When, one wonders, will mutiny begin among the troops in Iraq?
Recently I talked by email about the war with Jim Coyne, an airborne-infantry friend who served two tours as a gunship door-gunner in Viet Nam and then made a career in journalism. I asked, “Do they [I meant the officer corps, the official military] actually believe the optimistic twaddle this time around? Do they really not know what is happening?”
Jim’s response: “In my opinion, they really don’t know; they may not even want to know on some level. You know as well as I, these are mission-oriented folks; can do folks; failure and its introspective handmaidens are not options to them. And in a tactical mission-oriented world our military doesn’t really fail very often; in a strategic military/political world such as the Mideast and Iraq, however, we simply cannot win.
”Again, as in Viet Nam, the career officer corps salutes and marches toward the sound of battle. Eventually however (and it won’t be long now) it’s the grunts who will begin to revolt, first in small ways (as in the 101st in late 1968, “No sir. We are not going up that hill again.) and then, quickly thereafter (As in 1973, “Fuck you, asshole.”) By that time the media may get wind of things and spin it exponentially out of control. That’s what I think.”
So do I,
We have two sharply differing versions of Iraq. One comes from the professional officers. It holds that the military is making progress and the insurgents losing ground. The Iraqi people love us and want the benefits that we will bring them. The increasing attacks by insurgents are signs of desperation. Things seem bad only because the media emphasize the negative. The officers see light at the end of the tunnel. The body counts are great; the bad guys can’t much longer take the pounding we are giving them. Onward and upward.
The other view comes from enlisted men (and from a lot of reporters before being edited to say whatever the publisher believes). These assert that the Iraqis hate us and we, them; that the insurgency is growing in strength, that we are not making progress but going backward, that our tactics don’t work and we can’t win.
The pattern is so common in recent wars as to be routine. The enlisted men know that the US is losing. The officers do not know it, or refuse to know it. This will eventually have consequences.
When men die pointlessly in a war they know cannot be won and that means nothing to them, when they realize that they are dying for the egos of draft-dodging politicians safe in Washington—they will revolt. It happened before. It will happen again. But when? Next year, I’d guess.
It is important to understand that officers and enlisted men are very different animals. For example, enlisted men do things (drive the tank, repair the helicopter) whereas officers are chiefly administrators. But the important difference is psychological. Enlisted men are blue-collar guys or technicians. They carry little ideological overburden. They want to fix the tank or finish the field exercise and then go drink beer and get laid.
Above all, they are realists. If the new radio doesn’t work, or Baghdad turns out to be a tactically irresolvable nightmare, the enlisted guys feel very little urge to pretend otherwise. This is why officers do not like reporters to be alone with the troops. And they seriously don’t.
The standard response of the officer corps is that the troops cannot see the Big Picture. (Unless of course the enlisteds say what the officers want to hear, in which case their experience on the ground lends irresistible authority). But the Big Picture rests on the Little Picture. If a soldier sees slow disaster where he is, and hears the same thing from guys he meets from everywhere else in the country, his conclusions will not be without weight. Sooner or later, on his third tour with a pregnant wife at home and seven friends killed by bombs, he will say, in the crude but expressive language of soldiers, “Fuck this shit.”
By contrast, officers can’t conclude anything but the positive. There are several reasons. Career officers, first, are politicians. You don’t get promoted by saying that the higher-ups are otherworldly incompetents. An officer’s loyalty is to his career, and to the officer corps, not to the country or to his troops. If this sounds harsh, note how seldom an active-duty officer will criticize policy, yet when he retires he may suddenly discover that said policy resulted in unnecessary deaths among the troops. Oh? Then why didn’t he say so when it would have saved lives?
There is a curious moral cowardice among officers. They will fly dangerous missions over Baghdad, but they won’t say that things aren’t going well. They don’t go against their herd.
Further, and I want to say this carefully, officers often are not quite adults. They can be (and usually are) smart, competent, dedicated, and physically brave, and some are exceedingly hard men. But there is a simple-mindedness about them, an aversion to the handmaidens of introspection, a certain boyishness as in kids playing soldier. A lot of make-believe goes into an officer’s world. Enlisted men, grown up, see things as they are. Officers are issued a world by the command and then live in it.
Note the heavy emphasis of the military, meaning the officer corps, on ritual and pageantry. It is adult kid-stuff. Three thousand men building a skyscraper just show up, do their jobs, and go home. The military wants its men standing in squares, precisely at attention, thumbs along the seams, with brass perfectly polished. It wants stirring music, snappy salutes, and the haunting tones of taps, “Yes sir, yes sir, three bags full, sir.” This is justified as necessary for discipline. It isn’t. A gunny sergeant has no difficulty maintaining his authority without the hoop-la
Officers remind me of armed Moonies. There is the same earnestness, the same deliberate optimism-by-policy. Things are going well because doctrine says they are. An officer is as ideologically upbeat as Reader’s Digest, and as unreflective. This is the why they don’t learn, why the US is again flailing about, trying to fight hornets with elephant guns. “Yessir, can do, sir.” Well, sometimes, and sometimes not. It is not arrogance, more like a belief in gravitation.
And so we hear phrases that embody the eternal precedence of oo-rah! over realism: “There is no substitute for victory,” or “The difficult we do immediately; the impossible takes a little longer,” or “Defeat is not an option.” But sometimes it is an inevitability.
I think Jim is right. Sooner or later, a unit won’t go up the hill again. Then it will be over.
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Patriot said,
Today’s military is comprised of determined professionals and not quitters. It is weak minded sissies like you that caused the failure in Vietnam. Do the research. The North Vietnamese fighters will tell you they nearly gave up several times, but the peaceniks in America gave them hope and they continued. That and their secret meetings with people like Kerry.
Debate is fine. Discussion of overall strategy and policy is fine. But wondering and almost hoping for a military mutiny makes me sick. There won’t be an uprising because the people in the military today are stronger and braver than you. They volunteered and know why they are there.
Our military is not wondering when to uprise. They are wondering when idiots like you are going to start writing about all of the good things happening in Iraq and elsewhere. Of course there are bad things. That’s why we call it war. But there is far more good than bad. If a Democrat were in office we would see every school and power plant opening on CNN over and over again.
I am so glad whimps like you weren’t around throughout our history. Over 6,600 people died on the first day of the D-Day invasion and many times that were wounded. People like you would have raised the white flag.
This is a free country. I just wish it was free of weak quitters like you that secretly hate their own country.
October 1, 2006 at 3:10 pm
Denis said,
Fantastic post. I agree 100%.
Unfortunately, we will continue to hear bitching and moaning from the 60s crowd (and many of their offspring) until they are all old, dead, and finally gone. We are not the country and people we once were because of these losers.
Fortunately we still have many good men like you.
check out:
http://www.dailystar.com.lb/article.asp?edition_id=10&categ_id=5&article_id=75791
some excerpts:
“If you want to get a sense of which way the wind is blowing in a society, you should consult its youth or its best opinion pollsters. Earlier this month, I had the chance to do both in Dubai, and in the process learned about significant changing attitudes and new trends in the Arab region.”
“I participated in a seminar with 50 mid-level Dubai public-sector officials, many in their 30s and 40s. Though not strictly “youths,” they very much embodied youth’s desire to soak up new knowledge and experiences, and to crystallize their personal and national identity and their place in the world.”
“This third wave of Gulf nationals, since statehood and successive oil-fuelled booms, is not only well educated, but is also undergoing life-long education. Its basic needs are amply met, but, annoyingly, it often finds itself at the receiving end of the world’s mistrust or scornful envy. The new phenomenon in the Gulf that I observed was a nuanced sense of citizenship and identity that was not simplistically black or white in its sentiments or allegiances. It also did not hesitate to express itself in public.”
“To better understand this important evolution, by good fortune I was able at the same gathering to hear the respected American pollster John Zogby, who conducts regular public opinion polls in the Arab world. He shared his observations on recent trends he has identified from his annual polls in six countries that reflect the entire Arab region (Morocco, Egypt, Lebanon, Jordan, the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia).”
“Two important points he made confirmed my feeling that significant change was under way in this region: An Arab middle class with global values was emerging, and Arab populations seemed to be moving toward greater identification with their individual countries, rather than primarily expressing wider pan-Arab or pan-Islamic sentiments.”
“Younger Arabs, especially educated ones with good prospects in the globalized economy, simultaneously sense some positive changes in their own societies - a reason to be optimistic, leading to rising expectations. This reflects a significant difference in attitudes from previous years. Zogby’s polls also suggest that a middle class with globalized, modern values is emerging in some countries, particularly in the well-off Gulf states.”
“There’s no question that especially among youth under the age of 30 we are seeing tectonic shifts in attitudes, expressed in a modern view of the world. We sense optimism, a need for personal fulfillment, rising expectations, job-related personal growth, a demand for better health, education and professional opportunities, along with continued strong identification with the family and stability,” he explained. ”
With, what may be shifting attitudes among the young across the broader middle east, and America’s influence in dealing with rogue states that represent a threat and treat their own people poorly or who do not reflect the will of it’s own people, we may in fact see a middle east that is no longer at war with America.
October 1, 2006 at 4:53 pm
DadWithGirls said,
There is nothing more tragic than a patriot who sing-songs meaningless cliches because it’s too painful to look closely at the actual deal going down.
And Iraq IS going down, rapidly.
Bob Woodward’s new book “State of Denial” documents how Bush & Co. have censored data on the actual frequency of insurgent attacks on U.S. and coalition soldiers (one attack every 15 minutes), as well as the civilian slaughter between the Sunnis and Shias.
In an ironic way, Patriot’s historical critique that the “peaceniks” cost us victory in ‘Nam is very instructive. (Although I do not recall that the peaceniks actually made war policy — that would have been in the hands of Congress & the President, right?)
Patriot says the troops in ‘Nam were lied to, that they were winning all along, that the pols caved in to the peaceniks, defining a victory as a defeat, effectively “cutting and running.”
Today in Iraq, it’s the reverse scenario.
Right now the troops are losing, and the neocons in Bush-Cheney-Rummy-Rove Inc. are lying to them, telling them that they are winning.
The major mass media have been complicit in this deceit all along, but they are starting to turn.
Bush Co. will not be able to manufacture illusions of victory when the media sycophants become opportunistic pit bulls.
It’s only a few weeks away.
Bush is on record as stating that he “will not pull out” even if only Luara and the family dog are the only ones supporting him.
Now, that’s a real leader.
Fully, completely —
IN DENIAL.
October 1, 2006 at 5:13 pm
DadWithGirls said,
I did not create a hyperlink to an advertisement by “Ask.com” when I typed the word “media.”
Can I request a full index of the words that I might use on MND that will be automatically linked to commercials for search engine companies?
And, may I ask what my percentage of the revenue might be?
I can type a lotta profitable words, if that’s the direction this site is going….
October 1, 2006 at 5:19 pm
pskurnick said,
TO DAD WITH GIRLS: If there was a surprisingly resilent group of boys in your neighborhood messing with your girls, would you ‘cut and run’ if the fight got too tough? I doubt it.
October 1, 2006 at 6:11 pm
Patriot said,
How can you say the MSM is helping the white house and still look yourself in the mirror? They even forge documents and print classified reports trying to get news that looks bad out. They are doing everything they can to make things look as bad as possible.
Thanks for the laugh! Your post was great even though you missed the point of almost everything I originally posted. By the way. Just how many times have YOU been to the Middle East to have so much of a better idea of what is going on then I do?
October 1, 2006 at 6:52 pm
DadWithGirls said,
By next month, maybe by Christmas, there will be 3,000 U.S. combat dead who might wish they had an opportunity to take up your debate.
(And let’s just forget about the 60,000 - 120,000 deceased collateral damages … Iraqui men, women,and children.)
My fundamental question to you, Mr. Patriot, is just this —
How much slaughter does it take to adequately define your notion of FREEDOM?
BTW - I have been to the Middle East. Way back when it was a tourist destination and not a quagmire war zone. It was lovely then. You could drive from the airport to the city without being shot at.
That qualifies as a Bush Co. definition of “victory,” right?
October 1, 2006 at 7:30 pm
DadWithGirls said,
You really need to make some phone calls to the grieving families of this foolish useless war.
Perhaps you might explain your “metrics of valor” to sisters and mothers and fathers and uncles and aunts who don’t quite get your math.
There was a time in this country when patriots grasped the cost of war.
You sir, have no claim upon patriotism until you do.
October 1, 2006 at 7:43 pm
Patriot said,
First, don’t talk to me about understanding loss. Though I didn’t die I lost most use of my left leg in Afghanistan. I live with the pain of the war on terror every single day.
I agree it is terrible that we have lost many of our bravest men and women in this war. I personally lost two friends that were very close to me. War is a terrible thing, but many of these “peaceful Muslims” know nothing else and if we don’t fight this war in their backyard we will be fighting it in our streets instead. I honestly couldn’t care less about their freedom. We are in this war to kill Muslim extremists and we are doing that.
Second, there you go again inventing facts about 60,000 - 120,000 dead in Iraq. The total now sits at about 40,000 dead (still terrible) and most of those are due to Muslim terrorists bombing large gatherings of civilians. Saddam killed more than that on a regular basis. But again, I don’t care much about their freedom. If they wanted it bad enough they would have taken it themselves.
Third, I don’t have to make phone calls to the families who have lost their loved ones because I know several of them. Those brave men and women come from patriotic families and though their hurt is extraordinary they know that fighting for our freedom and security is just. That is just a concept you will never understand. Liberals are too busy judging and complaining to ever actually do something or fight for anything.
Fourth, don’t talk to me about Bush talking points. I would have him over a fraud like Kerry, but I believe neither one of them gives a damn about the average middle class American. I believe the last useful President we had was Reagan. Almost every politician, Republican or Democrat, cares far more about corporations than any of us.
Finally, that Middle East you visited a long time ago doesn’t exist. It has been taken over by extremeists that give christians three choices. Either convert, pay a tax, or have your head cut off. Truely a religion of peace.
Go ahead. Deny and repress the facts. Liberals hate truth. Just make some fake statistics up and spout. Continue to tell yourself you are right. It’s very entertaining to us all. Lucky for you there will always be brave Americans like me willing to die so you can stick your head in the sand.
October 1, 2006 at 10:40 pm
pskurnick said,
October 2, 2006 at 5:15 am
Denis said,
October 2, 2006 at 8:15 am
ggreen67 said,
I am very surprised to see Fred Reed publish this. Of course Fred doesn’t have much to worry about down there in Mexico or whereever the hell he lives.
DadWithGirls. Take a look at the link below and take careful note as to the actions some of the people on your side of the fence are doing.
Is this where you stand?
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/K/KY_SOLDIER_FUNERAL_KYOL-?SITE=KYLOU&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT
October 2, 2006 at 8:20 am
Eric said,
If only others would just do as I say…then, we would all be happy and copestetic…groovy…peace.
Eric
October 2, 2006 at 9:16 am
nighthawk said,
Sounds like Dad is suffering from the same myopia or lazyeye that afflicts our “mainstream” media.
Under 3000 U.S. casualties in a multi-year “quagmire”, while bad, is not a disaster.
Quoting Bob Woodward, the darling of the left, is rather like quoting Dan Blather or Hillary Clinton. Don’t expect to be taken seriously by sane people or believed. Because, of course, you will be half sane and lying.
Dad Said:
“Although I do not recall that the peaceniks actually made war policy”
Dad, you just ain’t right. I was just a kid, and I know better. Peaceniks in the media shape foreign policy by affecting public opinion, thereby affecting polls and voting patterns.
Now, if you have a media that lies, like Dan Blather , or Eason Jordan, it becomes absolutely disgusting.
In case you don’t remember Dad, Eason Jordan’s CNN lied for a decade about Saddam Hussein.
“He doesn’t have any WMD programs, torture chambers, rape rooms, mass graves, etc.”
CNN lying for TEN YEARS, right up until our tanks rolled into Baghdad, AFFECTED FOREIGN POLICY!
October 2, 2006 at 9:41 am
fourthwire said,
At first analysis, he’s apparently still living in the days of the draft.
Patriot - great post! America still has MEN, as evidenced by guys like yourself.
Denis - thanks for providing that link. It was an eye-opener!
October 2, 2006 at 4:57 pm
emarel said,
I fail, however, to see any connection at all between fighting in Iraq and “defending our freedom” when all the while the idiots in Washington allow the mass, unrestricted and illegal immigration into this country to continue unabated. What’ll we do the next time some 9-11 event occurs in this country…find some other Middle Eastern country to illegally invade…? Until we actually do something to first slam the door on illegal immigration, and then find and deport those who are here illegally, all this “fighting terrorists over there so we won’t have to fight them here” stuff is just great sounding crap. They’re probably over here already…
October 2, 2006 at 5:03 pm
sconway said,
For Fred part the revolt he envisions is never going to happen (not on any scale). The reasons are the makeup of the armed forces today vs the Vietnam era and the conflict itself.
Today we have a volunteer service - everybody has the choice to sign up or not and those signing up know full well that after training their asses could be shipped to Iraq. While I mourn every life lost over there it was there choice to make and I will respect them for it and pray that over time their sacrafice was not a completly in vain. In Vietnam it was a drafted army - an 18 year old had three choices: pray for 4F, flee the country or go get shot up. Having a volunteer force guarantees a higher morale agmonst the troups and a more cohesive structure.
Now the second part gets complicated because initially the two are complete opposites then become complete parallels. We entered Vietnam because South Vietnam refused to have agreed upon elections and the North invaded (simple fact - read the link)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vietnam_War
The warhawks in Washington rushed to the South’s aid because it was afraid that if an election was held the communist would win - and as any good conservative knows even an elected communist government is not a democracy (heavy sarcasm here). North Vietnam did absolutly nothing to the US and yet we sent our troups over to fight them.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geneva_Conference_%281954%29
Afghanistan was different because our homeland was attacked. We knew who the culprit was and where he was (in case you did not know that was Osama Bin Laden in Afghanistan) and the then government of the group (The Taliban BTW) stood up to protect him there was only one thing we could do - go in and kick their asses. No one on this post has disagreed with us invading Afghanistan. Same as WWII when Pearl Harbor was attacked and Germany stood up and said that if you declare war on Japan then we declare war on you there was only one thing to do - go in and kick their asses. This is why I find Patriots D-Day conclusion not only wrong but laughably so. So starting out the differences are night and day.
But then we invade Iraq on what turned out to be trumped up charges based on intelligence and sources that even the CIA was warning against. We were sold (slam dunk) that Sadam had biological WMDs, was working on a nuke and was going to hand it all to Al Qaeda which Sadam was sponsoring. And when we invaded and found no nukes, no WMDs whatsoever and no link to Sadam and Al Qaeda instead of telling us “I messed up, we have screwed over Iraq and its my fault. But we cannot pull out until we have a stable government because its our obligation to fix what we messed up” Bush gets on TV and tells Americans “there were other reasons to invade Iraq.” WHY?? To spread some more democracy at gun point. Did not Vietnam prove to us that that does not work??!! This was the day Bush lost my last ounce of respect and support. And that is when we became parallel to Vietnam. Iraq did absolutly nothing to the US since the gulf war and yet we invaded again. You talk about liberals making things up then Bush must be the looniest liberal out there.
Now that said I still say the “mutiny” Fred envisions will never happen. But a revolt is happening. Fewer and fewer people are joining the military because they do not believe in the war in Iraq. It has gotten to the point that the military is allowing high school dropouts and near retards (IQ 72 allowed - this is considered Borderline Intellectual Functioning) to sign up in the military in a desperate attempt to keep its numbers up:
http://www.slate.com/id/2127487/
http://www.armytimes.com/print.php?f=0-ARMYPAPER-1115401.php
http://www.rand.org/pubs/monographs/MG265/chapter1_sec4.html
http://www.assessmentpsychology.com/iqclassifications.htm
Patriot you did give me one good laugh. Your constant use of the term “liberal” for people who disagrees with you reminded my when I used to listen to Rush just to hear him call anyone who disagreed with him a “pinko commie liberal”. I leave you with two definitions and a thought:
Patriot - supporter of own country: a proud supporter or defender of his or her country and its way of life.
Fanatic - a holder of extreme or irrational enthusiasms or beliefs, especially in religion or politics
You have derided the people whose views you don’t like as weak, wimps or liberal. These actions are more inline with a fanatic than a patriot.
As it stands today the architect of 9/11 is still free and a two-bit dictator is in jail. My view is that we should NEVER have invaded Iraq. We should have taken all those troops and put them in Afghanistan and go after Osama. If we had done that the world would have been a much better place. If I am liberal for wanting Osama captured then so be it.
October 3, 2006 at 10:12 pm
nighthawk said,
You said:
“We should have taken all those troops and put them in Afghanistan and go after Osama. If we had done that the world would have been a much better place.”
A couple of small problems there buddy.
1) Osama is/was not restrained by borders. He can/could go anywhere he wants
2) Saddam and his thugs would still be torturing and maiming innocents, and commiting genocide.
3) (BONUS!) The world would be less safe, because the terrorists would not be concentrated in Iraq.
October 7, 2006 at 3:13 pm
sconway said,
History has shown that you cannot fight a war on multiple fronts. Hitler found that out the hard way when he lost his common sense and invaded Russia instead of commiting his troups to Egypt or Britian. Bush is finding this out the hard way when he took troups away from Afganistan to invade Iraq. At least he learned from his lessons and is trying to handle Iran and North Korea with diplomacy instead of more invasions.
The United States has always had a poor history of overthrowing governments and Sadam is a prime example:
1. He came into power with the help of the CIA
2. We (the United States) gave him the Anthrax he used.
3. Under Regan we KNEW for a fact that he was gassing whole villages in his own country but turned a blind eye because he was fighting Iran for us.
If you want other examples of bad governments we helped create (via CIA) look at Panama or any other South American government.
Basically there are two ways of looking at this. If you want to take the moral high road then look at the Golden rule “Do onto others as you would have done on to yourself”. We have no moral mantle to go charging into a country because their leader is bad - that is what we have the United Nations for.
If you want to take the moral low road then look at the saying “The devil you know is better than the devil you don’t know.” We helped Sadam overthrow Iraq and take over and now we have overthrown Sadam - If the thought of who could take over now does not give you cold sweats then you should be ashamed of yourself.
As for your small problems:
1) Osama is/was not restrained by borders. He can/could go anywhere he wants.
Which is exactly why we should have thrown every solider we had into Afghanistan when we knew he was there. There was times when US military commanders on the ground knew what village he was in and begged the Pentagon for more troups only to be let down because we were prepping the soliders for the “Slam Dunk” in Iraq. Bin Laden’s terrorism knew no border but Sadam was safely contained in Iraq. In my opinion Bush took the easy way out getting Sadam to make himself look good instead of pouring his resources into the real terrorist.
2) Saddam and his thugs would still be torturing and maiming innocents, and commiting genocide.
And today Osama is free masterminding the torture, death and genocide of innocent people. I have covered all my arguments on this one.
3) (BONUS!) The world would be less safe, because the terrorists would not be concentrated in Iraq.
Buddy the numbers don’t bear this out in the slightest. Take all the terrorist acts against us before we invaded Iraq (including 9/11) and you would come up with the worst year (2001) of just over 3000 killed - or about 10 per day averaged out. Read the news they are finding 10-30 people bombed or bound, tortured and executed a DAY in Iraq. So not only have we concentrated MOST (but not all) of the terrorist in Iraq but also made it worse. And the bonus here is that with all the terrorist in one place Osama is probably having an easier time organizing them.
If leads me back to my original point in my last post: If we had taken all the manpower we threw at Iraq and put it to hunting down Osama and dismantling Al Queda the world would be a better place.
To answer your post if we would stop screwing around goverments in the world then the world would be a lot better place. If you look at all the dictators in the world you will find that in almost all cases a SuperPower (US or Russia) helped set them up.
Personally we should have kept true the words of Thomas Jefferson “Peace, commerce and honest friendship with all nations; entangling alliances with none.” We lost site of that after WWII and personally I think we should go back to it.
October 7, 2006 at 6:42 pm
sconway said,
We are both agreed that Sadam should not be in power but with our history of mucking with goverments we should have learned from experience that we are ill equiped to pick a government for another country.
If we really did not want Sadam in power then why did the CIA help the Ba’ath party overthrow the Iraqi government in 1963?
Just think of it - If we had kept our noses out of Iraq in the 1960’s we never would be in there today.
October 7, 2006 at 9:16 pm
nighthawk said,
False. You can. As we both know, it was done in the same conflict you mention.
“Under Regan we KNEW for a fact that he was gassing whole villages in his own country but turned a blind eye because he was fighting Iran for us.”
Yes, much in the same way that we helped Osama fight the Soviet occupation. (Real occupation, not the imaginary one that liberals complain about today)
Yes, much like the blind eye of our American media that covered up all of Saddam’s atrocities because it didn’t fit their agenda. (Wonder who should be watching whom?)
As for why we supported Saddam at the time, I suspect in the political government world, one must simply choose the lesser of two evils. Not all problems have an ideal solution.
Agreed, more troops should have been used. However, Osama still would likely have gone to ground in Pakistan. This is likely what he did in any case.
Point is, Osama can cross borders with impunity, we cannot.
“If you look at all the dictators in the world you will find that in almost all cases a SuperPower (US or Russia) helped set them up.”
Yes, thye may be bad, but they are consistently bad. Stability.
“If we had kept our noses out of Iraq in the 1960’s we never would be in there today.”
Agreed, but you must play the cards as they are dealt.
October 10, 2006 at 6:12 am
sconway said,
Only becuase we had a draft (military size 8.3M vs 480,000 today) and the will to mobilize the majority industrial capacity of the United States towards the war effort (a far cry from what we are doing today). By splitting our forces today to go after both Osama/Afganastan and Sadam/Iraq we have failed to achieve overall victory on both counts.
“Yes, thye may be bad, but they are consistently bad. Stability.”
You are dangerously close to agreeing with me. As evil and murderous as Sadam was he held the country together and had a secular government (Sadam did not convert to Islam until just before we invaded) that almost all his neighbors hated. With Sadam out of the picture Iran was now free to throw their resources to other, nuclear, endeavors. As much as you might hate it Sadam was a stablizing force in the region causing most of the middle east to focus on him instead of us. Leaving him there would have enabled us to focus on Osama instead of trying to keep the Sunni’s and Shite’s from slitting each others throats.
“Agreed, but you must play the cards as they are dealt.”
Sadly the most true statement posted here. I just pray the next president will be more willing to learn from history than doing it their own way. In this case I would have suggested Eisenhower’s Project Solarium (link below). If Bush would have done half as much planning…. well like you said - you must play the cards as they are dealt.
http://www.eisenhowerinstitute.org/programs/livinghistory/solarium.htm
October 10, 2006 at 9:01 pm
Gus said,
I always love your witty, waggish comments on events and affairs but I have to question whether you know what the hell this war in Iraq is all about.
We are involved in World War IV (depending how you classify our encounter with the late USSR).
If you believe that we cannot win the Iraq War, as you seem to, then you are in the same position as the Democrats who love to howl but have no alternative to the present to Pres Bush’s strategy.
We are locked in a room with a psychotic who wants to kill us. There are two option. I’m sure you can figure them out.
I also question your belief that enlisted men have a truer knowledge of the over-all situation than the officers.
During the first phase of the war, I remember hearing a lot of talk about “The Siege of Baghdad”, “quagmires” and “not enough troops”, all of which proved not to be true.
The problems began after the overt military action was over.
They are enormously complex because they involve the decision of the Islamic moderates as to whether they want to continue to live under dictators and theocrats or risk a try at democracy.
The reasons for the complexities are not only social and military but also theological, perhaps the hardest of them all.
One option is definitely out: “cut and run”.
Containment worked with the USSR because they were not attacking our homeland.
The Islamic-fascists definitely are.
This is a fight to the finish and people’s minds who are fogged with memories of “fragging” in the Viet-Nam War had better start reading about the history of the 30’s.
The Islamic-fascists due to their psycotic apocolyptic delusions are much more dangerous than Hitler.
Gus Owens
October 11, 2006 at 11:27 am
nighthawk said,
“we had a draft”
True.
“s much as you might hate it Sadam was a stablizing force”
Ah, but then we run into the tyrannical dictator ship problem. Yes, dictatorships are politically stable.
“Sunni’s and Shite’s from slitting each others throats.”
A small fact that seems to be much overlooked in the whole situation, as are the reasons for it.
As for the rest, we don’t disagree that much.
Bush isn’t my boy. Can barely stand him really.
However, He has to deal with domestic enemies of America rather more than has been done in the past. Turn of phrase may be troubling for you.
Has he been competent? Barely.
“trumped up” reasons for being in Iraq? Not the way I’d phrase it.
Other reasons for being in Iraq?
If CNN had not lied for a decade about human rights conditions under Saddam, we might not be having this conversation now.
With some truth, and an administration with a less hostile (or at least not rabidly hostile) media, folks might have demanded that we go in there as we did in Bosnia.
Even if I don’t like Bush that well, the constant bashing is a little hard to take.
Have a good one there, sconway.
October 13, 2006 at 4:33 pm
sconway said,
I am not sure about the media lying though (except maybe fox - they have been caught outright). The media SHOWED the gassed bodies in the early ninties from when Saddam gassed the Kurds in 1988 and there was no mass public outcry to overthrow Sadam. And if a leader is gassing his own people its no stretch of the imagination that he is doing other bad things. I personally think that Americans as a mass would rather fix our own ills than go fix other countries problems.
Your term “domestic enemies” scares me. Who is that? The Democrats??
Personally anyone can bash the president (1st admendment) as long as they vote (Diebold’s not everywhere so some votes still count). To hear someone complain about the situation and then not do anything about it really ranks.
Either way the talks were fun - Hope you have a good one too.
October 13, 2006 at 11:18 pm