Zombie's new banner:
(See my tagline as well)
Posted on 11/17/2008 12:50:53 AM PST by atomic conspiracy
We won. The Iraq War is over.
I declare November 22, 2008 to be "Victory in Iraq Day." (Hereafter known as "VI Day.")
By every measure, The United States and coalition forces have conclusively defeated all enemies in Iraq, pacified the country, deposed the previous regime, successfully helped to establish a new functioning democratic government, and suppressed any lingering insurgencies. The war has come to an end. And we won.
What more indication do you need? An announcement from the outgoing Bush administration? It's not gonna happen. An announcement from the incoming Obama administration? That's really not gonna happen. A declaration of victory by the media? Please. Don't make me laugh. A concession of surrender by what few remaining insurgents remain in hiding? Forget about it.
The moment has come to acknowledge the obvious. To overtly declare a fact that has already been true for quite some time now. Let me repeat:
WE WON THE WAR IN IRAQ
And since there will never be a ticker-tape parade down Fifth Avenue in New York for our troops, it's up to us, the people, to arrange a virtual ticker-tape parade. An online victory celebration.
Saturday, November 22, 2008 is the day of that celebration: Victory in Iraq Day.
What do you need to do to participate? Simple. Just make a post on your blog on Saturday, November 22, announcing that the war is over, and declaring that day to be Victory in Iraq Day. That's it.
If you want to write a short post (or a long essay) analyzing the nature of our victory or cheering the troops for a job well done, great; but if you just want to make a simple announcement of the victory, that's fine as well. Anything will do. Just come and join the celebration to mark the day.
Keep reading below to find: evidence that the war is over (for the doubters); an historical discussion of previous postwar occupations and guerrilla violence; a list of blogs which have already joined the VI Day movement; free banners and graphics for you to download and put on your blog, if you so choose; and an invitation to submit your own "victory graphics" for posting here.
If you would like to comment on VI Day, you can do so here.
Observations and statistics agree: The fighting has ceased, the war is over
I have felt for many months that we had already won the war, but I was spurred to action by this report from Michael Yon:
"THE WAR IS OVER AND WE WON:" Michael Yon just phoned from Baghdad, and reports that things are much better than he had expected, and he had expected things to be good. "There's nothing going on. I'm with the 10th Mountain Division, and about half of the guys I'm with haven't fired their weapons on this tour and they've been here eight months. And the place we're at, South Baghdad, used to be one of the worst places in Iraq. And now there's nothing going on. I've been walking my feet off and haven't seen anything."
This post at the Mudville Gazette confirmed my conclusions.
If you don't want to go by anecdotal evidence, carefully study the official casualty statistics for U.S. troops in Iraq and you will see that they have reached extremely low levels, so low that they no longer even come close to rising to the level of "war"; it is now more dangerous to walk the streets of most major American cities than it is to be stationed in Iraq. For example, Chicago, just a single city in the United States, all by itself experienced twice as many shootings and killings of Americans as did the entire nation of Iraq over recent months:
125 Shot Dead In Chicago Over Summer Total Is About Double The U.S. Troop Death Toll In Iraq
CHICAGO (CBS) -- An estimated 125 people were shot and killed over the summer. That's nearly double the number of U.S. soldiers killed in Iraq over the same time period.
What more need be said? Whatever lingering violence still exists is Iraq is now nothing more than a series of minor disconnected terrorist attacks, which have become completely ineffectual in changing the hearts and minds of the populace, or re-igniting another civil war.
Zombie's new banner:
(See my tagline as well)
Where? ;-)
The important question: Do Americans in Iraq get November 22 as a holiday?
Seriously, great article and very good points. There's still a little misbehavior by al Qaeda remnants going on in the Mosul area and in Diyala, but when you compare the times now to two years ago, it is nothing short of amazing.
Yikes! Forgot it doesn’t come up in comments.
Tagline-—>
Call it:
“Mission Accomplished MOnday”
I LIKE it! :)
I will be happy to leave Iraq. But at the same time I feel sorry for the children of Iraq. They will be raised in an intolerant society and brainwashed into being the future terrorists.
I ama supporter of total war in some cases. The crusades were a good cause.
“I am a supporter of total war in some cases. The crusades were a good cause.”
Well, you’re there and I’m not, but I’d like you to consider the French experience in Algeria from 1954-1962.
The French waged total war on the Algerians to put down the insurgency. They had 500,000 troops there and used collective punishment, calling in air strikes and artillery barrages on villages that harbored insurgents.
The French tortured to death thousands, shot thousands in summary executions, and put 1.2 million (out of a population 9 million) in concentration camps.
All in all, the French killed as many 1.5 million Algerians, but they still lost. Even more importantly, they lost 18,000 men in eight years, a KIA rate three and a half times ours.
Total war doesn’t always work, and it’s not clear that it would’ve saved American lives, unless you’re talking carpet bombing Iraq with B-52s until nobody was left alive.
We both know that this would never have happened, so it’s kind of a waste of time to contemplate it.
I’ll leave you with this idea: The violence in Iraq got much worse after the destruction of the Golden Dome in Samarra. We’re told by a lot of “experts” that if we just hit these people hard enough and destroy the things they hold most dear, they’ll lose the will to fight.
The strategic bombing of World War II never broke Germany’s will to fight. It took the invasion of Germany to end the war, at a huge cost to the Russians. We ourselves took most of our casualties in the final months of the war in the Pacific. Even after we nuked Japan, several factions wanted to fight on.
In the end, I think we fought the Iraq war correctly, even though of course we made mistakes.
Still, the mistakes we made in this war don’t even begin to compare to the massive mistakes we made in World War II, mistakes that cost many thousands of American lives and resulted in many officers being relieved of duty.
The French did lose in Algeria. They gave up when they were on the verge of victory. They caved in to the “world opinion” that they were being too brutal. Sometimes brutality is called for. That is what will happen to us in Iraq with Obama at the helm.
I understand what these images convey. Our military, since 1944, has freed untold millions of people around the globe, and the American taxpayer has paid untold trillions of dollars in the most unselfish actions a superpower has ever performed.
But I’m done now. No more.
America’s freedom is under attack at home—and no one, I repeat, no one—will ever lift a finger to help us if we lose it.
Before I’ll celebrate VI day, I’d like to see Muqtada’s head on a platter, or any other mounting other than his shoulders.
I believe we won this war in 39 days. Securing the peace has taken a little longer.
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