Democrats call for surrenderFollow

OMG LOL I love that thats hilarious! I dream of freedom every night.

You know I can imagine u saying that with a Bush voice, really I liked that. I bug my buddies like that all the time, a few of which are pro Bush. Im Pro Anything but the Democrats...

Well thats a little oversimplified, if they said we're going over there to stabilize the region, overthrow a military dictatorship, try to install a democratic gov't in the Middle East to serve as a example to other US haters in the region. I would probly say "Cool, now why dont we do that in Cuba, N. Korea, Iran, Syria, Saudi Arabia, etc. etc." Im all for good causes, course Im also realistic, we're not doing this for the Iraqis specifically, we're doing this to give us hope for the future of our culture, Islam is spreading quickly all over the world, and they dont really fit well with democracies or republics (like us), and if we can force change which may lead to a more compatible culture that we can ally with, trade with, and not have to worry about some of thier denizens flying airplanes into our skyscrapers or blowing up our subways. So for those reasons, yes, I would have went anyway.

Fhrugby, you seem like an all right guy. At least you can debate policy without immediately degenerating into a froth of liberal bashing which is respectable in its own right. Anyway, here's where I see it.

You have a public who spent about three weeks watching actual warfare and the entire time thereafter watching soldiers get picked off by insurgents. At pretty much a set rate, regardless of how many safehouses we capture, Iraqis we round up and send to prisons, people we kill in firefights or whatever. The government reports that we captured this building, next day five soldiers die from a roadside bomb. Government reports that we killed ten guys in an engagement and the next day, four more soldiers are killed when a taxi explodes at a checkpoint.

People aren't really excited about a constitution being voted on because it's not changing the people getting killed. What's happening civilly isn't really affecting what's happening militarily and it's the military actions that the American people are relating to because those are our guys. So people look for the ending. But the administration refuses to speculate. They refuse to give a guideline. Even basic waypoints we hope to acheive in a year to get us towards the end of the tunnel. We're told that the insurgents will just outwait us. We're told to stay the course. And, each day, another handful of soldiers die.

No one is impressed with "only 2000 of our people died in a war." We're not stupid. This isn't Rommel and Patton in the desert. It's not trench warfare in Champagne or a hillside charge at Gettysburg. The "war" as people think of it ended quickly; a vastly superior military sweeping across one crippled by a decade of sanctions. Don't get me wrong, I'm certainly happy it was us on the 'vastly superior' side. But no one is mentally relating an APC rolling over an IED with Normandy. Instead, we're watching our guys get picked off by a seemingly endless supply of insurgents for the last thirty months or so. And we're told to "stay the course".

This is why people are impatient. This is why so many say the war was a mistake. Because time drags on and we're not given guidence on where we're really going. People need to see either a set of objectives and when we plan to achieve them so we at least know what in hell we're trying to do or else the number of our guys getting killed go down remarkably so we at least know we're accomplishing something militarily. Because sitting in limbo, watching those couple guys die daily while we crow about our "victories" is exactly why more and more people daily call this a mistake.

Edited, Tue Nov 22 16:41:07 2005 by Jophiel

And what is the mission, exactly? Keep in mind, this discussion is in the framework of setting a timeline for the withdrawal of our troops.

What needs to be accomplished before the job is done, in your view?

Thanks very much for the offer of a picture, but if you can enunciate your thoughts clearly, that will suffice.

So from now on anytime we have a guerilla insurgency, then we should tuck tail and leave? Do you think there weren't any of these tactics being used before Vietnam? Look up the bio of General Pershing and how he dealt with Islamic insurgents in the Phillipines. Insurgent tactics are nothing new, just the yellow stripe many Americans seemed to have evolved since Vietnam.

thus spake McCarthy

mmmm. cuban cigars.

picking on a country that hasn't done anything to us just because we think they might do something down the line and/or because we don't like the way they run themselves just seems wrong to me. that's all.

If that makes me a maniac, then fine.

As stated above ... all you have is a rifle.

By the way, you do know that the united states isn't a democracy, right?

That's a myth, by the way. Not that it makes much difference to you, I'm sure.

First of all, government is supposed to be seperate from Church (I know what you are going to say, I don't agree with all of Bush's decisions either), and by that alone is not enough reason to go in there.

I've said it to buddies of mine when we were over there. We're nothing more than a big honey pot, drawing all the terrorists in from around the world to one foreign location, to fight our battles away from home. This way we can A: fight the war on terror, and B: keep Americans safe at the same time.

You cannot force change on a culture that has been around for over 3 thousand years. These people live on some of the oldest settled land in the world, and they are war trained veterans. These people lived with genocide, murder, rape and terrorism like it was a part of their daily workout. To have the belief that the U.S. can just go in, mop up some mess and then think that everything will be allright is insane.

But, you can show people the good things of democracy, the stuff that this country was founded on. Not the obese, corrupt political spew that is spun from Capitol hill everyday. But it is up to them to decide whether to take it or not.

I'll say that when I was over there, I had a desire to do the right thing, because I thought I was fighting for the safety of people who lived over there. If you've seen the graves, the complacity in the eyes of people who have been so beat down and removed of their dignity, or even heard the stories of people living in walls out of fear of Saddam, you do feel you are doing the right thing. While I don't doubt that there was some questionable motives to go over to the middle east, I do not doubt for a second that there were good things to come out of it too.



Edited, Tue Nov 22 16:07:26 2005 by Credos