Respectable viewpoint. I have to disagree on a few points, but thats just because I think a war on terror is a humanitarian thing to do...and I think you in effect support that aspect of the war... I have to agree with Will on the security aspects of the war... we'll just ahve to agree to disagree on this one... As far as it being provoked, I wish we would have just flooded Iraq with tons of weapons inspectors to just stall any hopes they had of doing anything. But that didn't happen, and so now I support this...simply for war crimes against the Kurds, screw the rhetoric thats being put out there these days, being there is the correct thing to do. andy- the claim about ties being found between Iraq and Al-Queda was something that came out after the war, the one I'm referring too, yet have too much work to do to actually go look it up. My question to you is what if this stuff is true-- despite the rhetoric being tossed around by both sides, trust me I've heard great arguments by both, do you really think that being in Iraq is a bad thing?
The weapons inspectors were there. They were doing their jobs until WE kicked them out based on faulty information. Yes, being in Iraq under these circumstances IS a bad thing. If we were going to go to war, we should have waited for the appropriate body (UNSC) to determine that Saddam was in breach of the treaty. We entered the war unilaterally (with the exception of the nations we paid to be there) with mistaken intelligence and no exit strategy. Again, I just think we need new leadership to determine the course we follow from here on out. I cannot trust that the administration will present accurate information and that was part of the basis for me not supporting the last administration.
MacBeth: Those humble Canadians! Forty countries, really? I might have gotten bitten by the Bug of Exageration but the U.S. does the lion's share of the world's dirty, hard work when it is needed to be done by an outsider. I really have to wonder how many nations on the globe really don't feel we were justified versus just didn't have the cajones to do what really had to be done. There is a difference. That's that leadership thing that always comes up.
Not just that; in both WWI and WWII, the Canadian enlistment rate was far higher than that of the Americans, and their periods of service were almost double. Despite having less than a 10th of US population, they were among the top 5 Western Allied forces, were given one of the 5 D-Day beaches to take, and were often the spearhead of allied advances. Von Rumschtedt, Speer, and others were quoted as saying that it was acknowledged among German commanders that the Candians were the bravest soldiers they faced, bar none. And yet, when the war was over, as ususal, the Canadians just packed up and went home. But as to your second point, every poll taken around the world, every single one, without exception, showed that only one country on the planet favoreed the war, or thought it was justified, and all the others wer vastly opposed to it. ANd considering that there are forces fighting and dying in Afghanistan, Liberia, etc. as we speak from many of these countries, the cojones comment seems not only inaccurate, but arrogantly self-serving as well. How many times are we going to assume that we are right, and everyone else is biased and wrong?
Whatever you have to tell yourself to justify your glee. A bloody nose. Sixteen dead US soldiers are the equivalent of a bloody nose to you. Absolutely disgusting. But, I don't expect any better from someone who worships a cowardly simpleton who characterizes 3,000+ dead civilians as "an opportunity". Why do cowards and their supporters love death and killing so much?
Glee? Why would I, a ten-year veteran of the USMC, participating in Somalia and the Balkans be gleeful? I was in no way gleeful and for you to even say such a thing is an insult. I'm speaking rationally here. Any life lost is valuable, but this is war and when there are ground troops committed, there will be casualties. I lost six of my buddies when a helo went down at Camp LeJeune, but damnit, I didn't just quit the Marines because of it. Losing men hurts, but what did you expect, no one to die? It's war, not laser tag. It is a bloody nose when you consider how many people we have on the ground there, what percentage of our effectives, etc. That's cold, but that is war. You kill more of the enemy than he kills of you. So what do you want to do? Now that they killed a few of our troops, you want to run away and hide, don't you? Bring the troops home. Save their lives. Well, it is either pay me now or pay me later. Showing America to be a nation without the stomach for ANY casualties will come back to bite us in the ass. It's people like you who can't stomach one single casualty who are the cowards. It's you who whine and cry for our troops to be brought home because an "illegal" war and end up making us look like candy-asses in full view of the world. These Islamic whackoes understand only strength and when you show weakness, they become all-powerful, just as in Somalia where our elite troops took a bloody nose of a few casualties and we ran away like scared children, setting up the 9/11 attacks. Be a coward, but admit what you really are: what Lenin called an useful idiot. Revel in that row of being an unwitting traitor, it fits you.
I've gotta interject here, in, for God's sake, bama's defense. While it was a poor choice words for this format, and given that, insensitive, boxing or other sports related analogies are common parlance in military circles, and his having served as a Marine might explain why, to him, it would not have seemed out of place to so characterize such an event. If you read military annals, yill here of commanders rejoicing over the enemy 'taking the bait', 'reacting to a feint', etc., even when the event in question might have meant the loss of dozens of troops. Lord knows I don't like defending bama, but in this case, at least, I feel the attacks on him are, innocently enough, unwarrented.
Damned no edit... I did want to say, though, that bama's handling of this was clumsy. An acknowledgment of how he could see that would seem insensitive, with an explanation of the context of his verbiage would have gone a lot further to correcting the misunderstanding than trying to quote relative casualty rates, which only further increased the sense that he was being callous.
I agree that the fixation with bama's terminology is unwarranted. Unfortunately, this kind of comment has no defense... not in my opinion. This is straight out of Joe McCarthy: bamaslammer: "Revel in that role of being an unwitting traitor, it fits you."
Oh, totally agreed. I wasn't defending him in general, just felt that in this case, 'bloody nose', it was more of an instance of different terminologies than actual insensitivity.
I know. I was taking the opportunity to point out another instance where bama goes off the deep end slandering someone who disagrees with his position on the Iraqi War.
I think the "Bring 'em on" statement was stupid and somewhat primitive. That being said, I think taking a terrible killing of American soldiers and starting a thread with the title "Bring 'Em On" does give the impression that the thread starter is indeed happy about what happened so that he can say "I told you so". I am pretty sure that this is not the case, but it at least creates that impression. I hope that the people who did this will be caught and that the US will bring the situation in Iraq under control as soon as possible.
I think the thread title represents anger towards Bush's flippant remarks that make a war sound like an after school fight. I saw a news report today (NBC I think) that showed him making that very comment while they did a report about the chopper. I don't think the news report was taking a "I told you so attitude" and I feel the same about this thread.
I think it was quite a statement. It does have a certain sting in it. But I was responding to an attitude that I encounter far too often in these discussions about the War in Iraq. I don't see a nobility in dissent when there are troops in the field. I don't see why the loss of a few troops should cause us to immediately talk about pulling out and leaving another job unfinished. Either support our need to finish the job and allocate the resources neccessary to do so (to the credit of many in opposite of my viewpoint, they support our need to accomplish the mission, regardless of their previous opposition to the war), or admit what you are. Simply "supporting" the troops is not enough. When you get in the way of our troops accomplishing the mission (by continuing to forment dissent) and making it where those who have fallen died for no reason, you are a traitor. And fortunately, not too many on this board fit that description.
sigh try this one last time: That would mean, in practice, that no war could ever be protested, every war, once begun, must be actively supported until it's completion; effectively removing the 'responsible' aspect of responsible government. It would additionaly mean that all any administration needs to ensure re-election/absolute support is get us into a war in the 1st term...
bama, I'm one of those who doesn't think pulling out is an option now that "Bush Lite" has gotten us into this. But I strongly believe that he is the wrong person to prosecute this war. It is far to politicized by the Administration. From photo-ops on the carrier to the continued insistence that more US troops aren't needed burns my butt. More troops are needed, in my opinion. And it's also my opinion that they aren't being sent because of political reasons regarding poll numbers and next year's elections. This is worth repeating: Military experts say it takes time, and troops on the ground, to defeat a well-entrenched insurgency -- more time and troops than the Bush administration initially wanted to spend. But the longer the struggle takes, they warn, the greater the danger that support for the war effort, among both Iraqis and Americans, will waver. "The longer this lasts -- the longer the enemy can create chaos -- the more likely the advantage will shift to his side," warned retired Maj. Gen. Robert H. Scales, a former commandant of the Army War College. "I happen to believe that's not going to happen. The indicators of stability are progressing, and the number of Baathists is finite. ... But it could." and... "We're looking, in essence, at a test of will," said Scales, co-author of "The Iraq War," a book on the U.S. invasion. "They have little military power, but enormous will. Our situation is just the opposite: we have enormous military power, but our will is uncertain." "In the Middle East, indigenous armies fighting against Western-style armies are 0-7, you could argue, since 1948 -- but in unconventional warfare, they're 5-0," he said, citing the 1983 bombing of U.S. Marines in Beirut as an example. Administration officials, many of their critics and outside experts agree that more forces are needed to defeat the insurgency; the question is where they come from and how soon. "Everyone agrees that we need more troops on the ground in Iraq; they just can't agree on more of what," said James Dobbins of the Rand Corp., an expert on postwar reconstruction. "Conservatives want more U.S. troops. Liberals want more allied troops. The Pentagon wants more Iraqi troops. My view is that they're probably all right: We're going to need all three." So far, the Bush administration has said there is no need to increase the number of U.S. troops in Iraq above the current level of about 130,000. Instead, the Pentagon plans to replace some of the heavy infantry units in the country with lighter units more attuned to small-scale, counter-insurgency warfare. Much of that rotation is scheduled to occur next spring, as units now in Iraq complete a one-year deployment. Rumsfeld said Sunday that he suspected he would be able to reduce the number of U.S. troops soon. "It's come down from 150,000 to 130,000, and I suspect it will continue going down ... if the security situation in the country permits it," he said on NBC's "Meet the Press." and... "The time window is three to six months in which we have to succeed, in my view," (Senator) McCain said. "We've got to address the problem by more troops of the right kind -- counterintelligence and counterinsurgency. ... We still need more Marines. We still need more Special Forces. We need people who speak the language. And we need it quickly." Moreover, U.S. officials appear to have largely abandoned their hopes for significant additional help from allied countries. Turkey had agreed to send 10,000 troops to southern Iraq, but objections from Iraqi leaders have put that plan on hold. "We're going to need to increase the number of indigenous forces or get somebody else to do it," Scales said. "You just have to look at the math. ...There are probably only about 60,000 people out of 1.2 million (U.S. troops) that do this kind of work -- patrolling, low-intensity engagement. Most people don't understand how tiny the American military really is ... when it comes to close combat." "Over time, somebody else is going to have to take up the heavy lifting," he said, "or this force is going to break." These are not "left-wing liberal Democrats". The dichotomy between what the Administration is saying and what many other experts and Republicans like McCain are saying is striking. The Administration seems to be waiting for Turkey and others, as well as reconstituted Iraqi forces, to take over the burden from our military. The longer all of this takes, and it's uncertain how successful that effort will be, the greater the encouragement given to the Iraqi insurgents, who seem to be growing bolder and more organized. These are not just foreign terrorists from outside Iraq. They are certainly there, but in small numbers. This is primarily Iraqi Baathists and others who are driven by a variety of reasons... patriotism being one of them, to fight against US, and to a lessor extent, British and the other forces to drive them out of the country. Time works against us.
I didn't support the war, I didn't support these idiotic statements from Bush, and have the well being of our troops foremost in my mind while making threads like these. The President is prone to using statements of bravado... "bring 'em on", "wanted dead or alive", "let's roll", etc. to promote his cowboy image among gung ho conservatives like bama. Those types of statements indicate to me that he doesn't quite understand the gravity of combat. He had his chance to be tough as a young man and unlike John McCain, Colin Powell, John Kerry, Bob Dole, GB Sr., etc. he copped out and now he's out there running his mouth like he's some kind of bad ass while young men risk their lives to fight his war based on exaggerations and misrepresentations. We have an administration full of draft dodging, deferment pansy asses who get wood just thinking about going to war and that sickens me because those are real people with real families out there getting killed every day, not numbers on some tally sheet. What is the goal here? What is the exit strategy? Where is the plan? Any day now... it's outrageous. Of course all we can get from the neocon cadre is personal attacks for having the audacity to hold this administration accountable for this damn mess. Attack my patriotism, my courage, and whatever the hell else. Some of you have gone to that well so often now that it's just stale and really not worthy of a response anymore. Your collective inabilities to deal with the issues and necessity to fall back to personal attacks speaks volumes.
Well, of course. But that's just because you hate America. Deeply too, I might add. What do you think accounts for this deep, deep hatred of America and all it stands for?
That is utterly ridiculous. Of course I love my country. That's why I joined the Corps and spent ten years defending your sorry, whiney ass while you slept in your bed. That's why I support our troops and support finishing the job, so those who died did not do so in vain. That's why even though I will admit things are not perfect that I'm not going to sit here and armchair quarterback the war. And as for Bush being the wrong man to run the war, if Dennis Kucinich and Dean and their Democratic ilk had their way, we'd have already run away like cowards. OK, you may disagree with the war, but isn't it a bit late to continue with this almost seditious dissent? You don't have to be a Bu****e, but for chrissake, at least support our troops by insisting the mission is done right before we pull out.
