Denial: It's not a river in Vietnam

Man, that is some great stuff, Ottomaton. Really excellent. basso will continue sticking his fingers in his ears, accusing Democrats, Republicans who have broken with the Administration, Independents... the overwhelming majority of Americans who want to get out of Iraq yesterday, of being treasonous, as he continues his hero worship of George W. Bush, but a damn fine effort to reach him.

Kudos.



D&D. Impeach Bush and Cheney.

 

While I agree with a lot of what you say I don't agree that the war is lost. The war is lost in terms that I believe it might be impossible stabilize Iraq using the US military but I think there is still the possibility of a diplomatic solution that stabilizes the Iraq. Ironically following the ISG and other advice reducing the amount of US troops is one step on the route to victory not increasing the amount.

 

Simply an excellent post Ottomaton.

 

Neither you nor any of the dwindling core of syncophants surrounding the Decider has ever defined what "winning" is, you just claim that not staying indefinitely = losing. I suspect you don't really care what it is either

 

Neither you nor any of the dwindling core of syncophants surrounding the Decider has ever defined what "winning" is, you just claim that not staying indefinitely = losing. I suspect you don't really care what it is either

 

• Petraeus like the good soldier that he is, would stick his head up his ass if ordered to do so and sing its praises daily to its virtues the winning strategy. You do realize that the current plan requires the Iraqis to come together and play nice together, right? Do you really believe that this will happen? Every objective military analysis that I have seen indicates that victory under current conditions can not be achieved. This isn’t out of left field.
  
  
• The idea that you can somehow win if you just want it enough is another nonsensical idea. That you make this argument reinforces many times over my conviction that you are delusional with respect to Iraq. See The German 6th Army at Stalingrad and Hitler's declaration that the German Army would never retreat.
  
  
• Sam is right, you will not define conditions, but more than that you seem to actually not want to discuss anything rationally about the war at all at this point. You just throw out emotional arguments about Pol Pot and genocide. And that you start calling me names without making any sort of rational point at discussion shows that you have quite a bit emotionally invested in this war. Try to step back and make a rational evaluation. American soldiers should not be sentenced to death for the sake of your pride and the way it prevents you from looking at the situation rationally. As I have said, I would feel sorry for you if lives weren’t on the line.
  
  
• Lets try to take a step forward. I would be grateful if you would answer a question. About two years ago when you were saying that everything was getting better in Iraq and we just needed to give the situation some time, were you right or wrong? If you were wrong, did you actually believe that you were right at the time?

 

From your linked story...

 

Actually this post goes to the heart of the issue. At first basso attempted to make fact-based arguments about Iraq. Standard stuff about WMD's and free elections and the wonderful Bush Doctrine etc. All wrong, of course, but at least he tried.

As these arguments and the underlying assumptions collapsed while Iraq continuted to slide its way into chaos and the Admin showed the same general ineptitude deer-in-the-headlights style of leadership made famous by Hurricane Katrina, he has been bereft of facts in support of his argument. The Administration that promised to "create its own reality" tragically overestimated its capacity to do so. A minor tragedy (though probably a major one in basso's mind) was the collapse of his BBS house of cards.

So, our erstwhile young difference maker has had to retreat from facts into the bare territory of emotion, with only vague, unspecified references to winning, and lots of emphasis on losing and the thoughtcrimes of those who oppose him. This is much easier for him because he gets into a realm where facts are generally less relevant, you can just whine that so and so is a bin laden sympathizer and loves genocide and it is much more fun than confronting reality.

Ordinarily I wouldn't care but since basso takes this BBS so seriously I guess it was worthy of discussion.

 

That is a great question.

I would love to found out basso's answer.

 

By now, the Civil War was over. It only lasted 4.25 years.

The "debacle" you reference happened 2 years into that war. We have had more time now than the entire Civil War, WWI, WWII, Spanish American War, Korean War, War of 1812, Mexican War, Bosnia, and Kosovo. In fact, the only wars we have had that were longer than Iraq were the American Revolution, Vietnam, and the Indian Wars.

Your reference provides perspective, but not in the way you intended.

We have tried. We believed Bush and his cronies when they told us that Saddam was dangerous, we suspended our disbelief when his military was crushed in two weeks, and we waited patiently as the "six days, six weeks, I doubt six months" came and went.

The improvements never came, the reconstruction never happened, the mistakes were pronounced and many, and the war, as we have been fighting it, is over. The only question at this point is how long we will be there and how many more Americans will die in our present day Chancellorsville.

 

What are we supposed to win anymore? Who's the enemy and who's our friends. This stuff has gotten so ridiculously convoluted that it's honestly impossible to say what American troops are supposed to be doing anymore.

We use blanket terms like "the inusurgents" or "terrorists" when there are tons of groups with competing interests fighting in Iraq. There aren't just "insurgents" There are sunni militias killing shi'ites and vice versa. There's Kurdish factions in the north. There are splits among the Shi'ites and Sunnis in an almost tribal and warlord esque manner.

This isn't the US v. Al Qaeda (which represents less than 10% of attacks), this is a civil war with different groups killing each other and the US sitting in the middle as lame ducks. In fact, all your "lets win" arguments apply much more so to Vietnam where there was a more unified "enemy" than Iraq where there are a bunch of factions competing for territory and a government that has little control over anything anymore. This situation resembles Somalia more than anything else. A weak to non-existent government being trampled by competing factions and militias vying for control of the country.

You're engaging in the same semantic nonsense that this administration continues to deploy. Reducing a complex set of groups into a single "insurgency" or a single entity known as "Al Qaeda" that we can simply defeat in one blow. This administration is almost cartoonish in the way it talks about Iraq and frankly its INSULTING to every American that they continue to treat us like 5 year olds and dish out r****ded talking points that are absurdly simplistic and wrong.

I swear I could do a better job defending this war than the administration and probably a better job than you are right now because you choose to deploy the same logic and language of this administration. A blind and simplistic analysis of a situation that deserves so much more. Either the administration really is so dumb as to believe the bull**** they throw out, or they're playing politics with a real war with real people being killed every day.

I was probably one of the last people who opposed this war to actually want a withdrawal but even I've had it with an administration that treats us like toddlers and continues to **** this up repeatedly despite having a blank check from Congress for 4 years now. So forgive all of us if we're running out of patience, the Bush administration hasn't exactly done ANYTHING to warrant any more from us.

 

I guess we will have to wait till some blogger gets around to defining what "victory" or "winning' in Iraq is so that basso can steal it and post it as his own.

 

From your linked story...

 

waiting on an answer to the question posed to you.