It's Not Whether You Win or Lose...
In a recent interview Rep. John Murtha went on again that American troops were losing the war in Iraq, but Al Qaeda papers found by troops included a revealing document in which the terrorist group acknowledges its own "bleak situation" caused by losses on both the public relations and war fronts.
That's a strange contrast isn't it? Does that mean that Al Qaeda is giving U.S. troops more credit than Murtha is?
Murtha's not only full of insightful criticism, he's also got great ideas like re-deploying the troops in Iraq to Okinawa, Japan. Yeah, that should help in the war against radical Islamic terrorists. Deploy to Japan. Guess he didn't get the memo that we are already pulling out troops stationed in Okinawa to Guam. Is he senile?
The Democratic Representative and decorated veteran downplays the eradication of a terrorist that would still be going strong had we "pulled out immediately" as he suggested, tells the media, the world, and the terrorists that American forces are losing.
Yet, those actually on the ground in Iraq, Iraqi leadership, and even the terrorist organization itself seems to tell a different tale.
The documents seized in the weeks leading up to the 7 June 2006 killing of Abu Musab Zarqawi also have provided intelligence that has helped direct nearly five hundred allied combat operations and resulted in the killings of hundreds of insurgents, the U.S. command in Baghdad said yesterday.
Al Qaeda's acknowledged failures and the military offensive have been so successful that Iraq's national security adviser flatly predicted that Zarqawi's group, al Qaeda in Iraq, is at "the beginning of the end" and also predicts that "US troops could be out of Iraq by 2008."
The House on Friday voted 256-153 to back President Bush’s policies in Iraq after two days of passionate and partisan debate and there was Murtha again with a wonderful quote "We’ve become the enemy." Speak for yourself Congressman.
The left supposes that if we had just had “the right plan” the war would have been easy, cheap, quick, and clean. That is not an option. This is a guerrilla war, and no such war ever has been or ever will be easy, cheap, quick, or clean.
Winning and losing, is this vocabulary simply misplaced in reference to war? There are, after all, wars that are not actually won or lost. There are wars that achieve some of their goals, that result only in partial solutions and that leave much business unfinished, there are also wars that end ambivalently. There are wars that do not end with helicopters evacuating Americans from the embassy roof but that do not produce a victorious march into Berlin, either.
We may assist in creating the first truly democratic Arab regime, with independent media, real elections and a relatively liberal political culture. It is even possible, in the end, that we really will help bring into existence a new generation of democratic Arab reformers across the Middle East and that we will need to keep troops in the region for five decades to defend them. Would such an outcome mean the war was a "defeat"? Not necessarily. Would it mean the war was a "victory"? Not exactly.
The bottom line is that we will have to deal with radical Islamic terrorism until we defeat it. They do not want peace with us, they can't be reasoned with, they want to destroy us. This problem will not go away on its own. We have created a focal point for the battle now at the time and place of our choosing, in Iraq & Afghanistan.
"Win" or "lose" I believe this is a war of necessity.
That's a strange contrast isn't it? Does that mean that Al Qaeda is giving U.S. troops more credit than Murtha is?
Murtha's not only full of insightful criticism, he's also got great ideas like re-deploying the troops in Iraq to Okinawa, Japan. Yeah, that should help in the war against radical Islamic terrorists. Deploy to Japan. Guess he didn't get the memo that we are already pulling out troops stationed in Okinawa to Guam. Is he senile?
The Democratic Representative and decorated veteran downplays the eradication of a terrorist that would still be going strong had we "pulled out immediately" as he suggested, tells the media, the world, and the terrorists that American forces are losing.
Yet, those actually on the ground in Iraq, Iraqi leadership, and even the terrorist organization itself seems to tell a different tale.
The documents seized in the weeks leading up to the 7 June 2006 killing of Abu Musab Zarqawi also have provided intelligence that has helped direct nearly five hundred allied combat operations and resulted in the killings of hundreds of insurgents, the U.S. command in Baghdad said yesterday.
Al Qaeda's acknowledged failures and the military offensive have been so successful that Iraq's national security adviser flatly predicted that Zarqawi's group, al Qaeda in Iraq, is at "the beginning of the end" and also predicts that "US troops could be out of Iraq by 2008."
The House on Friday voted 256-153 to back President Bush’s policies in Iraq after two days of passionate and partisan debate and there was Murtha again with a wonderful quote "We’ve become the enemy." Speak for yourself Congressman.
The left supposes that if we had just had “the right plan” the war would have been easy, cheap, quick, and clean. That is not an option. This is a guerrilla war, and no such war ever has been or ever will be easy, cheap, quick, or clean.
Winning and losing, is this vocabulary simply misplaced in reference to war? There are, after all, wars that are not actually won or lost. There are wars that achieve some of their goals, that result only in partial solutions and that leave much business unfinished, there are also wars that end ambivalently. There are wars that do not end with helicopters evacuating Americans from the embassy roof but that do not produce a victorious march into Berlin, either.
We may assist in creating the first truly democratic Arab regime, with independent media, real elections and a relatively liberal political culture. It is even possible, in the end, that we really will help bring into existence a new generation of democratic Arab reformers across the Middle East and that we will need to keep troops in the region for five decades to defend them. Would such an outcome mean the war was a "defeat"? Not necessarily. Would it mean the war was a "victory"? Not exactly.
The bottom line is that we will have to deal with radical Islamic terrorism until we defeat it. They do not want peace with us, they can't be reasoned with, they want to destroy us. This problem will not go away on its own. We have created a focal point for the battle now at the time and place of our choosing, in Iraq & Afghanistan.
"Win" or "lose" I believe this is a war of necessity.
posted by Digital Fortress at 11:57
16 Comments:
"There is no doubt that, Saddam Hussein has reinvigorated his weapons programs. Reports indicate that biological, chemical and nuclear programs continue apace and may be back to pre-Gulf War status. In addition, Saddam continues to redefine delivery systems and is doubtless using the cover of a licit missile program to develop longer-range missiles that will threaten the United States and our allies."
Letter to President Bush, Signed by Sen. Bob Graham (D, FL,) and others, Dec, 5, 2001
"We begin with the common belief that Saddam Hussein is a tyrant and a threat to the peace and stability of the region. He has ignored the mandate of the United Nations and is building weapons of mass destruction and the means of delivering them."
Sen. Carl Levin (d, MI), Sept. 19, 2002.
"Iraq's search for weapons of mass destruction has proven impossible to deter and we should assume that it will continue for as long as Saddam is in power."
Al Gore, Sept. 23, 2002.
"I will be voting to give the President of the United States the authority to use force — if necessary — to disarm Saddam Hussein because I believe that a deadly arsenal of weapons of mass destruction in his hands is a real and grave threat to our security."
Sen. John F. Kerry (D, MA), Oct. 9, 2002.
"There is unmistakable evidence that Saddam Hussein is working aggressively to develop nuclear weapons and will likely have nuclear weapons within the next five years . We also should remember we have alway s underestimated the progress Saddam has made in development of weapons of mass destruction."
Sen. Jay Rockerfeller (D, WV), Oct 10, 2002
He has also given aid, comfort, and sanctuary to terrorists, including al Qaeda members. It is clear, however, that if left unchecked, Saddam Hussein will continue to increase his capacity to wage biological and chemical warfare, and will keep trying to develop nuclear weapons."
Sen. Hillary Clinton (D, NY), Oct 10, 2002
"We are in possession of what I think to be compelling evidence that Saddam Hussein has, and has had for a number of years, a developing capacity for the production and storage of weapons of mass destruction. "[W]ithout question, we need to disarm Saddam Hussein. He is a brutal, murderous dictator, leading an oppressive regime ... He presents a particularly grievous threat because he is so consistently prone to miscalculation. And now he has continued deceit and his consistent grasp for weapons of mass destruction ... So the threat of Saddam Hussein with weapons of mass destruction is real ...
Sen. John F. Kerry (D, MA), Jan. 23. 2003.
Hard to remember, but the Dems were on-board at one time. I know almost every politician flip-flops, but come on now.
I mean, can someone please explain why the Dems love to criticize Bush for supposedly ignoring and not acting on intelligence prior to the 9/11 attacks, but then accepting and acting on the intelligence for Iraq?
It's a bunch of crap.
Do we want a Middle East dominated by representative governments with civil rights, human rights, and personal freedoms or a world dominated by a radical Islamic terrorists Jihadist who believe they are called by Allah to kill all the infidels (US) under the Mullahs and the Sharia?
I do not understand why the American Left does not grasp this. They favor human rights, civil rights, liberty and freedom, but evidently not for Iraqis. In America, absolutely, but nowhere else.
300,000 Iraqi bodies in mass graves in Iraq are not our problem. The US population is about twelve times that of Iraq, so let’s multiply 300,000 by twelve. What would you think if there were 3,600,000 American bodies in mass graves in America because of George Bush? Would you hope for another country to help liberate America?
Sorry brother I went on my own rant there. :)
On reflection, maybe Murtha isn’t as crazy as I thought. Consider:
We withdraw all of our troops from around the world to US soil. (If there’s no sense having “boots on the ground” in Iraq what’s the value of having them in Okinawa?)
We fight the WoT exclusively with air power (which is what he seems to be saying.)
Rather than risk bomber crews, we create pilotless aircraft.
Since jet engines are slow, we equip these aircraft with rocket engines.
We equip them with nuclear warheads (since that’s the most efficient way of bombing an enemy) and base them out of places like North Dakota. (We could even put some on submarines!)
We give them a catchy name. Something like “It Can Bomb Mecca (ICBM),” and we use them, actively, as the centerpiece of our military and political dealings from now on.
You know, he may be a deranged, opportunistic, treasonous, senile lying scumbag of a politician…
But maybe he’s on to something.
It has become increasingly difficult for me to believe that this turd wore the same uniform I did.
Is John Murtha a member of an al Qaeda sleeper cell?
Lee Harvey Oswald was a Marine too ;)
As I recall it Murtha is just a Pa. congressman without any true policy power. Unlike the President, Vice President, other Executive Branch officials, the Speaker of the House and other high ranking Congressional figures, Murtha has no control over Iraq policy so why is evryone getting on his case?
This war is a fiasco.
He has no control over policy?
Murtha is currently the ranking Member and Chairman on the Subcommittee for Defense, which means that he is voting on bills up on the Hill that can affect policy.
Just beacuase the Republicans are the majority in the house, it doesn't render the Democrats completely powerless.
Get yourself a copy of School House Rock for God's sake.
At this point in time it makes no damn difference whether or not you or anyone else agrees with why we’re in Iraq. The fact remains we are there and we’d better win while we are there. That does NOT mean pulling out. I have no idea about your age, but trust me when I say a retreat is wrong. Perhaps you may have heard of a little soiree’ in SE Asia we were involved in. You may not be old enough to truly remember that one.I am. I served a total of 27 months in that shithole between 1968-1973. Did I want to go? NOT ONLY NO, BUT HELL NO! But, after we pulled out with a “Peace with Honor”, abandoning our erstwhile “allies”, do you remember the aftermath? Perhaps you should go watch another video called the Killing Fields and then triple the horror.
What I am trying to get to in my pathetic way is simply this, if we leave Iraq, things will be as bad or worse than they were in SE Asia. Anyone who ever even thought of helping the US and her partners will be a target. Shiites and Kurds will be slaughtered by Sunnis who will be slaughtered by the former. The only way to prevent the “civil war” the left enjoys babbling about is to ensure it doesn’t happen. And that means, for the present, US troops.
By the way, talk to the troops that are serving in theater. I do all the time. It’s really strange...they think they’re winning. Imagine the surprise they feel here at home when the left, MSM, Hollywood, and elected representatives tell them how badly they are losing.
Sorry for the long rant.
Murtha hasn’t changed either, reporters have just gotten lazy.
He had the same "cut and run" stance for Mogadishu, Somalia and we all know that Osama was appreciative that we pulled out of there.
Murtha is just full of crap...Check it out here
Murtha's got no qualms about sucking down as much DOD money as he can finagle, but he’ll claim that our military murdered in “Cold Blood” sans benefit of trial. Hypocritical, senile piece of crap.
An actual dialogue has occurred!
Murtha does have an affect on policy in his official duties and also on the coverage the media give him every time he so much as says anything that could pass as a thought on policy. What he is saying is demoralzing and upsetting, but certainly not true or even good or logical ideas.
Yes, Osama bin Laden did state that the events in Somalia and the Black Hawk Down incident in Mogadishu were an inspirationfor 9/11
One of the many stupid and more destructive things to America that Clinton did in his eight years in office was to "cut and run" in Somalia. It led Osama to think that he might get the US to pull out of the Middle East by attacking our homeland. Another was to seriously whittle our military down to almost nothing, but that's another rant...
The moral of the story: If we cut and run now, regardless of what is happening, we will only encourage the terrorists to come after us again and discourage our allies from ever following us or trusting our commitment. I believe that such a cowardly move may isolate us in some political circles and leave us with more enemies than we already have. We have to stay the course. For our sake, for our allies’ sakes, and for the Iraqi peoples sake. We have to leave the message in the terrorists’ minds that we will not break, we will not run, and we will not fail, and that by crossing us, they have doomed themselves and their foolish and hateful ideology to the landfill of history.
We who are sitting in the middle of history being made may find it hard to see the long-term effects of our actions today. All we can do is do what we deem to be the right thing, here, now, today. The Jihads, the militant Muslims, believe that Islam, their radically conservative form of Wahhabi Islam, should own and control the Middle East, then Europe, then the world, and that all who do not bow to Allah should be killed, enslaved, or subjugated. They want to finish the Holocaust, destroy Israel, and purge the world of Jews.
Islam is having its Inquisition and its Reformation now, but it is not yet known which will win - the Inquisition, or the Reformation.
If the Inquisition wins, then the Wahhabi, the Jihadis, will control the Middle East, and the OPEC oil, and the US, European, and Asian economies, the techno-industrial economies, will be at the mercy of OPEC - not an OPEC dominated by the well-educated and semi-rational Saudis of today, but an OPEC dominated by the Jihads, the terrorists.
If the Reformation movement wins, that is, the moderate Muslims who believe that Islam can respect and tolerate other religions, and live in peace with the rest of the world, and move out of the 10th century into the 21st, then the troubles in the Middle East will eventually fade away, and a moderate and prosperous Middle East will emerge.
All it takes for the bastards to win is for us quit now and "cut and run".
The actions of the soldiers have made a difference. Ask the people who have been there and have seen what it means to the Iraqi people. I can tell you first hand that we have made a difference. Ask the soldiers that are still there, the boots on the ground, and gain some perspective.
Thanks to all of you for your thoughts.
To MRE:
All those Democrats were backing the president at that time because they were led to believe that Saddam was a true threat. We know now that there were no WMD and that Saddam was not linked with AL Queda. This was simply Bush wanting to finish what his father didn't do. I agree that Iraq needed to be delt with eventually, but the job in Afgahnastan is yet to be resolved. While Bush pats himself on the back for capturing Saddam let me remind you that Osama is still at large.
Now that the troops are there they need to stay until the job is finished. I support the troops but not Bush!
Democracy in the Middle East? I don't think it will last no matter how good of a puppet we put in there. They live and think different in that part of the world.
Will we ever pull out? Probably not completely, we are still in Germany and Korea. Is our goal to populate every part of the globe and continue to police everyone?
The former Iraqi regime of Saddam Hussein did have a link to al Qaeda, they trained thousands of radical Islamic terrorists from the region at camps in Iraq over the four years immediately preceding the U.S. invasion.
The training took place primarily at three camps, in Samarra, Ramadi, and Salman Pak and was directed by the "elite" Republican Guard units of the Iraqi military.
The Senate Intelligence Committee report showed that the CIA did obtain evidence of an al Qaeda Saddam relationship from foreign intelligence and open sources.
I don't think it's as simple as Bush wanting to finish the job his daddy didn't.
To work towards a constitutional government in the Middle East is not naive. We must seek democracy's practical dividends. This isn't starry-eyed idealism and I am not talking of Jeffersonian democracy all at once.
Afghanistan may not be resolved, but it is encouraging. A few years ago, no country in the Middle East was more lawless, anti-American, or brutal than Afghanistan under the Taliban; today, our intervention has produced a more consensual government. The verdict may still be out on the stability of the Karzai government, much less the country's long-term prospects, but clearly, the present government gives Afghanistan its first ray of hope in three decades.
They live and think different in that part of the world is true, but history provides more encouragement than we might think. Cynics in 1945 warned us that Japanese terrorists would make an American occupation of mainland Japan impossible. The traditions of Japan were Asian and authoritarian, they said, and we should not confuse a desire for Western weapons and industry with any capacity for democracy. Yet we plunged in, and in five years Japan had become one of the sanest and most humane societies.
Plus, lets not forget Israel is in the Middle East and they are a democracy. :)
Saddam was a TRUE THREAT. I would even consider HIM the actual WMD in Iraq. 300,000 Iraqi bodies in mass graves. Saddam Hussein's regime offered a $2 million bribe to the United Nations' chief weapons inspector, Rolf Ekeus, to doctor his reports on the search for weapons of mass destruction. why didn't Saddam cooperate more fully with weapons inspectors if his country had no weapons of mass destruction? He had six years to dismantle, hide, etc. any weapons he did have. If he didn't have them, he was working towards having them.
As for the link between Iraq & al Qaeda - go here. I agree with this opinion.
Will we ever pull out? Of course.
Check it out
4 down and 9 more almost there. 13 out of 18 provinces ready or near ready for a transfer of power from coaltion to Iraqi security forces.
We may never know the full truth, but that's my take on it.
The Democrats backed the President on the basis of the same intelligence that the President had. If they are going to blame the President then they need to blame themselves as well. Saddam was a tyrant and a threat is so true. He needed to be gotten rid of. He ignored the mandate of the United Nations and surely was building weapons of mass destruction and the means of delivering them. We gave him ample time to come clean, but instead he tap danced and tested our resolve. Well, he got what was coming to him.
Looks like you can stop crying about no WMDs now -
The United States has found 500 chemical weapons in Iraq since 2003, and more weapons of mass destruction are likely to be uncovered....more here.
WMDs found, al Qaeda in Iraq, no Haditha cover up, guess you still got him on the where in the world is Osama bin Laden though.
Good luck & keep writing such awesome content.
Virgin Linseed Oil BP
flaxseed oil
Best content & valuable as well. Thanks for sharing this content.
Approved Auditor in DAFZA
Approved Auditor in RAKEZ
Approved Auditor in JAFZA
i heard about this blog & get actually whatever i was finding. Nice post love to read this blog
Approved Auditor in DMCC
Post a Comment
<< Home