same in either case: poorly defined objectives, poorly defined rationale, and lack of an exit strategy that results in US troops being in place in perpetuity. The only good commonality is the sterling performance of the US soldiers, airmen, sailors and marines.
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