[MNJohnnie]

We are on patrol today in Iraq. Men and women of the United States armed forces in armored vehicles patrol the streets of Baghdad. They pass in the way of so many who have come before them: the Egyptian charioteers of Ramses II, the Macedonian phalanx of Alexander the Great, the Roman legionnaires of Cae­sar and Trajan, the Crusaders of Richard the Lion-Hearted, the legionnaires of Napoleon, the Camel Corps of Lawrence of Arabia.

This guy is a PHD? This guy is an idiot. Neither the Romans, the Cursaders nor the Legionnaiers ever "patrol(ed) the streets of Bagdad" What a complete moron.

[Edgerunner]

Piled Higher and Deeper...

[MNJohnnie]

Dear Consumed by his FEARS, What you advocate is called "Isolationism". Please pull your head out of your butt and read a history of the 1930s. Your blather is not only silly, it is dangerously stupid. Grow up you silly twit. You cannot hid from this danger. What you are is just another psuedo-intellectual making wise sounding noises about a topic you know NOTHING about. Sorry you cling so desperately to your 9-10-01 mindset in a post 9-11-01 world. Please shut up before your stupidity gets MORE American Civilians Killed.

For the Neo-isolationists, HERE is what we are up to in Iraq.

Counter Insurgency is a strange bastard style of war. It is not total war but it is also more then the Leftist" Police matter". The other thing most old Cast Iron Conservatives forget is the political aspect. Iraq was doable. We had the political consensus to do it. So since we needed a kill zone we could suck the terrorists into and we needed to get the American people to support the cost, there was no other choice BUT Iraq.

Want to really blow the Leftists minds? Tell them this. Even if Al Gore won in 2000 and 9-11 happened the USA would STILL be doing the same thing now in Iraq. Iraq was doable militarily and politically. There was no other place for the US to go. Iraq is basically the same deal as the invasions of Italy was in 1943

Here in a nutshell, is the MILTIARY reason for Iraq. The War on Terrorism is different sort of war. In the war on Terrorism, we have a hidden foe, spread out across a geographically diverse area, with covert sources of supply. Since we cannot go everywhere they hide out, in fact often cannot even locate them until the engage us, we need to draw them out of hiding into a kill zone. Iraq is that kill zone. That is the true brilliance of the Iraq strategy. We draw the terrorists out of their world wide hiding places onto a battlefield they have to fight on for political reasons (The "Holy" soil of the Arabian peninsula) where they have to pit their weakest ability (Conventional Military combat power) against our greatest strength (ability to call down unbelievable amounts of firepower) where they will primarily have to fight other forces (the Iraqi Security forces) in a battlefield that is hostile to guerrilla warfare. (Iraqi-mostly open terrain as opposed to guerrilla friendly areas like the mountains of Afghanistan or the jungles of SE Asia).

There are other reasons to do Iraq but that is the MILITARY reason we are in Iraq. We have taken, an maintain the initiative from the Terrorists. They are playing OUR game on ground of OUR choosing.

Problem is Counter Insurgency is SLOW and painful. Often a case of 3 steps forward, two steps back. I often worry that the American people have neither the maturity, nor the intellect" to understand. It's so much easier to spew made for TV slogans like "No Blood for Oil" or "We support the Troops, bring them home" then to actually THINK. Problem is these people have NO desire to co-exist with us. They see all this PC posturing by the Hysteric Left as a sign that we are weak. Since they want us dead, weakness encourages them. They think their "god" will bless them for killing Westerners.

So we can covert to Islam, die or kill them. Iraq is about killing enough of them to make the rest realize we are serious. See in the Arab world the USA is considered a big wimp. We have run away so many times. Lebanon, the Kurds, the Iraqis in 1991, the Iranians, Somalia, Clinton all thru the 1990s etc etc etc. The Jihadists think we will run again. In fact they are counting on it. That way they can run around screaming "We beat the American just like the Russians, come join us in Jihad" and recruit the next round of "holy warriors". Iraq is also a show place where we show the Muslim world that there are a lines they cannot cross. On 9-11 they crossed that line and we can, and will, destroy them for it.

[MrsEmmaPeel]

I found it a little too "poetic" for my tastes, with too many factual distortions. I gave up reading at his over-simplification of the reasons for the civil war

[Capriole]

Um, you have taken him a bit too literally. He did not mean that Roman legionnaires (or any of the other conquerors he mentioned) actually patroled Baghdad streets, but they did patrol the streets of conquered lands in the same way we now patrol the streets of Baghdad. It is not necessary to term someone an "idiot" because he is making a graceful comparison.

[Casloy]

This fall of Rome comparison is old and very tired. No one really knows why Rome fell and if you ask 10 historians you will get 10 different answers. How did Egypt fall, how did the Soviet Union fall, how did the British Empire fall?

[rattrap]

You read the entire article in under three minutes?

[conservonator]

This guy is a PHD?

Hay as soon as I can come up with the $500.00 and a valid email address, I'll be one too! ;>

[Cronos]

Quite right -- Baghdad was founded by the Ummayyads in the 7th century, so that rules out the legionnaires and I don't think the Crusaders ever reached so far east -- they mostly played out in what is now Syria, Lebanon, Jordan and (of course) Israel.