Unfortunately, no one has proposed a strategy with any hope of achieving this goal. This will become tragically apparent sometime this fall, when it will be undeniable that the surge has not only failed, it has made things worse. It is unfortunate we must wait that long and sacrifice hundreds more American lives before all but the most stubborn Bush drones realize we are pouring good blood after bad. I predict by the time the presidential primaries begin, there will be a Republican candidate who favors withdrawal from Iraq, and he/she will be the eventual nominee of your party. Of course, they will call it something else, something like “Peace with Honor”, but it will be cut and run by any other name. And it will be the right decision.
Scylla, I’m surprised you think we’re holding back, as many would say America has gone beyond total war. We’re not just fighting on the ground, but kidnapping foreign nationals, holding them indefinitely without due process, and engaging in activities that look a lot like torture. At his worst, Sherman didn’t do any of this.
There’s an important difference between the Iraq War and the Civil War, WWI, WWII, etc. that may have escaped you: we can’t tell hostiles from friendlies. So, either we wait for the hostiles to identify themselves by attacking, or kill them all.
You said as much in your argument:
I don’t think anyone’s afraid of killing, Scylla, but killing everyone bothers a lot of people. Many, including myself, think mass extermination is a worse outcome than cutting-and-running.
I’ll argue this further, but you need to clarify your position. Do you really think annihilating the Iraqi people is an acceptable victory condition?
They have discovered that war and an external enemy fires up their base and makes it easier for them to attack their opponents at home. This is nor Rocket science.
By “conquer all of us”, do you mean that pulling out of Iraq is the same as being conquered by Iraq, or are you thinking that there is a risk of ‘terrorists’ coming to the USA sometime later to do a bit of conquering.
If the options are 1) Wipe out the middle east or 2) Admit defeat. I do not think that the latter would actually put the USA at risk of being conquered. It didnt after USA was defeated in Vietnam and it will not now.
Perhaps the USA should pull out of the middle east and invade a Grenadan-size country to show the world that she shouldn’t be fu*ked with. Perhaps Bush should pull out of Iraq, invade the Seychelles and finish on a high note.
I don’t think the people we are fighting have.
He did a lot worse. His standard SOP was to destroy everything. They would take everything they could use, and destroy what they couldn’t so there would be nothing to sustain anybody, soldiers or populace. He hung people summarily simply for protesting.
In Georgia he destroyed the entire town of Roswell, and arrested every single person with the intent to ship them to the North as prisoners. There weren’t enough rails and cars to carry everybody so he let his cavalry pick women to carry along with them and rape them along the way.
Here are some excerpts from some of Sherman’s orders in letters he wrote:
“If torpedoes (mines) are found in the possession of an enemy to our rear, you may cause them to be put on the ground and tested by a wagon load of prisoners, or if need be a citizen implicated in their use. In like manner, if a torpedo is suspected on any part of the road, order the point to be tested by a carload of prisoners, or by citizens implicated, drawn by a long rope.”
“Can you not send over to Fairmount and Adairsville, burn 10 or 12 houses of known secessionists, kill a few at random and let them know it will be repeated every time a train is fired upon from Resaca to Kingston.”
“I am satisfied…that the problem of this war consists in the awful fact that the present class of men who rule the South must be killed outright rather than in the conquest of territory, so that hard, bull-dog fighting, and a great deal of it, yet remains to be done…Therefore, I shall expect you on any and all occasions to make bloody results.”
“I’m going to march to Richmond…and when I go through South Carolina it will be one of the most horrible things in the history of the world. The devil himself couldn’t restrain my men in that state”
Read a biography of Sherman. Read his letters. The things he did were almost beyond comprehension. There was a real reason they put him in an asylum. I in no excuse any of the things we have done which are wrong, but to claim that they are worse than what Sherman did is simply untrue.
He deliberately waged war on civilians. Hung, tortured, raped, killed outright as examples. He had a whole crew called “Bummers” who were tasked with foraging and taking all the food and ability to produce it from communities, and destroying everything they couldn’t take so that the land was left uninhabitable once Sherman left.
Sherman’s shit would make Bin Laden blanche.
You couldn’t always in those conflicts, either, so I don’t think this is valid.
If it was just as simple as cutting and running, that would be fine. I think though that cutting and running increases the chances of a worse conflict later, and increases the chances of a genocide later. We need to win decisively now, so that we don’t have to fight it again in a much worse way later. We can probably win now without genocide or destroying the Middle East. Later on this will probably not be the case. Winning may not even be possible.
If we are going to fight a war we should be fighting until our enemy either gives up, is destroyed, or we are destroyed. It is not a matter of “acceptable.” There’s nothing about this conflict that is acceptable. It’s a matter of necessity. I don’t think that it is a necessity to annihiliate the Iraqi people now. If we keep screwing around though, it may be in the future.
That’s only true if you regard this as a race/ethnic war, or a war to loot the ME of it’s oil; not “fighting for democracy” or even a religious war. Would killing everyone in Europe been a victory in WW 2 ?
Too late; we are already much worse than them.
And an effective means of killing the enemy; us.
They are fighting because we are occupying their land, slaughtered their people, ruined their country. Hope ? We have destroyed all hope for the Iraqis; the rest of their lives will be Hell, and they know it, and they know we are to blame. What reason do they have to NOT fight ?
Or Reagan just paid them off. Recall Iran-contra.
The terrorists are a near irrelevancy in Iraq; most of the fighters are Iraqis who have nothing to lose, thanks to us. What can we threaten them with ?
We can’t even DEFINE win, much less do so.
We can leave.
Of course they would; killing the people who killed your friends and family and devastated your country is a goal in itself.
If true ( and it’s not ), so ? We are the bad guys; hurting us and our troops is a good thing.
So anyone who opposes us is a terrorist ? Most of the people fighting us are Iraqis; unless we intend to stay forever, or kill every last Iraqi, they already know that all they have to do is outlast us.
Besides, the last thing the terrorists want is for us to leave.
Hardly; we ally with them as often as we fight them, on matters like abortion and homosexuality. We are at war with the people of Iraq; not even their government, but their people.
And “militant Islam” isn’t powerful enough to be much of a danger, and it’s not the sort of enemy best fought with a military anyway.
Why ? We are the bad guys. We should lose, as badly as possible; it will be both better for the world, and for us if it discourages us from trying this garbage again.
Now that’s just silly. They don’t have the power; they don’t even have anything close to the power to do that.
The latter. Iraq is a battle in the war against militant Islam. Militant Islam means to destroy us.
You might be right. I’ve considered that, and you might be right. The reason why I think you are wrong though is that Vietnam was a battle against communism. Ultimately, we were fighting a rationale nonsecular opponent though. The threat of mutually assured destruction deterred escalation.
I don’t think the militant Islam we are fighting though is rational or would be coerced by such a detterant. I think they would use whatever they could against us.
It would be nice though, if you were right. If we could withdraw, if things would settle down and militant Islam would mature and rationalize and become something that could be dealt with without a war.
I think though that militant Islam though is anti-rational and has specifically evolved its tactics and methods as a counter to rationalism and civilization. It’s methods are specifically those that can defeat a restrained and peace-seeking people. That’s what terrorism and fanaticism has evolved to do over the last forty years.
No, it’s a war against the Iraqi people; for control of the region’s oil. And an opportunity to kill people in “retaliation” for 9-11. And just for the hell of it.
So ? They can’t.
The Iraq war is HELPING them, not hurting them. I’m sure they pray that we will stay there a long, long time.
Der Trihs
The one sentence rebuttals “No,” “So ? They can’t.” “The Iraq war is HELPING them, not hurting them.” aren’t doing it for me.
I’m trying to communicate ideas. Your basically posting simple negations. If you’re intent is simply to negate what I’m saying than I suppose these are good tactics. If you wish to discuss ideas with me, you’ll need to give me reasons and show me your ideas that go beyond “No. It’s not.”
Would we had learned some lessons from Vietnam!
That is not a weakness of democracy. It is rather the point of it. What the people want should be done – be that war or peace.
And the press is just as free in Iraq at the moment – mainly because no one has the power to censor it effectively.
No, we don’t. Because the insurgents definitely are committed to winning at all costs. They will keep fighting no matter what. You cannot frighten or demoralize men who are willing to volunteer as suicide bombers.
No, we don’t, Scylla.
Because any cure that might be applied there is worse than the disease.
:dubious: How exactly does domestic opposition to the war “hurt our troops”? It’s the Administration’s fault, not peace protestors’, that they don’t have the armor and equipment they need. Seems to me they’re in much more danger of being hurt by Iraqis than by Code Pink.
Bear in mind, also, we have more than one enemy here. Each faction has its own agenda. Enmity to the foreign occupiers is the only thing holding them together, and even that doesn’t work all the time. If we pull out they’ll fight each other – but civil war is inevitable whether we stay or go.
Israel did simply win, in 1967. Conflict continues because Palestinians still live in the conquered territories, they are unwilling to accept Israeli rule, and the Israelis are unwilling to exterminate or expel them. I certainly hope you do not wish the Israelis were willing to take such measures, then or later. That example would empty your “total war is kinder in the long run” argument of all meaning or value. Not that it has any to begin with.
The Islamic nations, singly or together, will never in our lifetimes be in a position to present a realistic conventional military threat to America or even to Europe. Terrorism is all the Islamafundies have got – and the only ways to effectively deal with it are non-military in nature.
I hope you are old enough, now, to realize that resolution was and remains clinically insane.
We don’t have to win. The insurgents have to win, or lose all they have. We can afford to lose. We can lose, in that particular theater, and still remain safe, free, strong and rich.
But, they never will, not if Saladin himself rises from the grave.
No, it isn’t. Iraq has nothing whatsoever to do with the “war” on Islamic terrorism – a problem that, in any case, is better characterized, and should be addressed, as a policing problem. Going after it with an army is like trying to use a machine gun to rid a house of termites.
:rolleyes: And I did; the full statement was : “No, it’s a war against the Iraqi people; for control of the region’s oil. And an opportunity to kill people in “retaliation” for 9-11. And just for the hell of it.”.
You keep making claims that are just silly or our warped. Iraq is a “war against militant Islam” ? We killed Saddam Hussein and handed Iraq over to militant Islam. We may “need” to annihilate all Iraqis ? What are they going to do that comes close to justifying that ? And your constant harping of militant Islam as such a dangerous force that any action whatsoever is justified to stop it - that claim is utterly ridiculous.
Reagan’s election had almost nothing to do with the release of the hostages in Iran. Carter had been seeking channels to negotiate for their release since shortly after they were taken. Part of the problem was that he could never get in contact with anyone who truly had the authority to order such a thing. It was just after a revolution, and power was still shifting between the new government and the ayatollahs. The military mission Carter did order only stiffened the resolve of the hostage takers. Reagan just played coy about the whole thing during the campaign. Carter did eventually secure the terms to release the hostages. The timing of it was one last embarassment the students wanted him to suffer.
In fact, the Reagan team might actually have delayed their release.
You’re throwing off a lot of ideas here, Scylla. Some are odd, some are bad, and some downright scary. You seem to be bent on unleashing your hard-headed realism upon us, a stern and sobering review. They seem to be receiving due attention, no need to repeat the glaringly obvious. But this, in particular, I thought noteworthy.
It worse than that, and we made it worse than that. Now it is morphing into militant Islam against militant Islam, Shia against Sunni. We had a strep throat, now we have smallpox.
You want the AlQ in Iraq destroyed? Then leave, AlQ is virulently anti-Shia, and the Shia majority in Iraq will wipe them out toot damn sweet. Might take out a couple hundred thousand Sunni doing it. But, well, you can’t make broken eggs without breaking some eggs…
(If our presence in Iraq is actually having some damping effect (and I find that a very debatable question), we are then preventing the annihilation of AlQ in Iraq!)
The longer we stay, the more we cement our attachment to the Shia government of Iraq, the more we cement the impression of Sunni Islam than a) the Great Satan is loosed upon them and b) the Shia heretics are allied with the Evil Ones. (Us.) Jihad. Holy war. Capper? Cherry on top! The Sunni are the overwhelming majority. Goody.
Sherman thought Hell was a civil war. He didn’t know the half of it. Fighting for land and ideology doesn’t bring out the true savagery in mankind, for that, they have to be killing in God’s name.
We should pull out and let the Shia and the Sunni massacre each other. Then my Christian Assyrian neighbors can finally go home.
Let’s see… If I apply Sherman’s tactics to Iraq… that means we should competely and utterly destory Iraq’s oil infrastructure. If only those mean ol’ Democrats would let us do that.
A brief, succinct, and very intelligent summation by J.M. Marshall, of* Talking Points Memo…*
http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/013856.php
It is too tightly constructed for excerpts. So go read, already.
Scylla:
About your ultimate fighting example.
It’s odd that someone who’d lose in 15 minutes could last an hour. But say they can. If they last an hour, and don’t lose the match, but both fighters are so beat up that they are permanently injured, is this a victory for anyone? Perhaps we’ve already damaged Iraqi society beyond repair, certainly no surges or walls are repairing it. And for us, a country that used to be a beacon of hope is now known for torture and spiriting away innocent people. I think we’re damaged too. Maybe it is time for the ref to end the fight, the ref being the American voter in this case.