For the sake of unifying the country under the Baathists, enmity was invariable, which, after the Baathists lost power became a revengeful civil war. None of this has anaything to do with the U.S. or U.K. It has to do with Iarqis “losing” the war as they lose their country. Simply because Iraq isn’t performing as the U.S. would like doesn’t mean the war is lost, but rather that the naturally occurring chaos is unfolding so that unity is impossible.

With this in mind how could Humpty Dumpty be put together again (winning the war) without Iraqi society figuring out internally how to do it? And it’s not America’s role to figure that out.

Comment by M. Thau — July 25, 2007 @ 1:13 am

No, the American people are too interested in Lindsay Lohan’s trevails and Paris Hilton’s boobs to care much about people dying in the streets of Iraq.

Okay, Mark, what is your suggestion for “cut[ting] off the head of the serpent”? Kill them all and let God sort them out? Ask Hitler–that policy didn’t work out too well for him.

Good luck with your mission. Dubya and Dick, neither of whom had enough courage to be under fire themselves, will be happy to send a letter of condolence to your family. So long as your mother does not speak out against the war, in which case they will employ all their gutless chicken hawk water carriers to brand her a “kook” a la Cindy Sheehan.

Mark, the real reason we are in this war is not to free the Iraqis, or to eliminate non-existent WMDs. It’s to secure Iraq’s oil for the Major Multinationals. That’s why they are sooooo intent on keeping the US Army there. If we withdraw, 12% of the world’s reserves are up for grabs. At least with American GIs dying every day, there’s still a chance that the tide might be turned and Exxon might get control of their share of Iraq’s wealth. Same for Chevron, Conoco, BP, and Shell.

If this president meant what he said about Saddam’s bad acts, then we would have invaded Sudan years ago to stop the carnage in Dharfur. But since there is no oil there, we have no interest in that conflict.

This entire war has been a sham of lies. They tell you that they want to spread democracy through the middle east. Yet they had no plans for Day 1 after Baghdad fell. Why? They expected Chalabi to step in and be the new strongman, and to give the Multinationals their desired ends. In other words, they had no intention of giving Iraq a democracy; they merely wanted to change one dictator (who was opposed to the Multinationals) with another who was in favor of them.

Mark, wake up and smell the coffee. This president is in the pocket of the oil industry, and has been all along. Why do you think Shooter will not allow us to know who was in those Energy Task Force meetings, or what they discussed?

1) – I support our President. I don’t think he is dumb. It was necessary to fight in Iraq, and necessary to our national security to kill Saddam and his cronies. I voted for him twice, I do not regret my choice.

2) – I think that cut-and-run is stupid, and an obvious method of bringing the war to American soil.

Comment by Mark — July 20, 2007 @ 7:46 pm

Mark if you feel that way, your local recuiter can’t wait to meet you.

I’m interested to note that of all the people mentioned in this article, only one (Colin Powell) has ever been under fire in a war. The rest should be rounded up, issued an M-16, and sent out on night patrol in Baghdad in an under-armored Humvee.

It now looks like a second string squad of similar neocons are pushing us to invade Iran? Sen Leibermann doesn’t go a day without mentioning the need for the hard line against Iran. CNN and Fox bring it up constantly. Americans need to take control of our country for America.

Israel’s pro war fanatics are just as guilty… along with Tony Blair’s circle jerk of liars also.

Some preliminaries:
1) – I support our President. I don’t think he is dumb. It was necessary to fight in Iraq, and necessary to our national security to kill Saddam and his cronies. I voted for him twice, I do not regret my choice.

2) – I think that cut-and-run is stupid, and an obvious method of bringing the war to American soil.

3) – I think that the current Democratic leaders have not provided a consistent or well-reasoned strategy for an American withdrawal, and are appealing to emotion and “Bush-bashing” rather than to leadership.

4) – I think that we should certainly “win” in Iraq. I think that the comments by Nevada Senator Reid about us having already lost have all the essential ingredients of treason. Treason in time of war is punishable by death. He should be tried, and if convicted, he should be executed. I defend his right to free speech, but not to treason.

Now you know my current stance, you should also know that I am not a blind follower of the President, either. My question: When the President says we need to “win” the war, what exactly does “win” mean?

“Win” – when you are talking about a war – has to be a military objective, and the only thing that I have heard from the current administration with reference to “winning” is somehow creating a stable democratic form of government in Iraq. That is a political objective – or possibly a moral objective. Since it cannot be accomplished by military force, it cannot be the military objective. What is the military objective that we could accomplish with our fighting men and women that would define “win”?

Here is what I think. I would like to see us “win”, and then come home. Let’s cut the head off the serpent, and go home. Granted, we will eventually have to cut it off again, but there is no sense in trying to make Iraq, Iran, or any of the insane Muslim crusader governments anything but a serpent. (Christians had their insane period too. It resulted in America – land of religious freedom.) We know that the deeper and more deadly the cut, the longer it will be before we have to cut it again. If we cut deeply and fiercely enough, we will not have to cut again for a long time, perhaps for another generation.

We cannot occupy a nation to give it time to become free, freedom is a tree that begins growing in bloody, violent soil, and cannot germinate in peaceful soil. It did not do so here, it will not do so there. It only germinates when the people of a nation want freedom more than they want life, and are not afraid to loose their lives to gain their freedom.

This nonsense about “winning” being tied to the development of an Iraqi government friendly to the US is just that – nonsense. All it does is give greedy men the opportunity to plunder us while they tell us lies about how they want a “peaceful government”. We win when the bad guys are dead, not when the good guys are in power. Kill the bad guys, kill them without mercy, without reserve, and without any doubt in anyone’s mind as to what we are doing, then come home. When you bloody the bully’s nose bad enough, he will leave you alone.

In remaining there this long attempting to accomplish something that cannot be accomplished with guns and missiles, we have given the “nice” people too much time to kiss the bully’s boo-boos, and encouraged our enemies to begin bullying again. Being nice is fatal when dealing with an extremist. I say hit them again – hard, fast, and continuously, and when they are unconscious, let’s go home. The United States should not be “nice” like a doormat. We should be kind, and generous (and we are) – and as dangerous as a bullet fired from the end of a machine gun (and we can be).

We can be kind – distributing humanitarian aid to civilians that are the victims of brutal regime – but only at the point of a gun, so that any military force that comes within miles of the civilian populace is immediately and mercilessly decapitated. If you just mail sacks of flour, the regime will starve the populace and sell your flour for more bullets to shoot at you.

If the Iraqi people want a free society, let them create it. We are a blueprint, so they don’t have to reinvent the wheel. Let’s stop pretending we can deliver the world’s cowards from themselves. We cannot. We can only keep the land of the brave free, not the world. Freedom takes courage with honor, and it is in short supply in the natives over there. Let them prove me wrong.

1. John Yoo. Wrote justification for torture. Now teaching law at Berkeley.

The President’s party will have a very long time to recover from the excesses of Mr. Bush’s administration.

We can mention the thousands of injured military service men and women who will bear the scars of Mr. Bush’s War until they die. We can add the huge cost of their life-long medical treatment to the overall cost of this war, and the long term effects of those costs will dwarf the war-time costs.