OK, you Righties, what is wrong with this? Senator Harry Reid said:
United with one voice, Democratic leaders from Joe Biden to John Murtha sent a clear message to George Bush — it’s time for a New Direction in Iraq. Our plan is straightforward: we believe that a phased redeployment of U.S. forces from Iraq should begin by the end of 2006. And our soldiers in the region should transition to a more limited mission focused on counterterrorism, force protection of U.S. personnel, training and logistical support of Iraqi security forces.
The problem with the George W. Bush approach is — how do we know when we are done? When did we win? When Iraq has no insurgents? That may never happen. When they have a government? They have one now. When they have an army? Like the one we decimated? They have an army and apparently half of the solders are insurgents, too.
Tell me, oh wise ones, when we will know when we are done in Iraq?
(I am leaving off the table for now my personal belief that our troops are making the situation worse by their presence and not better.)
lolife 
Been busy lately and haven’t had a lot of time to banter. Don’t take my absence as any tacit agreement!
Anyway, no, I absolutely do not think my statement is over the top. I think it is right on the money. I think the left’s downplaying of the threat is what truly scares me. Every conflict you mention is just a skirmish in their larger war, in my opinion. I do not believe it is a small faction. If there are 1 billion or so Muslims, I believe it is at the very, very least 10% of them that feel this way. That means your “small group of extremists” has, at the very least, 100 million supporters. That’s 1/3 of the population of the entire USA.
Also, I don’t think the country of Iran is a “small group of extremists” either. Can you explain to me why you don’t take these people at their word? Listen to what they say, what they preach, and what their stated public goals are. In the words of Winston Churchill, you lefties want to feed the crocodile and hope you’re the last ones eaten. Call me crazy but I’d rather kill the crocodile. And don’t ask me “why aren’t we fighting Iran then?” I believe we are attempting diplomacy still and I can’t believe the left is going to criticize the right for pursuing the path of diplomacy.
Mark my words though, if the UN imposes sanctions, they will be ignored by Iran because Iran knows that the UN is a paper tiger. Then what will eventually happen is there will be a conflict between the US and Iran or Israel and Iran, or a wider regional conflict. I will say what I have said a thousand times, diplomacy does not and will not work with these idiots. They will only maybe concede in public but work double-time in private to reach their ultimate goals. I truly, truly believe this.
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Great points, Chad.
michedelic, you said: “we must defeat an enemy intent on taking over the world and imposing an evil regime over all people.”
Don’t you think that is a little over the top? Yes, a “small” group of extremists may have this goal, but there is no real threat there whatsoever. The insurgents we are fighting in Iraq do not have that goal, they have a goal of getting the US marines out of there country. The Palestinians have a goal to have a sovereign land of their own. Hezzbolah has a goal that the US/UK and Israel will stop having heavy handed and ill-conceived campaigns in the middle east.
We had to do what we did in Afghanistan. Hussein was a bad man a threat in the same way as countries like Iran but this war was not to save the world at all. That is nonsense.
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This reminds me of the Powell Doctrine, taken from wikipedia.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Powell_Doctrine)
I think the two main violations of the Powell Doctrine, here’s a few points Powell proposed and some thoughts (more of them are in the link).
—
1. Do we have a clear attainable objective?
Broadly defined, the Commander-in-Chief’s objective is “when Iraqis stand up, Americans will stand down.” So, in this sense, our objective is to get the Iraqi military to function on its own. Of course, this is different than defeating all of the terrorists in Iraq.
2. Have the consequences of our action been fully considered?
I think the above is the most obvious failure. The current bloodbath among Iraqis was clearly not anticipated by our leaders. This failure to consider the consequences really complicates #3 below…
3. Is there a plausible exit strategy to avoid
endless entanglement?
—
The thing that I notice among some of the war supporters is that they have the World War II “kill em all mentality” but they fail to realize that we won’t do that in Iraq.
Powell’s doctrine is also known as the “Powell Doctrine of Overwhelming Force” becuase we are suppose to use overwhelming force to win a war. If you want a comparison with WWII, in that war we did use total war–blowing apart cities, factories, infrastucture, and the general public. We can’t do that in Iraq becuase we are suppose to be bringing people their “freedom” by building infrastructure. Basically we jumped to the Marshall Plan part of the war without making the enemy surrender. The enemy is mixed in the civilian population–and they don’t think they have been defeated. So we are trying to do two things at once, with a relatively small occupying force, and it’s insanely difficult.
Unless there is some grand plan that is about to come into place which is hidden to me, I don’t see how anyone can argue that this whole thing hasn’t been a huge strategic blunder.
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I keep hearing you guys say stuff like that. It is in stark denial of the facts. Your premise is that we are not making things worse. You know what they say — if you find yourself in a hole, stop digging. We keep on digging with not a single new thought on how to actually achieve our goals. Stay the course, right into the chasm.
No. We need to actually achieve our goals and nothing the president has done has gotten us closer to that. But y’all are so damn loyal to that oaf you just want to go over the edge with him, too.
World War II is not a good analogy at all. Every fucking war from now until the end of time people are going to claim is “good” because WWII was good. We had an objective that was achievable militarily in that war. We do not in this war. It is a very, very, very important difference.
The only thing dumber than an arbitrary timeline is no fucking plan at all. We didn’t control Iraq before this and we won’t control it after it. Get used to that.
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(Leaving off the table for now my personal belief that Harry Reid, Joe Biden and John Murtha are all three idiots and hopeless party hacks…)
When we are done, it will be obvious; no wise ones will have to tell you. How about this, lets use the same “timetable” we used to pull out of Germany and Japan. Oh, wait, we still have troops in Germany and Japan, and that war went pretty darn well for the good ol’ USA. Except maybe that we lost about 400,000 of our brave men & women out of 11,000,000 who served in the war. And to my thinking, I believe the stakes are pretty much the same, we must defeat an enemy intent on taking over the world and imposing an evil regime over all people.
To set an arbitrary timeline for political purposes is idiocy and political gain is the only reason your goofy trio mentioned above have made this proposal. To state a planned pullout from Iraq based on a timetable is just handing a timetable to Iran and the insurgency on when they can just waltz in and take over.
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