Regardless of weather or not the 'Troup surge' is working we will eventually win. There is a much larger picture here...
I think it sidesteps the responsibility of every American who was all in favor of going to war (which is more than 80%) to blame it all on any one person (even George W. Bush). Bush was doing what he thought was right at the time, and he took his case for war before the Congress and the American public. To come along after the fact and say "hey, this was a mistake, and where are the WMD's" is a cop out and a total disregard of the facts that lead up to the war in Iraq and the support for the war at the time.
I would agree with you that there is a larger picture here, though its likely we see different pictures. There will be a large cost in order to win this war and i think there should be some very serious questioning as it were to determine if the costs (on a variety of levels) will be worth the endemic nature of this war against terror.
I would agree with you on the point that it is perhaps an overstretch to blame everything on bush. Certinaly there was a noticable lust for revenge after the 9/11 attacks that was rather reasonable. However, simply because someone believes an action is right at the time, does not excuse them from long term critique. Frankly there is a fair amount of work out at the moment that suggests our extensive clandestine services in both the afghanistan and iraq preparation. Frankly, if you are in charge of the lives and livelyhoods of the millions of individuals affected by oour armed services....thinking something is the right move is not enough. There is a level of professional detachment that is required in these situations, and bush may have failed in that regard.
We HAVE found WMDs, and the evidence that Saddam was planning to reconstitute his WMD manufacturing capacity at some point in the future, and in Bush's speeches prior to the war he clearly stated that Iraq was a GATHERING threat, and that he thought action was necessary NOW to prevent Iraq from becoming a much bigger threat in the future. After the attacks of 9/11, people seemed to understand that sitting back and waiting for our enemies to get strong is a BAD idea, now 6 years later with no new attacks we seem to have some strange version of mass alzheimers. Especially the despictable politicians like John Edwards who go around saying 'what terrorists?', like there never have been, and are not terrorists who would LOVE to turn New York, Chicago, LA, or any of our other cities into a radioactive pile of smoking rubble.
I think you are certainly stretching some of the truth here. What america was sold on the war was a viable immediate threat of wmds that posed a catstrophic risk to our national security. It was not so that in the future we could be in danger of attack, it was on the notion that iraq in the very near future was going to be involved in an attack on american soil. This was an understandable concern for a nation staggering from an attack.
Likewise, because of the nature of this war, surely if we are going to avoid chastizing those in charge for their failures, they should certainly not be completly commended for the success. Frankly, the war on terror is fraught with imperfect information. We simply cant assume just because there hasnt been attack it is because we are doing anything brillant to stop them, even though thousands of men and women are working very hard to make this so. Certainly its not the success of this administration because of no attack.
It's time to GROW UP and accept that the reason the insurgency contines to exist is not because we can't find and kill the insurgents, but because as a country we lack moral courage to stand up when things are not going well and say 'We are going to WIN against these evil people, no matter what cost'. If we had anything resembling a unified front the insurgents MIGHT just be a bit hesitant to continue to fight what would appear to them to be a losing cause, but instead we piss and moan about Bush and Cheney like we never heard of Iraq before THEY pushed us into 'the war'. Well, we had troops dying over there BEFORE the invasion, it was called enforcement of the no-fly-zones and we had troops stationed for 10 years in Kuwait because we left the Iraq situation for 'another day' for 8 long years under the Clinton administration rather than insist upon enforcing the 18 UN mandates to have Iraq disclose it's WMD's (or provide proof they had dismantled them).
Frankly its easy to blame ourselves when we are fighting a conflict that by nature is going to be long term and difficult to win in. To politicize one group of people and blame them for not doing what is necessary when the struggle is an endemically difficult if not unwinnable one over the long term, is pretty much an abuse of rhetoric. Frankly pushing your own ideological aims didnt work in vietnam and its clearly going to start failing here. IF theres rhetoric that should be advanced, it should be consistent sober analysis of the information and tactics available. Seemingly this is what created the change in tactics to the surge, which is showing some signs of success. However, to blindly assume its because we lack some kind of moral courage, and not to attribute blame to our failures in intelligence, tactics, manpower of drive of the opposition is a bit of a dangerous fallacy.
The war goes on because many of the Americans who oppose the war today do not do so because their core beliefs were that the war is wrong. If they REALLY believed that then there would not have been more than 80% of Americans supporting going to war in the first place. MOST of the Americans who oppose the war today do so because they either fail to accept their own responsibility to support a victory in Iraq (if you are going to support going, you have to support winning) OR they are just flat out cowards.
This should be no surprise that the public was compelled to get retribution after a national incident of the tragic levels of 9/11. Clearly in the information that was made use of and the political efforts of the period, people were going to be inclined to act. However to adopt inflexible long term positions and adopt rigid stances not only leads to foolishness in terms of action in this particular conflict, but creates a larger sense of intellectual timidness that will fail us in other areas. Im not saying that you have to adopt a stance that one must leave, but to claim cowardness or to claim one must accept a potential misguided improper war all the way through, is not a very dynamic or responsible position.
It is easy to blame everything on Bush, and clearly, the man has made mistakes in the prosecution of the war. Get over it, even Roosevelt made mistakes in the prosecution of World War 2, that is the nature of war, mistakes WILL be made, and lives WILL be lost. However, if you were one of the flag waving throng that cheered the troops going to Iraq to put an end to Saddam's defiance of 18 UN mandates and the possibility of him using WMDs in the middle east to destabalize the region, then SHAME ON YOU if you don't have the guts and the moral fortitude to support a victory in Iraq. A victory in Iraq would not be a Bush victory, it would be an American victory, and ultimately, a victory for the whole human race.
speech making and sophistry aside, your point is again rather fleeting. Do you know which nation violates more WTO ruilings than any other? The united states of america. frankly we dont play by international rules anymore that it suits us than anyone else. Was saddam a bad person and possible a danger, yes most likely. However to assume that a secular stable ruler in the region has been traded for a better climate at the end of this situation, shows a lack of geopolitical knowledge that is dangerous. Your saberrattling aside, frankly it appears that this type of rhetoric will lead us down dark alleys that do not have winnable solutions and will tie generations of young men and women into causes that dont benefit the security or long term prosperity of this nation.
Victories for america? What about the dozens of other tyrants who have killed more people? What about the other humanitarian situations across the globe that we dont spend nearly as much energy or resources on both as people and as a nation. If you would like victories for humanity, write your congressman or congresswoman and have them start asking why the united states has never made the un development goals parameter, designed to bring nations out of extreme poverty. Ask why despite the technology required to cure the aids virus, we arent doing it? The human condition and experience have far more winnable targets and goals than mere neoconservatism.
And that's worth fighting for.
'War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things. The decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks that nothing is worth war is much worse. The person who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing which is more important than his own personal safety, is a miserable creature and has no chance of being free unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself.'-John Stuart Mill
since we are in the mood to use quotes....allow me if i may
America will never be destroyed from the outside. If we falter, and lose our freedoms, it will be because we destroyed ourselves.
~Abraham Lincoln
Welcome to the forums, as i dont believe ive talked with you yet.
I don't think it's a matter of creating the case. It's not too hard to find articles showing that he wasn't going to comply with his end of the bargain at the end of Gulf War I. Clinton's policy was also for regime change and Bush just carried it out. I mean Sadaam actually invaded Kuwait & killed thousands of his own people with chemical agents. Niether Bush nor Clinton killed their own citizens. I don't think the two are comparable.
