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mike182d
Guest
Then why isn’t Vietnam considered a “success?”
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wabrams
Guest
Germany declared war on the US a day or two after we declared war on Japan. We immediately started fighting the Japanese, whereas we didn’t start fighting the Germans until we invaded North Africa in mid-1942.
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Richardols
Guest
To those who wanted our men home, I think it would have been a success. By war’s end, both conservatives and liberals were thoroughly fed up with the war. No one wanted our forces to stay there and keep fighting.
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Lance
Guest
What do Richardols and gnjsdad suggest we do to end the war? We are there and that is a fact, now argueing about whether we should have gone or not is a moot point. What do you want to do to get our troops home and give the Iraqis the freedom they deserve?
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Richardols
Guest
I see your point. Our armed forces are bogged down in a quagmire thanks to our Administration, and they can’t slog their way out that easily.
Oh, we can still say that we had no business there, even if I don’t have a solution for extracting our men from Iraq now.
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gnjsdad
Guest
I’m with Richardols. I haven’t a clue how to win the war in Iraq; neither, I suspect, do the President or his neoconservative advisors who got us into the mess. What we have here is a Hobson’s choice. Staying and leaving are equally unpalatable alternatives at this point. This insures more American casualties, a growing insurgency, and more Iraqi deaths.
In fact, “winning”, meaning achieving an objective and bringing the troops home, may not be in the cards at all. What likely is in the offing is a permanent US presence. The US now has plans to construct at least 4 giant military bases in Iraq, which strongly suggests that the American military isn’t coming home from Iraq anytime soon. Empire, anyone?
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gilliam
Guest
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gnjsdad
Guest
I thought about making this a new thread, but it seems more appropriate to post it here.
This is a source for the story of the plans for US base construction in Iraq. If a country makes that kind of military and economic commitment, it’s not on the verge of leaving.
However, just who in the future is going to man (or woman - for those of you who see military service as equal opportunity) these bases is very much open to question, especially if the desertion problem gets any bigger and mid-level officers continue to plot their own exit strategy.
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gilliam
Guest
We all know the US will be in Iraq for awhile, altough I think we will be in Afghanistan longer. If you are going to move troops from 100s of small bases and consolidate them into a few larger bases (while moving a lot of troops home), you need to plan for and establish the few, larger bases.
You don’t just move troops to an empty lot if you can help it.
So far, our retention is doing great, thank you very much, and we don’t have any real problem with desertion. Most troops that go AWOL do so for family reasons (breaking up with girl friend or whatever) and are back, late, but back. Very few troops go AWOL for political reasons. Our troops are very loyal.
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Jeffrey
Guest
Oh brother. 
Talk about flame bait., Is that the only reason you posted this http://www.fanstop.com/smileys/pukeface.gif
gnjsdad:
Talk about flame bait., Is that the only reason you posted this http://www.fanstop.com/smileys/pukeface.gif
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INRI
Guest
gnjsdad and Richardols, you guys DO seem like you are cheerleading for the US to fail. All of it is based on the perception, and you keep parroting the talking points without fail, that Iraq is a “quagmire”. Negative, negative, negative 100% of the time seems to be your way. It doesn’t have anything to do with what is really happening on the ground. What is really happening is that we are make slow, but steady, progress in building a new country.
The terrorists (don’t you dare call them insurgents) are in fact getting more desperate. They are hated by nearly all of the population, Shia, Kurd, and Sunni because all they bring is death and destruction. They have no plan to rebuild the country. In fact, the majority appear to be foreigners now. al-Zarqawi stepped up his attacks because of the perception, both inside and outside his “movement”, that they were losing steam. How does it make you feel to know that you are *de facto *aligned with guys who consider chopping off heads of civilians as acceptable, and who recently announced that it was OK to kill innocent Muslims in their jihad?
Have you ever read Arthur Chrenkoff’s biweekly column “The Good News In Iraq”? No, you haven’t. (Here’s the link: opinionjournal.com/extra/?id=110006724
Note that he comes out with something this long every two weeks.) You just keep reading **** that you got off of antiwar.com and The Guardian. What do you know about the everyday progress in rebuilding the infrastructure of Iraq (that was degraded badly even before the war)? Nothing. What do you know about the increase in the size of the police force and Iraqi army? Nothing. The recruiting stations get bombed, and the next day a line forms again to sign up. What do you know about all the IED’s that get found and defused before they explode (now the majority)? Nothing. How often do you read about the terrorist casualties? Never. Do you ever read any of the military blogs by the guys who are actually on the ground in Iraq? No, you don’t. Take a look for a change. They ALL complain about how the press doesn’t report anything good that happens, how it’s all “if it bleeds, it leads”, and how they try to hone in especially on getting photos of dead Americans, neglecting any respect for the dead.
Consider this statement, culled from the link I posted that you didn’t read. It sums up my thoughts exactly:
*But what has shocked and dismayed me, way beyond the sadness and regret of our losses, has been the willingness, even the eagerness, among many on the left who want nothing more than to see our side lose. *
*Our soldiers are fighting and dying to install what any sane person can see is a widely-representative democracy, heroically elected at great personal risk. Opposing them are a shadow army of former secret policemen, state torturers, and foreign invaders of every stripe who kill Iraqi policemen, behead innocent Iraqi cabdrivers, and detonate car bombs at the opening of new schools and children’s centers. There may be an explanation for this support I am not seeing. I, for one, can not get past the idea that millions of Western Progressives would rather see a nation re-enslaved, or erupt in civil war, or have twenty thousand of their countrymen come home in boxes than admit that they were wrong. *
*And they have the audacity, the unmitigated gall, to claim the moral high ground? *
I am trying my level best to understand how and why someone who professes to be for freedom for artists, homosexuals and women – not to mention unlimited personal expression of every stripe – can take the side of 8th Century religious fanatics who brag about murdering writers, stoning women, beheading homosexuals and instituting moral policemen at every street corner with unquestioned authority to beat, jail or execute anyone suspected of being insufficiently pious.
cont’d below
The terrorists (don’t you dare call them insurgents) are in fact getting more desperate. They are hated by nearly all of the population, Shia, Kurd, and Sunni because all they bring is death and destruction. They have no plan to rebuild the country. In fact, the majority appear to be foreigners now. al-Zarqawi stepped up his attacks because of the perception, both inside and outside his “movement”, that they were losing steam. How does it make you feel to know that you are *de facto *aligned with guys who consider chopping off heads of civilians as acceptable, and who recently announced that it was OK to kill innocent Muslims in their jihad?
Have you ever read Arthur Chrenkoff’s biweekly column “The Good News In Iraq”? No, you haven’t. (Here’s the link: opinionjournal.com/extra/?id=110006724
Note that he comes out with something this long every two weeks.) You just keep reading **** that you got off of antiwar.com and The Guardian. What do you know about the everyday progress in rebuilding the infrastructure of Iraq (that was degraded badly even before the war)? Nothing. What do you know about the increase in the size of the police force and Iraqi army? Nothing. The recruiting stations get bombed, and the next day a line forms again to sign up. What do you know about all the IED’s that get found and defused before they explode (now the majority)? Nothing. How often do you read about the terrorist casualties? Never. Do you ever read any of the military blogs by the guys who are actually on the ground in Iraq? No, you don’t. Take a look for a change. They ALL complain about how the press doesn’t report anything good that happens, how it’s all “if it bleeds, it leads”, and how they try to hone in especially on getting photos of dead Americans, neglecting any respect for the dead.
Consider this statement, culled from the link I posted that you didn’t read. It sums up my thoughts exactly:
*But what has shocked and dismayed me, way beyond the sadness and regret of our losses, has been the willingness, even the eagerness, among many on the left who want nothing more than to see our side lose. *
*Our soldiers are fighting and dying to install what any sane person can see is a widely-representative democracy, heroically elected at great personal risk. Opposing them are a shadow army of former secret policemen, state torturers, and foreign invaders of every stripe who kill Iraqi policemen, behead innocent Iraqi cabdrivers, and detonate car bombs at the opening of new schools and children’s centers. There may be an explanation for this support I am not seeing. I, for one, can not get past the idea that millions of Western Progressives would rather see a nation re-enslaved, or erupt in civil war, or have twenty thousand of their countrymen come home in boxes than admit that they were wrong. *
*And they have the audacity, the unmitigated gall, to claim the moral high ground? *
I am trying my level best to understand how and why someone who professes to be for freedom for artists, homosexuals and women – not to mention unlimited personal expression of every stripe – can take the side of 8th Century religious fanatics who brag about murdering writers, stoning women, beheading homosexuals and instituting moral policemen at every street corner with unquestioned authority to beat, jail or execute anyone suspected of being insufficiently pious.
cont’d below
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Richardols
Guest
It may become one if it isn’t such already.
Cite my posts where I’ve been cheerleading for the insurgent forces, please.
Sorry, we’ll have to get the “Happy News” reporter for you.
Why not? They fit the definition.
As opposed to you, who keeps reading the sh** that you get off the right-wing news sources.
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INRI
Guest
cont’d
No, today the loudest criticisms of the West come not from the bottom, but from the top: millionaire filmmakers and Harvard University professors and columnists who live in luxury skyscrapers. These people have never met real savagery, but they’ve seen it on *Hogan’s Heroes! *Anyone who can compare the US Marine Corps with the German SS has obviously never had to deal with either. There are millions of photos of people protesting President Bush. There is not a single photo of people in the street protesting Hitler. This tells me something. This should tell the Bush=Hitler crowd something, too. But it doesn’t.
Reality has left their building.
…
This awful and necessary war has done a lot more than show us the nature of the barbarism we face when confronting this death cult…and make no mistake, the men we face now in Iraq – not the poor regular army conscripts, but these beheading, civilian-murdering bastards – are cut from precisely the same cloth as the 9/11 hijackers, and hail from the same places, too. I, for one, would rather face these people in Fallujah and Mosul with the U.S. Army and Marine Corps than deal with them in Times Square and the Rose Bowl with Firemen and Paramedics.
…
Here they sit, surrounded by laws and medicine and art and culture: despising themselves. Remarkable, isn’t it? These people, who pride themselves on nuance, see no difference between a naked human pyramid of ten prisoners lasting two minutes and piles of corpses six million deep. Both shameful, therefore, both equal in their eyes. And *we *are the ones who only see things in black and white?
…
So why – someone? anyone? – why do otherwise intelligent and educated people so despise and detest American society, which has achieved more in the way of individual rights, science, arts, medicine, diversity, cooperation and prosperity than any other in history? Why would they oppose such a society when it is trying to bring these blessings to people who have spent thirty years cowering in dark places, fearful of letting the slightest word slip, or betraying their entire family with an askew glance or unguarded moment? Why would someone so viciously oppose freeing a People who have lived for a generation in total, abject fear?
It’s because *they *have never lived it. That is what I mean when I say reality has left their building. How many people would be opposing the war in Iraq if they had to watch, actually witness, three or four *hundred thousand *people being shot in the head in front of their families? At the rate of one life taken every single second, with one unique and irreplaceable person being extinguished every tick of the 60 Minutes stopwatch, going without sleep or rest, you would be at it for three and a half days. Bang. Bang. Bang. Bang. Bang. Every face unique, every one someone’s son or mother or precious grandchild. *Bang. Bang. Bang. *All night and all day, every second for three and a half days. How long to wipe out your entire family? Four seconds? Eight? Thirteen? We have found that many in Iraq, more will follow, believe me.
How many children – four or five year old boys and girls – do you need to see raped in front of you before you change your mind about Iraq? Fifty? Fifty thousand? Will that make a dent in your stainless steel belief system? How many cries for mercy in the muffled corridors of prison basements? Ten thousand? Ten times ten thousand? They were there. They happened.
…
There’s nothing “progressive” about what these people believe. It is refined selfishness and moral cowardice.
End of sermon.
No, today the loudest criticisms of the West come not from the bottom, but from the top: millionaire filmmakers and Harvard University professors and columnists who live in luxury skyscrapers. These people have never met real savagery, but they’ve seen it on *Hogan’s Heroes! *Anyone who can compare the US Marine Corps with the German SS has obviously never had to deal with either. There are millions of photos of people protesting President Bush. There is not a single photo of people in the street protesting Hitler. This tells me something. This should tell the Bush=Hitler crowd something, too. But it doesn’t.
Reality has left their building.
…
This awful and necessary war has done a lot more than show us the nature of the barbarism we face when confronting this death cult…and make no mistake, the men we face now in Iraq – not the poor regular army conscripts, but these beheading, civilian-murdering bastards – are cut from precisely the same cloth as the 9/11 hijackers, and hail from the same places, too. I, for one, would rather face these people in Fallujah and Mosul with the U.S. Army and Marine Corps than deal with them in Times Square and the Rose Bowl with Firemen and Paramedics.
…
Here they sit, surrounded by laws and medicine and art and culture: despising themselves. Remarkable, isn’t it? These people, who pride themselves on nuance, see no difference between a naked human pyramid of ten prisoners lasting two minutes and piles of corpses six million deep. Both shameful, therefore, both equal in their eyes. And *we *are the ones who only see things in black and white?
…
So why – someone? anyone? – why do otherwise intelligent and educated people so despise and detest American society, which has achieved more in the way of individual rights, science, arts, medicine, diversity, cooperation and prosperity than any other in history? Why would they oppose such a society when it is trying to bring these blessings to people who have spent thirty years cowering in dark places, fearful of letting the slightest word slip, or betraying their entire family with an askew glance or unguarded moment? Why would someone so viciously oppose freeing a People who have lived for a generation in total, abject fear?
It’s because *they *have never lived it. That is what I mean when I say reality has left their building. How many people would be opposing the war in Iraq if they had to watch, actually witness, three or four *hundred thousand *people being shot in the head in front of their families? At the rate of one life taken every single second, with one unique and irreplaceable person being extinguished every tick of the 60 Minutes stopwatch, going without sleep or rest, you would be at it for three and a half days. Bang. Bang. Bang. Bang. Bang. Every face unique, every one someone’s son or mother or precious grandchild. *Bang. Bang. Bang. *All night and all day, every second for three and a half days. How long to wipe out your entire family? Four seconds? Eight? Thirteen? We have found that many in Iraq, more will follow, believe me.
How many children – four or five year old boys and girls – do you need to see raped in front of you before you change your mind about Iraq? Fifty? Fifty thousand? Will that make a dent in your stainless steel belief system? How many cries for mercy in the muffled corridors of prison basements? Ten thousand? Ten times ten thousand? They were there. They happened.
…
There’s nothing “progressive” about what these people believe. It is refined selfishness and moral cowardice.
End of sermon.
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Richardols
Guest
Cut-and-paste from some right-wing website, eh? Why not post your own original thoughts?
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INRI
Guest
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INRI
Guest
Because he states it better than I could myself.
But I guess labelling things as “right wing” beats having to think about the arguments for a change.
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Richardols
Guest
Like the universal habit on this Forum of using “liberal” as a pejorative?
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mike182d
Guest
INRI, would you happen to have a link for this? I made the comment about Nazi post-war insurgency based off of something I saw on the History Channel months ago, but couldn’t remember specifics.
Also, thank you for your earlier post about the American progressives being out of touch with reality. I get so frustrated with the “solidarity” movement, even in the Church; the proponents talk big about how we need to be doing everything we can to help the poor and underpriveledged because they are our brothers and sisters. Yet, when our most defenseless and innocent “brothers and sisters” in another nation are systematically slaughtered for no other reason than maintaning a fascist dictator’s power, these same people who demand solidarity turn a blind eye and say we have no business being there and that the war is pure evil.
If I saw my sister on the street being attacked and raped, I guarantee that I would not be passive and try “diplomacy” to get him off…I would be fighting to pry him off in her defense. When good and evil try to compromise, evil always wins.
There is no such thing as a Catholic pacifist - it contradicts 1950 years of solid Catholic theology.
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Richardols
Guest
Oh? What teaches that we have no right to refuse to bear arms against another?
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mike182d
Guest
Pacificism is the complete rejection of war as a solution. Read the works of any theologian prior to the late-19th century and you will be hard pressed to find one that agrees with this position.
“…let him respect and preserve peace, which is not wickedness unpunished nor freedom without restraint, but a well-ordered harmony under the rule of the will of God…” Pope Pius XII
Peace is not the absence of war. Anyone who refuses to fight any war refuses to ensure peace. Certainly a person can object to a war, personally, but a person who rejects any and all wars is never justified.
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