[QUOTE=BJMoose]
Guess y’all have missed the official spin on this. Saith Earless Leader: “They have made some progress on about half of the benchmarks; airgo, everything ist sehr Gut in dem Vaterland.”
Mein Fuhrer! I can walk!
[/QUOTE]
And some in the media have already fuzzed this up. Mike Barnacle, in for Chris Matthews on Hardball, said that only about half of the targets** had been met.**
[QUOTE=David Simmons]
And some in the media have already fuzzed this up. Mike Barnacle, in for Chris Matthews on Hardball, said that only about half of the targets** had been met.**
[/QUOTE]
Even that is a matter of dispute. Link to Cordesman’s latest, a rather sceptical take on this report, since I mentioned him earlier:
http://www.csis.org/index.php?option=com_csis_pubs&task=view&id=3948
I vote we take him at his word.
[QUOTE=elucidator]
He’s not about to let this war be micromanaged by politicians. That al-Maliki is an Iraqi politician is of no consequence.
[/QUOTE]
luci, that can’t be right. If al-Maliki were to ask us to leave, then we’d be fighting AQ here instead of there.
How the CD doesn’t make Bush’s “brains” shoot out his ears is a question for scholars much more qualified than I.
-Joe
[QUOTE=Contrapuntal]
Is it still too early to analyze whether we will be met by throngs of flower-wielding Iraqis, loudly proclaiming their gratitude for every ear to hear? When **can **we determine how well the war is going, exactly?
[/QUOTE]
The war has been going generally in a negative direction, with ups and downs. When did anyone make the claim that we’re going to be met by throngs of flower-wielding Iraqis because of the surge? One second, I have to check something.
Oh, right, it’s 2007. I think you may be confusing 2007 with 2003, it isn’t 2003 anymore. Anyone who thinks mistakes haven’t been made in the period 2003-2007 is not someone worth listening to, if anyone had read the press conference from Odierno that I linked to earlier in this thread, you will note he clearly and candidly admits when things in the past were done incorrectly.
There is a big difference between determining how the war is going and determining how a specific operation within the war is going. The surge does not equate to the war in Iraq or vice versa. The surge could be doing great and the overall war could still be doing terribly, or vice versa. What is true is that the surge has not been fully implemented for much more than a month. The last combat troops did not arrive until recently, and various enablers for those troops did not finish arriving until after that. We’ve cleared out weapons caches, training centers, IED factories, we’ve cut supply lines insurgents have used around Baghdad and are operating with success in areas we have not operated in since 2003/2004. This is all from Odierno’s press conference. I do not think he would blatantly make stuff up, I think that stuff is actually happening, I think he is one to know about it since he is directly in charge of combat operations in Baghdad and its environs.
The idea that we’re going to be greeted in Iraq as liberators was off base. Hey, guess what, we realized that in 2003. However, I do note that CNN was showing video feeds of Iraqis tearing down statues of Saddam Hussein and well, greeting Americans as liberators back during the initial invasion. Do I think that even sans Rumsfeld things could have been kept that way? No, I think the sectarian divisions were destined to cause problems. However, if we had gone about things differently from the very beginning, those problems could have been managed much better than they were for the first three years in which Rumsfeld was setting policy.
Many people are calling Petraeus President Bush’s “Grant.” That may not be a terribly poor comparison. The American Civil War by and large was not going well for the Union several years into it. Luckily for Lincoln things started to turn around before people went to the ballot box in 1864, because for a significant period of time the danger was legitimate and real that the Union’s efforts were going to fail, that Lincoln was going to be swept out of power and replaced by a President who campaigned on a platform of peace with the Confederacy.
My general feeling is, “so what” if the war has gone bad? That just means we need to try new strategies. The stakes for us in this war are low, in my opinion. If we withdrew our troops today would anyone in America’s life get much worse? Nope, sure wouldn’t. This war isn’t hurting America. As a former soldier I say, “so what” to the casualties we’ve suffered. When we get to the point where just because we’ve suffered casualties we have to stop a military action, we need to disband the military. Soldiers die, soldiers get wounded in horrible ways, and that is by and large a consequence of war. Way more Iraqis have died than Americans, 3,500 is a tiny little drop in the bucket of 300 million Americans. I don’t want to minimize the ultimate sacrifice that our young men and women have made, many of them probably wanted no part of this war, yet they went because that was what they were ordered to do and that is what they signed up for; that is why politicians owe a great deal to the soldiers who they send into war. That is why said politicians owe them much better than what they got under Rumsfeld, and hopefully things are starting to change under Gates.
This is a sustainable war even if casualties don’t decrease anytime soon. What’s important is we have a responsibility to work towards “fixing” Iraq until Iraq tells us to leave or we can no longer afford to be there, the former hasn’t happened yet, and we’re not remotely close to the latter.
[QUOTE=John Mace]
Sam, this isn’t 1941. This is 1949. We won the Iraq war 4 years ago. It’s over. For the last 4 years we’ve been trying to nation build, and now we’re mediating a Civil War. Thing is, we’re not even picking sides-- we’re fighting against both major factions as if we could just beat them into submission. The whole point of the surge was to create some “space” so that the political process could move forward. We can argue all day about whether or not we’ve created that space, but the bottom line is that the political process isn’t moving forward. So, either the surge isn’t creating the needed “space” or that “space” isn’t helping the process move forward. Granted, it’s only July and the “surge” has only been fully operational for 1 month, but the Iraqi parliament hasn’t even thrown us a bone. They seem intent on fighting a civil war, and I don’t see how we can stop them.
[/quote]
I’ve said much the same thing except I’m not on the same page as you with the current progress of the surge. Part of the problem is us, or more specifically Americans who do not have the stomach for the meal they have decided to eat.
We went into Iraq with the support of a majority of the American population and a majority of the elected representatives of said government. A big blockage in reconciliation between the various factions in Iraq is the fact that they know what is going on over here. Guess what, they have the internet, too! They can read CNN.com, they can read blogs, they can read opinion polls. As long as the perception remains, “the Americans are not here to stay, we can’t rely on them” Iraqis are going to be posturing for the future, are going to be lying in wait, ready for the big battle between the other factions so that their faction can hopefully seize power in post-America Iraq.
Look at the message Iraqis have been getting up until now. The message has been, “If things get really nasty, we may blow up some of your buildings, kill a bunch of people, then leave.” Now we’re projecting into the population itself, we’re working as security not as a “search and destroy” response team, that stays sheltered in our fortresses the rest of the time. As you yourself said, we’re one month into this, there is a second report due in September for a reason, I like to think two reports were scheduled in advance for a reason. I think that reason is so that we could wait until that second report is filed before a final, comprehensive overview of the situation is done. Maybe I’m being optimistic, maybe the two reporting dates were only there so that Democrats could find a way to exploit them for their own political gain.
If Petraeus comes out in September and says things have not materially improved, I’m going to take things from there and reanalyze my feelings on the Iraq war. Maybe at that point I will have to conclude it really is a failed war, and that we have to wipe our hands of the Iraqis and close our eyes to the horrors that will follow our withdrawal. If anyone here is interested, you can be certain I will change my tune somewhat if in September the word really is “no meaningful progress has been made.” However one month is nothing. One month has been long enough that we have seen some security improvements on the ground, but it’s not near long enough for Iraqi factional leaders to change their assessment on us. We’ve been there for four years, and we’ve let them down continuously for four years, I can’t blame them that after a single month they haven’t started a big group hug.
I think part of the reason I’m hesitant to do that is I think there’s a very real chance if we do that, twenty, maybe twenty-five years from now we’ll end up back in Iraq, but this time as part of a controversial U.N. “peacekeeping” mission. Of course, I’ll be in my 70s at the time so maybe I’ll be too senile to worry about it, but maybe not. I’m also very hesitant to call it an unwinnable situation, because that absolves decision makers of responsibility. If we leave Iraq because it is unwinnable, the political leaders that lead us out of it will say, “there is nothing that we could do” to stop the violence and mayhem that will follow. I don’t like absolving decision makers of responsibility. It’s my belief if we withdraw it will be because of Democratic leaders that want to exploit a difficult war for political gain, to the detriment of Iraq and quite possibly to the detriment of the United States national security.
[QUOTE=Martin Hyde]
I’ve said much the same thing except I’m not on the same page as you with the current progress of the surge. Part of the problem is us, or more specifically Americans who do not have the stomach for the meal they have decided to eat.
[/quote]
We’ve decided to eat? We were told this was a first class meal, but we discovered that the ingredients came from China. Now we don’t have the stomach for it.
So, how long do we have to stay for this not to be the case, or do we have to kill them all before we leave? Why were they fighting a few years ago, when the war had more support?
Well, I agree that it was well past due to get out of whack-a-mole mode, but an article in the Times, interviewing soldiers in the city, said that the way it has worked out is that they spend less time on the street, since so much of their force is required to defend the local bases. The insurgents are actually freer than they were before the surge. Hey, I thought it made sense also.
I know the new party line is that the surge is only a month old. That’s crap. Casualties increased, as expected, for the past several months, showing the surge was in operation. The effect of the surge should be linear with the number of additional troops. It’s not like no action is taken until all the forces have been deployed. This is just another excuse for lack of results.
We know the report is going to fudge things to put a good face on them - we’re seeing it already. The WaPo reported today that some are concerned that Bush is setting Petraeus up as a fall guy already. The real problem is that the political process is going to take time, time is running out, and the Iraqis don’t seem to feel any sense of urgency. Do you think they are going to sit down in mid-August, pull a few all-nighters, and get a political settlement wrapped up?
[QUOTE=Martin Hyde]
Maybe at that point I will have to conclude it really is a failed war, and that we have to wipe our hands of the Iraqis and close our eyes to the horrors that will follow our withdrawal.
[/QUOTE]
Don’t you dare close your eyes. I want you and the other warmongers to maintain an unblinking stare at the devastation your abstract boardgame politics will have wrought in the real world. Only by keeping your eyes open do we have the slightest chance of remaining unblinded the next time we have a similar choice to make.
[QUOTE=Cervaise]
Don’t you dare close your eyes. I want you and the other warmongers to maintain an unblinking stare at the devastation your abstract boardgame politics will have wrought in the real world. Only by keeping your eyes open do we have the slightest chance of remaining unblinded the next time we have a similar choice to make.
[/QUOTE]
Yeah well, the beautiful thing about opposing all wars is that you get to sleep nights without a guilty conscience, even if your lack of involvement caused a genocide. I was one of the ‘warmongers’ who was arguing that the U.N., or the U.S., or Canada should step up and stop the potential genocide in Rwanda. Do you think the people who opposed intervention stay awake at night thinking about the blood of the millions of people hacked apart with machetes because they did nothing to stop it?
If the ‘warmongers’ advocated overthrowing Saddam in 1991, should those who opposed them lay awake at night crying for the Kurdish children now lying in mass graves after Saddam gassed them? Or for the hundreds of thousands of Iraqis murdered in various purges and reprisals carried out by the Hussein regime?
Should the ‘warmongers’ who agreed to try to stop Hitler in WWII be held responsible for the 40 million people killed in that war? After all, if we had just sued for peace, much of that bloodshed could have been avoided - for a while.
There are consequences of action and inaction. If Saddam had been left in place, who knows where we’d be today? You can’t see the results of the path not taken. Frankly, one main reason I supported the war is because I thought it was inevitable. It wasn’t a question of whether or not Saddam should be engaged - it was a question of whether it was best to do it in 2001, when Saddam was at his weakest, or wait for 10 or 20 years and have to do it anyway, except now with Saddam possibly having nuclear weapons or a revitalized military. As I said at the time, the biggest problem with leaving Saddam alone was that his dictatorship was not just brutal, but incredibly stable. There seemed to me little possibility for change in the next few decades, what with Saddam being relatively young and his children, who were even more evil than he was, poised to take over should he die.
Martin Hyde: Good post. I agree that we should wait for the September report. In that report, I want to see two things - one, that good progress is being made on the ground, and two, that the Malaki government has made real accomodations. I’m not hopeful, and if in September there has been absolutely no progress, I will advocate a withdrawal with the caveat that we must ensure the protection of the Kurdish population. They’ve been on the U.S. side right from the beginning, they’ve made good-faith efforts to compromise, their regions are peaceful and the economy there is booming. They deserve to be defended.
[QUOTE=Sam Stone]
Yeah well, the beautiful thing about opposing all wars
[/quote]
Strawman! Where does Cervaise even remotely suggest that he opposes all wars?
Great rant if that were indeed his position, but I fear your jeremiad is wasted.
[QUOTE=Martin Hyde]
My general feeling is, “so what” if the war has gone bad? That just means we need to try new strategies. The stakes for us in this war are low, in my opinion. If we withdrew our troops today would anyone in America’s life get much worse? Nope, sure wouldn’t. This war isn’t hurting America.
[/QUOTE]
[QUOTE=Martin Hyde]
I think part of the reason I’m hesitant to do that is I think there’s a very real chance if we do that, twenty, maybe twenty-five years from now we’ll end up back in Iraq, but this time as part of a controversial U.N. “peacekeeping” mission. Of course, I’ll be in my 70s at the time so maybe I’ll be too senile to worry about it, but maybe not. I’m also very hesitant to call it an unwinnable situation, because that absolves decision makers of responsibility. If we leave Iraq because it is unwinnable, the political leaders that lead us out of it will say, “there is nothing that we could do” to stop the violence and mayhem that will follow. I don’t like absolving decision makers of responsibility. It’s my belief if we withdraw it will be because of Democratic leaders that want to exploit a difficult war for political gain, to the detriment of Iraq and quite possibly to the detriment of the United States national security.
[/QUOTE]
How can it be a detriment if it is not hurting America?
:sarcasm:
Just another example of the Backstabbing insult/argument, it is still silly.
[QUOTE=Martin Hyde]
The war has been going generally in a negative direction, with ups and downs. When did anyone make the claim that we’re going to be met by throngs of flower-wielding Iraqis because of the surge? One second, I have to check something.
Oh, right, it’s 2007. I think you may be confusing 2007 with 2003, it isn’t 2003 anymore. Anyone who thinks mistakes haven’t been made in the period 2003-2007 is not someone worth listening to, if anyone had read the press conference from Odierno that I linked to earlier in this thread, you will note he clearly and candidly admits when things in the past were done incorrectly.
[/QUOTE]
I think the administration fits the bill (No sooner you hear something similar to an admission of having made a mistake that then Dick Chaney opens his mouth to show how they can fool about 26% of Americans still), and propping up the al-qaeda militants as the target is the same mistake the French did in Algeria by assuming once we get rid of the extremist militants we will make progress. (The French did eliminate the most of the extremist groups, they succeeded, but then other groups formed thanks to the brutal repression, the French still had to go)
As I said before it is even more clear to me that if we leave then all Iraqis will have a reason to get rid of Al-qaeda. We stay, then even more of “the enemy of my enemy is my friend” is to be expected.
[QUOTE=Martin Hyde]
There is a big difference between determining how the war is going and determining how a specific operation within the war is going. The surge does not equate to the war in Iraq or vice versa. The surge could be doing great and the overall war could still be doing terribly, or vice versa.
[/QUOTE]
I thought that talk did go away with Rumsfield, so much for hoping.
[QUOTE=Martin Hyde]
What is true is that the surge has not been fully implemented for much more than a month. The last combat troops did not arrive until recently, and various enablers for those troops did not finish arriving until after that. We’ve cleared out weapons caches, training centers, IED factories, we’ve cut supply lines insurgents have used around Baghdad and are operating with success in areas we have not operated in since 2003/2004. This is all from Odierno’s press conference. I do not think he would blatantly make stuff up, I think that stuff is actually happening, I think he is one to know about it since he is directly in charge of combat operations in Baghdad and its environs.
The idea that we’re going to be greeted in Iraq as liberators was off base. Hey, guess what, we realized that in 2003. However, I do note that CNN was showing video feeds of Iraqis tearing down statues of Saddam Hussein and well, greeting Americans as liberators back during the initial invasion. Do I think that even sans Rumsfeld things could have been kept that way? No, I think the sectarian divisions were destined to cause problems. However, if we had gone about things differently from the very beginning, those problems could have been managed much better than they were for the first three years in which Rumsfeld was setting policy.
[/QUOTE]
No mainstream media outlet as bothered to report that the “footage worth in gold” of the Saddam statue being toppled in Iraq was a created moment by the USA for propaganda purposes. (only the BBC bothered to make a correction) From that moment, ideology and propaganda rather than common sense has ruled in Iraq.
The reason why 2003 and the beginning of the war cannot be ignored is because the same administration that was mistaken then and continue to be mistaken (By crying now [del]wolf[/del] Al-qaeda and Iran at all encounters) is calling the shots.
[QUOTE=RTFirefly]
Where does Cervaise even remotely suggest that he opposes all wars?
[/QUOTE]
QFT. The invasion of Afghanistan was eminently justified and morally correct, regardless of how obscenely it was bungled in the long term by this laughably incompetent administration. The invation of Iraq had neither a pragmatic nor a moral basis from the moment the words “fuck Saddam, we’re taking him out” were produced by Dubya’s pinhead brain.
[QUOTE=Sam Stone]
Should the ‘warmongers’ who agreed to try to stop Hitler in WWII be held responsible for the 40 million people killed in that war? After all, if we had just sued for peace, much of that bloodshed could have been avoided - for a while.
[/QUOTE]
:rolleyes:
Invading for false reasons is the reason why Hitler is blamed for all.
[QUOTE=Sam Stone]
There are consequences of action and inaction. If Saddam had been left in place, who knows where we’d be today? You can’t see the results of the path not taken. Frankly, one main reason I supported the war is because I thought it was inevitable. It wasn’t a question of whether or not Saddam should be engaged - it was a question of whether it was best to do it in 2001, when Saddam was at his weakest, or wait for 10 or 20 years and have to do it anyway, except now with Saddam possibly having nuclear weapons or a revitalized military. As I said at the time, the biggest problem with leaving Saddam alone was that his dictatorship was not just brutal, but incredibly stable. There seemed to me little possibility for change in the next few decades, what with Saddam being relatively young and his children, who were even more evil than he was, poised to take over should he die.
[/quote]
The inspections were making him weaker, back then I posted that it was idiocy to fight now when even the few teeth remaining were being extracted.
[QUOTE=Sam Stone]
Martin Hyde: Good post.
[/QUOTE]
Nope, bad and contradictory with the previous one.
[QUOTE=Sam Stone]
I agree that we should wait for the September report. In that report, I want to see two things - one, that good progress is being made on the ground, and two, that the Malaki government has made real accomodations. I’m not hopeful, and if in September there has been absolutely no progress, I will advocate a withdrawal with the caveat that we must ensure the protection of the Kurdish population. They’ve been on the U.S. side right from the beginning, they’ve made good-faith efforts to compromise, their regions are peaceful and the economy there is booming. They deserve to be defended.
[/QUOTE]
I predict it will be a mixed report and only one thing will be concluded: More Friedman Units.
Now that is curious, the copied link has the “)” but the actual link does not.
Trying that last link again:
Now the copied link is different.
Sam, read, read, Sam:
Bush made intel fit Iraq policy
That way you won’t go making completely irrelevant comments such as this one:
Remind me again, who did Saddam attack – or even threaten to – in 2003? Or for that matter, since GW-I?
or this one:
See now, I do agree with you here. Except the reason it was “inevitable” was because of Bush and the Neocons and not Saddam.
Read, Sam, read:
Bush Planned Iraq ‘Regime Change’ Before Becoming President
As for your current “progress”? Yep, read, Sam.
You Call That Progress? The outrageous White House report on Iraq.
The WH’s own Homeland Security Advisor lying even today that Bin Laden’s AQ and the gang in Iraq are the same group.
And neither comes up even as a serious considerationi in the Pentagon’s withdrawal war games.
There is absolutely no factual support for that position. None. Nor was there at the time. We discussed that rather thoroughly. You brought nothing up to support it then. Because there wasn’t and isn’t any. No excuses now.