Democrats call for surrenderFollow

Do you know how to post without making asinine comments? It turns what could be political debate into childish namecalling, and is quite immature on your part.

Which is why, instead of reading your "contributions", my filters are skipping them, due to them being sub-default.

Do they make padded cells big enough to house both you and your ego Virus?

Do Democrats hate America, Freedom, etc.....

No, to my knowledge, almost everyone loves it, and if they don't, they can move to Antartica for all I care. More America haters out of the country, the better (now there is a difference between hating the country and hating how it is run I believe).

Do I think pulling out of Iraq is a form of surrender?

Absolutely. I want to get an answer. How does pulling all support out of Iraq not a clear form of surrender? We are saying that we quit. Have fun without us because we don't want to be in this anymore. What? You are screwed right now? Well... tough luck ya know! Have fun fighting terrorism without us....

Success is not measured in body count. That's the problem. Everyone's trying to measure things in terms of how many people are injured or killed.

Success is in the change over time within the area you are fighting. Success is measured in the rebuilding of infrastructure. Success is measured in the movement towards a new government. Success is measured in terms of the gradual shift of security work from US to Iraqi forces.

The death rates last year were mostly from attacks on US soldiers while those soldiers were doing security work. Watching checkpoints, and patrolling streets. In the last year, we've seen many Iraqi security forces take over those duties, freeing up US soldiers to patrol into more dangerous areas, but with the ability to actually do something about them (taking the fight to the insurgent camps rather then sitting back and letting them attack us).

For the first time since the occupation, we've begun patrolling and securing the Iraq/Syria border. That's a measure of the progress of the war. This is what you wont see by simply counting up bodies. If we'd used your method of measuring success, we'd have pulled out of the Normandy invasion after the first couple hours because too many people had died. We would have abandoned Iwo Jima because it was too costly to take and hold.


That is totally the wrong way to measure success in a war. And when Murtha implies that we should measure it that way, and ignores the incredible success we've had over the last couple years in Iraq, it cheapens the sacrifices of those who've already fought and died there.

Maybe your husband is one of those who sees his military duty as doing the minimum needed. Maybe he just sees success only in terms of minimizing his risk. That's fine. He's welcome to that attitude. But my experience is that *most* members of the military would rather that their work and sacrifice actually mean something. Is this easy? No. But that's the point. Nothing worth doing ever is.

Let's make it clear that the dems didn't want to pull out immediately, just set a timeline for withdrawal.

Now, to Gbaji, my oh so favorite ex-meth user poster, how many of these soldiers in the Iraqi army do you actually believe are sincere? Do you actually believe that anybody in Iraq likes America or are just lying to appease the aggressor? Who besides the political puppets in place in that psuedo government are sincerely backing the American involvement in their country? Also, given that the country citizens are use to oppression and fear, how many of the average citizens are just grimacing under the yolk of percieved American oppression while playing the waiting game? The fundamentals of Islam contradict some American ideology, so how many highly religious Islamic people will let their beliefs go no matter how long we stay in the country?

Just questions. I don't have the answers but I doubt any of the people that looked at spreading democracy in the middleeast ever asked these questions. If they did, they may have been short sighted given the history of the region. These people are proud and religious and have deep moral convictions, even if those convictions are foreign to American belief systems. Greed doesn't drive their culture like it does ours. That's why you don't see a lot of people coughing up information based on 'reward for information leading to', type of tactics.

Anyways, what you see isn't always what is real. I would be willing to bet that millions of Iraqis despise America and the invasion but are too scared to say it to anybody. And, the more we have collateral damage in out pursuit of international terrorists and national terrorists (or, as some percieve them, freedom from invasion fighters), the more enemies we will create in the region. Digging a deeper and deeper hole.

This survey attempts to answer some of these questions though note it's from 2/04. The majority of the responses are middle of the road, suggesting to me not religous zealots or militant fanatics, just mostly Average Joe's trying to get through life the best they can. Kinda like here.

Nope, I don't think that is something you could say about him. When I read him your post, because he wanted to know what your response was out of morbid curiosity, he said that those who have died there did so without a good reason to begin with. He also said for you to stop just reading things and believing it, because things aren't going well over there, no matter what you try to say. And I still haven't met a person who went over there who believes that we are winning, or that we should have been there in the first place. Seriously. Maybe these people just want to stay home and ***** their wives and drink beer instead of being shot at, but I'll tell you what, they were more than happy to go to Afganastan after September 11. The attitudes towards war, and being deployed, are very different from when I was in the army.

I enlisted in March 2002. When I got to my permanent duty station, most people wanted to be deployed. That was the -goal-. You weren't really doing your job unless you were deployed. Plus, there are obvious monetary benefits. But now, no one wants to go. I mean, there are a few people that do, single privates who want to bank the cash, but they are very few and far between. I mean like 1 in 20. People grow very anxious when their end of contract grows near because they are terrified that the army won't let them out. It didn't used to be that way a very short time ago.

See. This is what I don't get. Because this is 100% reversed from every single active duty military person I've talked to. Heck. I went out to dinner this last weekend with a group of friends (and friends of friends). I met a guy who's a career Marine. He's working towards 20 years (heh. And looked the part). Every single thing he said matched what I've said in this thread (and have heard from dozens of other active duty guys, mostly Marines). He had a number of "choice words" to say about Mr. Murtha. Actually, after a few jack and cokes he had some even more choice words to say. Something about removing his vocal chords out through his ******...

It may be that most of the guys I know and talk to are career. Most of the guys I talk to were in Gulf 1, were in Somalia (although their only role in that was relief stuff while on their way back from the Gulf), were in Afghanistan, and are now in Iraq. So maybe the fact that these guys have a bit more salt makes them a bit more patient towards the process. I know for a fact that every single marine I've talked to who served in the 91 Gulf War thinks that the process is working. Because they saw what happened when they weren't allowed to invade back then. They saw 100 thousand Iraqi's die over the next 10 years. They saw Saddam tighten his grip on the country. They saw the Kurds who we encouraged to revolt get slaughtered because we then refused to help them. They felt that they'd been betrayed by the politicians who couldn't commit to a military action and follow through. And they all feel that this is something we have to see through correctly, or it'll be just another in a line of clusterfu[/b]cks that our military actions have become in the last couple decades.

Due to sanctions driving people into starvation, I might add. And that number is low.

The problem with people like you, Gbaji, is that you think in one frame of mind, the American frame of mind. You are unable to break out of this way of thinking and see reality through other peoples eyes. Many times, life or death is irrelevant, but dignity and pride in ones history, culture, and belief are more important than life.

What we have happening in the middle east right now, isn't even about Iraq. It's about ideologies of Islam verses Christianity, and if you don't believe that this is the subtext of it all, you are the blind one. Iraq is just one battleground, and the fact that Iran is pursuing nuclear weapons just feeds the frenzy. America is enemy number 1 right now for millions of common muslims, and that is the problem.

Iraq is the current battleground but it's the least of our worries and we can't wear out an invisible enemy. We will only exacerbate the problem with violence. The war on terrorism will NEVER BE WON by violence. It's a war of ideologies where one side believes as strongly as the other, and paradise means more than secular survival. That's all there is to it.

Katarine. Please don't take my posts as any sort of attack on you or your family, or your husband. I understand what you're going through. I do have many friends in the military, and many family of friends in as well. Kinda hard not to when you live in a miltary town. I can certainly understand your viewpoint, and can respect it.

I am honestly surprised though that our respective experiences are so different. Yeah. There's grumbling about being deployed. But then I've never heard different whether we were involved in a shooting conflict or not. No one likes going on deployment. But I'm honestly not making things up when I say that the overwhelming statements I hear from everyone I talk to is that while it of course sucks to have to put yourself in harms way, everone would rather we "do it right", then pull out and ensure that everything they've been doing for the last 3 years is in vain.

It may be that I'm talking to a more conservative crowd. And you're right that more of the guys I talk to are the older crowd (cause I'm in my mid 30s, and so my peers tend to be in that age range, and their friends, are, etc...). Certainly, a 20 year Pendleton DI is going to have a different perspective then most (the guy I talk to most since he's the husband of a co-worker). The guy I met last weekend has been a Gunny for something like 12 years now (guy literally looked like he could eat nails and sh[/b]it bailing wire), and is approaching his 20 year mark as well. I don't know if I'd call it brainwashing though. While there's always the stereotypical "robot jarhead" image floating out there, I've found that most of those older career guys are pretty quiet and introspective. Their comments and opinions are ultimately the result of watching the decisions that have been made over the time they've been in and seeing how it affected things. They can "feel" when something's screwy. And most of them are feeling that towards the idea of needing to withdraw or even set a timetable for withdrawel. Every single one of these guys I've talked to has said that would be a mistake. It would be a disaster for troop morale. It would be a disaster in terms of politcal capital for the US. It would be a disaster for the people of Iraq.

Heh. But then there is the old saying. People in their 20s tend to be Liberals and sometime in their 30s they turn into Conservatives. May be that's all that happening here.


But this stuff I've got to respond to:



Yeah. That's the point. The military guys *knew* what would happen before the politicos in the UN knew. You are aware that the sanctions were the UN's alternative to simply invading Iraq, right? And when we realized that Saddam was simply passing the burden of those sanctions onto his own people, the UN (predictably) lessened the sanctions and created the Oil for Food program. So, Saddam used their sanctions to kill of citizens and increase his hold on the country, then used the Oil for Food program to make money on the side.

And you wonder why this process wasn't working? Oh wait! To some people it *was* working...

You're right though. That number is low. I was being conservative with the 100 thousand figure. Um. Not sure how that helps though. Just adds more support to the argument that the UN's solution to Iraq was not the right one. We may have had no choice then, but we have a choice now. Maybe we should make the right one this time?

And you ignored the whole Kurd thing. You are aware that we got them to revolt against Saddam on the assumption that we would follow up after liberating Kuwait and help them topple Saddam. But then the UN decided that negotiating a cease fire with Iraq was sufficient. Can you guess what happened to those Kurdish rebels?

And that's not even getting started on the increase in terrorist membership attributed to our presence there maintaining the no-fly zones. See. Everyone talks about how our presense in Iraq is adding to terrorist membership, but seems to forget the fact that we had a presense in Iraq and Saudi Arabia for the entire 11 years between the end of the first Gulf war and the invasion of Iraq. I've even heard some claim that part of what allowed Bin Laden to recruit so many Saudi's was unhappiness with US troops stationed on their soil.

My point is that we were "suffering" that cost already, but the UN process wasn't generating a solution anytime soon. All the talk about having troops in the area for the next X years and how that'll just add to terrorism is silly since we *already* had troops in the region and that was already adding to terrorism. The only real difference is that now we've got our trooops in a position to fire back...



Hah. I'd say the same of you actually. Your placing this in the context of strictly US political terms is indicative of your US-centric view (actually, just a western view in general). Guess what? The people living in Iraq don't care if the Democrats or the Republicans are in power in the US. They don't care if we feel guilty over what we do or not. They don't care if we have people who list off the numbers of dead or not. What they care about is whether or not they and their families will be on a list of people to be executed based on who takes power in the coming years in their own country.

Your arguments stem from an extension of the western concept of the "white man's burden", and a bizaar backlash against it. Somehow our decisions and actions must meet some cryptic ethical criteria that only matters to us, and we tend to forget how those actions affect the people we interact with. It's more important that we "not interfere", but only when that interferrence is direct and obvious. It's ok for us to stage military forces out of Saudi Arabia for a decade because we don't see that in the news every night, so it must not actually affect anything. But if we move those troops into Iraq where they are directly engaging people, that's wrong. It's ok to fly airplanes over someone's country and drop bombs on them, or launch tomahawk missiles at them, but if we actually walk up to them and shoot them, it's suddenly a moral quandry. Isn't that backwards?

And that's my problem with this type of argument. It's incredibly inconsistent. Guess what? No matter what we choose to do, we are still interferring with their country. Either way. Whether we sit back and launch airstrikes when they do something we don't like, or invade and attack directly, we are interferring. Whether we leave right now, or stay for the next 10 years, we are interferring. We are directly affecting their lives and the results of the proccess. We can't consider just ourselves here. Do you think things will be better in Iraq if we left right now?

And at this point, we've commited ourselves. It is absolutely imperative that we follow through with that commitment. If we leave now, it'll be just like what we did in 91, when we left the Kurds high and dry and whole villages were wiped out as a result. We have an ethical duty now that we've started this to finish it. And any member of the US Congress who would reverse themselves in such a short amount of time is failing miserably IMO. Doubly so when it's so blatantly obviously done for purely local political reasons.



Bull crap! It's not even a little bit about Christian versus Muslim. No matter how desperately some try to paint it that way.



It'll never be won any other way either though. Geez. Where do you get these platitudes? You read a lot of bumperstickers or something?

I'll tell you what will never end terrorism. Treating it as a criminal affair will never end it. If terrorists aren't afraid of dying, they certainly arent afraid of being arrested and/or deported, right? It'll never end by playing local perception politics, where our leaders play around doing just as much interferrence in the Middle East as they can, without actually angering the anti-war people. You know, like Clinton ordering air strikes to deal with actions from Bin Laden, or Saddam. Maintaining no-fly zones in other people's countries for years on end, while those leaders simply pass on the misery caused to their citizens. That's not going to end terrorism either.


What will end terrorism is ending the regimes of leaders who create the conditions that cause people to join those groups in the first place. Showing those who live in the region that if they stand up and fight for things like freedom and democracy, that they can obtain it, and we'll even help them. What we've done in the past is *say* we'll help them, but when it comes down to it, we always seem to bail on them and leave them holding the bag (and dying shortly thereafter).

The US is most hated in the Middle East, not for our military actions, but our *lack* of actions. We pissed off the Afghani's because once we'd finished with using them to wear down the Soviet military, we left them high and dry. We pissed off the Iranians because we supported a despotic ruler who'd sell us oil cheap. We pissed off the Iraqi's for much the same reason. We're *still* pissing off the Saudi's because of our support for their rulers.

So, when we finally have an opportunity to do something right, shouldn't we actually do it? Not just sit at a safe distance enticing others to do our work for us. Not just lobbing bombs at random groups of bad guys. But actually getting into it, and working through the process and *commiting* ourselves to ending the oppression, even if just in one country.

Isn't that worth it? And if we succeed, maybe "the people" in the Middle East will trust us the next time we say we'll do something. So far our track record (and that of the West in general) has been horrible. We've screwed those people over so many times, why is anyone surprised that they don't trust us? We've got an opportunity to show them that we can actually follow through with this. And for awhile, we were doing just that. Right up until Murtha opened his mouth and allowed all the fears that the Iraqi people have worried about for the last 2.5 years to appear to be true. All the things that the people there say about the US. "They can't be trusted". "They cut and run when things get tough". "They'll leave you hanging when you need them most". When Murtha said those words, he confirmed those fears to those people and may have done irrepairable damage.


That's why it was wrong...

Gbajj, I didn't see anything you said as an attack on my family.

And I just wanted to point out that the first few paragraphs of your last post were a good post. Instead of the usual preachy conservative spin that you put on things, you were just stating what you thought and it was somehow easier to take that way. I dunno.