“Safeguarding morale” - I like that. Good food, uninterrupted sleep, letters and parcels from home, some select creature comforts, good equipment, good supplies - and a well-defined mission with clear objectives is what builds morale. Dog and pony shows don’t. Not that I’d worry - I’m sure the troops are able to form their own judgments. Soldiers have been proven to detect BS from superior officers at several hundred yards, it’s a survival trait.
From what I read in the newspapers, Iraq is more like Vietnam than Europe.
When United States troops liberated the European countries in 1944/1945, they were cheered, and kissed, and had flowers thrown to them everywhere, and the French, Belgium, and other liberated peoples did not try to bomb or snipe at our boys once we liberated their countries and we were then there as occupying soldiers.
I dont even think the German, Japanese, or Scandanavian citizens resisted/killed occupying American troops post 1945, as much as the Iraqis are resisting our presence now.
When the United States went into Vietnam to liberate it in 1965, they were still being shot at until they left in 1974.
If the Iraqi liberation was a success, we wouldnt even need our boys to still be there.
We will lose a lot more of American lives if bush plans on staying there until the middle east/Iraq “stabilizes”.
Judge our success(or failure) there by comparing it to history when we sent U.S. troops into Canada in 1812, Vietnam in 1965, and europe in 1944.
Juan Cole has done just that, and his conclusions are highly disturbing (scroll down to September 22 entry for the full story).
As Razorblade notes, these kind of comparative statistical exercises are fraught with difficulty, so take this with a nice big grain of salt. It’s interesting for illustrative purposes, though.
By the way, Razorblade, welcome to the SDMB.
Aldebaran, thank you for the response.
madmonk28, please be safe.
This one did:
But of course, he’s a Democrat now. What does he know? Chickenhawks always know better.
Geez. Did he get banned again?
rjung:
No, that’s not what I meant. I meant that they’ve placed greater emphasis on successfully arguing for the war than successfully fighting it. (And selling the attack on Iraq as part of the war on terrorism sounds like the ol’ bait-n-switch.)
-
Scandinavia was not at war with the United States, so why is it in a group with Germany and Japan?
-
The United States didn’t go into Vietnam in 1965; they were there before then.
-
And they didn’t go in to liberate it; they were there to prop up a puppet government, in part against its own people.
-
The U.S. didn’t occupy Canada in 1812, so why is THAT comparable to Vietnam or Europe?
There appears to be no coherent plan on how to deal with Iraq’s rebel held territories. Or if there is, there’s some serious miscommunication going on between the Iraqi defence ministry, and the US military. On the one hand, Iraq’s defence minister says that there’s a big offensive on the way: Rebel-held areas will be retaken in October
While on the other hand, the chairman of the joint chiefs tells us that Force Cannot Produce Lasting Results in Fallujah
It’s almost October 1, so something should be happening soon. I hope they get their plans sorted out before taking precipitate action. Not doing so could seriously screw any chance of elections come January.
If we are about to send in a crapload of force in the rebel cities and areas… why havn’t we? We have this awesome power, shock and awe to the max, and we have to announce it to everyoe that … ‘Soon! Just you wait… We will send more troops to kick your ass! Just wait another month and you’ll be screwed!’
How about we do it or admit we’re the ones that are screwed?
Duh, they’re making preparations. They have to take into account the governments wishes of them invading the cities out of their control, the amount of deaths that might occur, whether those deaths will be predominantely civilians which could cause Allawis and the US reputation to sink further lower, and whether it would be better to exhaust all other options to bring them back into the political process before deciding the military option.
Madmonk apparently knows what’s going on; at least, you’ve all heralded him as the voice of authority and vindication for your “I told you so” objective. So how can you say that contractors don’t know what’s going on? Soldiers also know what’s going on. That’s why they’re careful and suspicious of every person they see. War is dangerous. People get killed in wars. Your proposal, it seems to me, is not to give them The Truth, but to paralyze them with fear. “Hey, Joe! Just want to let you know you’re gonna die, but you hang here anyway until then, okay?”. Lord have mercy.
-
Finland is Scandanavian, and it was an Axis power- Finland was on the other side with Germany and was against the Allied nations. But it really doesnt matter which Scandanavian power allied with whom, if they were oppressed by anyone, e.g. Denmark was oppressed by Germany. The point is, nearly all the Scandanavian powers were oppressed by somebody, we liberated them, and after we liberated them, they did not shoot at our troops.
-
Its true that The United States was involved since June of 1950, and had advisors there for a long time, from a few hundred to a few thousand(we currently have U.S. troops in a hundred countries), but it wasnt until 1965 that a significant number of U.S. troops were sent in, to do military action, a la the Iraq invasion.
-
Use whatever word you want to use, but Lyndon Johnson and American soldiers went into Vietnam for supposedly the same reasons that bush went into Iraq. He said he didnt want the vietnamese people being oppressed, he said that if we didnt go into vietnam it would threaten the US and world peace, he said that vietnam was unstable, etc. and US troops went into a country that didnt want us there.
-
Canada was comparable to Iraq in that Canada at that time was under control of the King of England. If the US was successful in winning in Canada, we would have liberated Canada from the control of the king of England, and free its people from colonial rule.
Canada is comparable to vietnam, and to iraq, in that the Canadians did not want us there.
It is comparable to europe, in that we were invading a country supposedly to set it free, europe wanted us to free it, other countries do/did not want us there.
All I am saying is that whether or not we are or will be successful in Iraq, or Canada, or vietnam, or europe, is mostly a function of whether or not the people want us to come in to their country and change their government. Europe wanted us to do it, vietnam, Canada, Cuba, and Iraq do not want us there.
Also, our success in Iraq can be measured by how long it takes. In europe, Germany and japan, it was only days after we defeated the army that the people stopped shooting at us. In Iraq, vietnam, etc, our people will be killed as long as they are stationed there.
America didn’t fight the Finns – Ivan did. You didn’t liberate any Scandinavian country – Tommy did, and for a small part - Ivan. There were no yankie troops in Scandinavia, there were a few English. Montgomery liberated Denmark & Norway. Sweden & Iceland were neutral.
Finland was forced to “liberate” itself from the Germans when the latter declined to leave Finland as required by the Finnish-Soviet armistice. Finland was never an Axis country per se, but was allied with Germany for the sole purpose of winning back territory stolen by the Soviet Union as a buffer during the winter war. The Finns refer to WWII as the Continuation War for that reason. The Finns had no real beef with the western allies (although Britain did eventually declare war when the Finns turned down an opportunity to make peace mid-war).
WRT the time it takes for the Iraqi’s to stop shooting being the measure of success - it was only after several years of bombing and a bloody grinding inch by inch ground war that the German’s surrendered. Let us hope that we are more successful this time.
After Germany was taken, the German citizens did not keep shooting at us, and bombing us, like Iraq is doing. We have already taken Iraq, just like we already taken Germany.
In reply to the OP:
Wall Street Journal reporter Farnaz Fassihi is stationed in Baghdad. His recent (9/29) e-mail to his friends is posted on this site. This is a first-hand account of Iraq by a reporter from a fairly conservative publication.
That is one depressing email.
As I recall, one of Saddam’s final offers of settlement before we invaded was to negotiate an exile for himself and a gradual conversion of Iraq to democracy. Hindsight is 20-20, I guess. Maybe we should have taken him up on it.
Thank you for posting that, Hey you!. To be fair, are there any blogs from people in Iraq that say the situation is improving? Or is it just not?
I just checked the thread and realized that might come across in a different way than I meant it. Just seeing if there are any other blogs out there. I’m not saying the situation in Iraq is going either way, good or bad.
I don’t know of any Iraq situation blogs outside of the ones already mentioned earlier in this thread. I recall some of those subscribe to a more positive outlook.