Well, the Taliban fought the Pakistanis to a standstill got themselves a sweet peace treaty, and now al Qaeda’s set up new training camps in Waziristan.
It looks to me like the terrorists are pretty darn emboldened.
They’re certainly not going to go away if we throw another $400 billion in the direction of Baghdad.
I agree with the critics. After reading the questions, it’s easy to see that the poll is complete bullshit geared to elicit a specific response.
:dubious: What, this?
IIRC, the Dems emerged from the end of the Vietnam War politically stronger than the Pubs.
It would certainly and correctly be perceived, however, as a failure of the Bush Admin.
You are attributing Machiavellian skill in political calculation to the insurgents in order to explain their behavior. Occam’s Razor would suggest a simpler explanation: The insurgents are attacking and killing the occupying forces at every opportunity just because that’s what insurgents do.
The Taliban and Al Qaeda were formed long after the Soviet Withdraw. The Taliban overthrew the goverment formed by the original victors over the Soviets.
The Soviets were invited into Afghanistan to defend a home-grown Communist revolution. (It was like supporting Castro, not taking over Poland, or at least it started out that way.) What reason do you have to think they would not have gone in, if the Americans had stayed even longer in Vietnam?
:rolleyes: “Defense” has nothing to do with any of this, Moto.
It will almost certainly be replaced by a Shiite theocracy; while I’m sure he’d prefer a Sunni version, I’m also sure that he would prefer a Shiite or even a Christian theocracy over any sort of secularism.
And I seriously doubt there will be a democracy there for a very long time, since we’ve discredited the whole idea in that part of the world. As far as the ME is concerned, “democracy” = “bloody chaos”; the sort of chaos that makes the rule of someone like Saddam look like a golden age.
Our military is pinned down, our equipment and people wearing out, our political and moral capital zero. Crippled.
Hardly, what with the flood of recruits we’ve created for him, and his ability to expand into Iraq now that we’ve eliminated Saddam. This sort of conflict is more about people than money.
I don’t. In public they’d tell us it was our problem, with a few platitudes about solidarity in the face of terrorism; in private I expect they’d say we brought it on ourselves. And the more democratic countries would avoid helping us for fear of the public reaction.
Of course it does; it makes us look like what we are. Liars, sadistic, greedy and bloodthirsty. The Islamic fanatics call us names like the “Great Satan”, and we do our best to convince the world they are right - a major victory for people like Bin Laden.
Most likely they’d leave the country or be killed.
Most likely Iraq will create or sponser a Shiite version once we leave ( or even if we don’t ); they have no reason to love Al Qaeda.
Our being there “emboldens” them; they want us in Iraq.
This growing scandal over poor care for wounded vets at Walter Reed might make it difficult for Americans to buy into the sincerity of the administration’s ‘support are troops’ mantra.
Bush needs to get out in front of this if he’s to have any chance of pulling off the big bamboozle. So far he’s not doing anything.
Al Qaeda has become a movement instead of an organization, and the news this week was that Al Qaeda’s top people are getting back in the loop.
Since when was this about the support of nations?
Not only will opposition to the war not cost the Democratic Party (considering that it already gained them the House and the Senate), it appears that support for the war will shatter the Republican party into fragments. It’s exceptionally bad policy. It’s exceptionally costly policy. And it has yielded a new Viet Nam and has allowed the continued existence of the actual enemy, Al Quada. Apparently, you can both run and hide, and continue to lead a terrorist organization to boot!
But unlike Mr. Moto, I won’t for a second pretend to offer sage and concerned counsel to the other side. America has jumped off the train that Bush is steaming to the lip of the cliff. I’ll be pleased as punch to see him take the Republican party right on over with him.
Yeah, that poll’s a riot.
It’s clear that Rush and a bunch of other excited wingnuts haven’t heard the adage that if something sounds too good to be true, it usually is.
One wonders how they might integrate those polling results with the larger set across multiple polls here. It’s clear that those findings are at odds with the general findings from a variety of polls.
In all likelihood, excited wingnuts probably never try to integrate findings from multiple polls. That requires thinking about something, which is inconsistent with being an excited wingnut.
The tragedy of 9-11 provided an opportunity for American leadership which could have been used to cripple the Islamist movement. That opportunity was horribly wasted. We had the world united with us. We could have stayed and successfully hunted Osama down, continued to pressure Sadaam with united international pressure in such a way that those alleged weapons of mass destruction were neutralized as a potential threat and any military action, if ever necessary, was done in a true multilateral manner. We didn’t. We let Osama go and instead got ourselves bogged down destroying a bad man who was no threat to us and destroyed the stability that that particular bad man enforced on the area without having anything ready to takes its place. The results have been a huge success for decentralized organization that is al-Qaeda, the squandering of America’s place as the world leader, civil war in Iraq, and an Iran no counterweight. The ME and the world are now a less stable places. Iran was always the bigger threat to US interests and is now able to operate more freely and will, as a direct result of our efforts, end up as the region’s dominant powerhouse with no significant offset.
This damage is done and there is no undoing it. Now we can only focus on damage control and slowly digging ourselves out of the ditch we have been driven into. Bigger hammers are not the answer. We need to pull out some different tools. Political ones.
The Dems will do well to respond not to short-term polls but to what is right and then lead the public to that conclusion. To do that they need articulate leadership that can actually unite the American people. If they don’t have that then any policy will cost them.
The Dems were voted in largely as a backlash to a very stupid and greedy war. If they fight the escalation they will be doing what they were voted in to do.
However , if Osama walks in from the desert next year and says I give up you guys are right. No more terrorism. The Repubs will be in power forever and we will have a radically different country. That is an unlikely scenario but would destroy the Dems forever.
Chiam, I have an analogy for you that came to mind, that may help explain why Osama would not view his current state as “a terrible debacle” Just remember that he is as much a true believer as was any of the Zealots fighting against Rome. Imagine a history in which the Zealot leader, Eleazar ben Gamla had been routed from Jerusalum but had in return earned a new following among all the Jews. He was in hiding but had more hope that Jews would unite behind him and more were joining the ranks in the Revolt. Somehow Rome’s actions in Israel caused enough of a response across the Empire that her influence across the world was threatened, or at least diminished. Would Eleazar ben Gamla had been displeased?
Osama’s perception is that he as unto a Zealot leader fighting off a Rome that has no capacity for the cruelty and indiscriminate destruction that the real Romans had. That was the force needed to crush the Revolt and would be the force needed to crush the Islamists. Force is not going to work here, not the force that we will bring to bear anyway. Political solutions that marginalize or at least contain the Islamists while the Arab world gradually embraces modernity are. That is real counter-insugency.
Serious question, Moto, why are you so worried abou the Democratic Party and their strategies? This is certainly not the first thread you’ve opened “recommending” the right course of action for the Dems to succeed.
Funny though, most of what you post goes exactly against general wisdom as to what the Dems have to do to gain the WH: witness the '06 Congressional backlash against your Party, Iraq and its hawks. And yet you insist, based on a guy that I’ve never heard of – besides the fact that whatever he might have been to Gore is now totally irrelevant given what Gore keeps saying about the Iraq clusterfuck – befoe, that Democrats should become a mirror image of the (lessening) crew of warmongering Republicans.
Not a bit disingenuous are you?
No. I’m on record here for a long time hoping for both a stronger and more responsible Democratic Party, which I believe would help the two-party system in general, and a more defense-minded Democratic Party as well, which goes along with the first hope as well as ensuring that military matters won’t suffer in a Democratic administration.
Now, you can judge my sincerity as you wish. And it is true that I won’t likely vote Democratic for high office anytime soon (though I do sometimes vote for Democrats in local races). But a Democratic party in the Truman-Kennedy mold would still be liberal, but wouldn’t be one that neglected its obligations abroad or in the Defense Department.
The answers in this thread to the premise of the OP is based, like everything else, through the ideological prism of the individual involved. Some people cannot help denying that the democrats are perceived as weak on national defense. If they admitted it, it would shake the foundation of everything they have spent years justifying and believing in. Logic does not work on people who think their ideology is flawless. The right has its share of zealots as well. People that tell themselves that stem cell research must be stopped…and that prayer in schools is the most important issue of the day. Many on the left refuse to accept the twin albatrosses that the left has been dealing with for forty years…the “tax and spend” philosophy and the anti-war/weakness on national defense labels. Whether these beliefs belong to a particular individual or not, when someone has a (D) after their name, they carry this baggage. I belive that was a primary reason that John Kerry made his presidential campaign about a short time in Vietnam almost forty years ago instead of his Senate record. He was trapped by current events into trying to defeat the Democratic pacifist stereotype by “proving his manhood”. And he wasn’t doing it for the people that would vote for him anyway. He knew he had “lockstep democrats” from day one. He was doing it for the casually informed moderates who might still equate democrats with weakness on national defense.
The last hawkish Democrats that come to my mind are people like “Scoop” Jackson and Sam Nunn. The Democrats do not have anyone today that compares to the national security/defense credibility that these men had. To many people, when you mention national defense and democrats, the idea of “nuclear freezes” and cold war mushiness come to mind. Remember how horrified some people were when Ronald Reagan made clear that he was going to be openly adversarial to the Soviet Union? They called him a a “cowboy”. They insisted on trying to undermine SDI by calling it “Star Wars” and claiming that it was too expensive. It turned out to be one of the primary reasons that Gorbachov realized the game was up and that the Soviet Union could not afford to compete with our military technology and feed the people at the same time.
But some people refused to follow that string of logic. Even now, they are foaming at the mouth to refute what I just said. Those are the people that are responsible for the “weak on defense” label that the Democrats wear today. Some of them wear it proudly…but they must remember that the heady feeling of righteousness may have unintended long term political consequences.
So hear we are at a crossroads for the Democratic Party. It’s the same one they have been facing for years now…moderates versus the left wing. The left wing wants the United States out of Iraq. They are doing whatever they can to make that happen. It’s a big gamble. The Democrats had a very successful election in 2006. Is pulling out really what the majority of the american people want? If so, the Democrats should proudly march into the chambers of the House and Senate and cast their votes for all to see. Don’t waste time with non-binding resolutions designed for posturing and political cover. Draft the pullout legislation and put it on the floor. Take a stand.
The fact that they are not willing to do that at this point tells me that the anti-war stereotype is something that they are very much aware of…people who protest the lack of its existence to the contrary.
What happens in Iraq to this point is on GWB and the Republicans. If Democrats vote to pull the plug, they will be in the game as well. They will be taking a chance on getting some of the glory…or the blame…depending on how things turn out. If it’s what the american people really want, the Democrats will be set to be in the majority for years. If things go to hell, they run the risk of being tagged with the “weakness” label…at least by those who are not intellectually invested with tending the sacred tenets of leftward thought. How many of those people are out there…and how many of them will vote? We’ll find out in 2008 and beyond…assuming the Democrats decide to get in the game and take a stand that actually has consequences instead of being “non-binding”. If I were the Republicans, I would not stand in the way of any binding withdrawal legislation. It’s a no-lose situation for them. If Bush vetos, he has to take the consequences. If it passes, the Democrats get stuck to the tar baby as well if things go south.