5 posts tagged “war”

Do you wish the dinosaurs were still roaming the Earth?

The other day, a very nice, polite, no doubt well-intentioned youngster by the name of Jeremy was lamenting our loss of freedom as a result of the Patriot Act. Of course, when pressed, Jeremy couldn't name any specific freedom he'd lost, much less name someone who'd been victimized by the Patriot act. But I bet everyone has heard of someone who's been jailed, fined or prohibited from using his property as he'd like because of environmental restrictions - and I"m not talking about big polluters.

Recently, James Taranto coined a term: "the delusion of competence." If he didn't coin it, I, at least, hadn't seen it before, but I immediately thought about all those scientists who subscribe to the UN climate report - as well as some here...

"In the paramount threat of our time, the Democratic Party is AWOL. And those are the patriotic Democrats. The rest are actively aiding the enemy... Like the noose hysteria currently sweeping New York City, liberals are always fighting the last battle because the current battle is too frightening." - Ann Coulter

I read something tonight about what a fraud carbon offsets are, and I was surprised that it was so easy to see and yet I hadn't heard anyone talking about it until now. It has to do with planting trees, but it doesn't involve the sheer numbers necessary for so many people to cover their tracks. Any ideas? Btw, I have so much material that mocks and debunks this warming nonsense that I can't keep up. It's literally scrolling off my clipboard extender.

How many of a species is enough? I ask because the other day, a woman called Rush Limbaugh to tell him she was a conservative, but she was also an animal lover, and she was beside herself that there were only 5000 tigers left. Limbaugh mentioned in a sort of question.statement that they were in zoos, to which the woman responded, "No, I'm talking about in the WILD!" That prompted Limbaugh to utter one of the funniest lines I've heard recently - "Oh, OK, then it's covered." At this point, you may want to reconsider your answer to my opening question?!?

So warming started the fires... and the fires increase warming... so not only is the cycle complete, it's spiraling out of control, and perhaps the only thing that can stop it now is a major volcanic eruption?

And is it my imagination or is it that with oil around $95. a barrel, liberals don't seem nearly as sanguine about their "blood for oil" indictment of the administration?

So Nancy Pelosi returned from a tour of Iraq and promptly called for an end to the war because it's gone on too long. Coincidentally, that's exactly my gripe.

I said our engagement over there had gone on too long after the first year when we hadn't paved Iraq and left.

See, somehow, I'd gotten the impression from Mr. Bush when he said, "You're either with us or against us," that he meant that if you were against us, we'd either persuade you not to be or you wouldn't be - at all - in the Hamlet sense.

Instead, we became infatuated with a grotesque remix of that Carpenter's song, Rainy Days and Mondays, this one called Holy Days and Mosques... And what the world thinks about us.

Most of "the world" wouldn't help us they if it could, since they actually are members of that Bush designated group: "those who are against us." Of course, there's nothing wrong with being respectful of the religion of peace except that too much respect in a place like Iraq results in Americans (with the notable exception of the President himself) losing parts of themselves and even their lives.

So while we might have lost three thousand of our finest in the push to Baghdad alone and accepted that as a cost of war, to lose them in ones and twos and twenties for seemingly nothing is unconscionable, especially when you can still find Fallujah on a map and al-Sadr still exists.

If you juxtapose Pelosi's comment with the opening this week of the Center for the Intrepid, a -privately- funded facility in San Antonio for the rehabilitation of our many fallen heroes in Iraq and Afghanistan, an event, by the way, that the President was unable to attend, no doubt due to his intense personal involvement in the training of Iraqis to take up their own fight, you realize that this "surge" Mr. Bush is in the process of implementing is unlikely to accomplish anything other than increasing the numbers of our dead and wounded, and that under no circumstances will it result in a safe and secure Iraq with terrorists in full and pursued retreat.

Now here's the worst part of it: the President could have likely turned things around at any time after things started to go wrong simply by reasserting his "with us or against us" policy and ordering his generals to do what the military does best. But not only will he not do that,  it's clear he never intended to, and so among his many and grave sins, perhaps the gravest of all is his creating a set of conditions in which people like Nancy Pelosi appear to be right.

Because when you're right, the reasoning that got you there gets overlooked. So you see what I'm saying? The President has made it possible for absolute morons to believe they're geniuses. But then perhaps one day well look back and say, "That was the genius of George Bush?"

Are you like me? Did you think that there was nothing new you could learn about how we're conducting the war in Iraq that would make it more outrageous? Well, this week we found out that our virtual Guide: "7 Steps For Shooting The Enemy," the previous revelation that made Catch-22 seem quaint, was mere prelude to the big secret of the last four years.

It was revealed that President Bush gave the OK last summer to kill or capture... Iranians. This gave rise to a series of questions such as: What was the old policy? Did we have to "card" the enemy? And of course the big one - what does George Bush have up there, a brain or a Persian melon?

It turns out that the old policy vis-a-vis Farsicles was "catch and release," you know, like what you do when you're a recreational fisherman? It was almost as if Iranians had, heretofore, been regarded as an endangered species in Iraq, you know, like say you wanted to build a dam and there was an Iranian there? Or maybe pacify an area?

Even more amazing is that, to my knowledge, no Democrat has cited this as evidence of the futility of sending more troops to Iraq, yet the only thing that could make this story more absurd would be if it broke in Field and Stream!

I saw the title: How Vietnam Really Ended. It was in the left-leaning publication, Slate, and while I thought I knew how that war ended, having been actively caught up in it, I wanted to get it just right, so where better to learn about the missing pieces than from the world's last rational liberal?

Now I know what you're saying, "Ted, how do you know this fellow is the last rational liberal?"

In fact, I don't. All I know now is that if there is one out there, it's not (and I'm not making this name up) Gideon Rose, the one who placed a lot of words below the above mentioned title.

First, here's what I know: Vietnam escalated because of an attack in the Gulf of Tonkin which never actually occurred, and whether Johnson lied to us or simply didn't want to acknowledge the facts because he was anxious for an excuse to involve usfurther, he committed five hundred thousand or so individuals to fight a war he, and subsequently Richard Nixon, had no stomach for winning.

As a result, and because at the time young men could be simply ordered to subject themselves to horrific conditions and random death, fifty-eight thousand of us died for nothing.

None of that is true about Iraq, but I only mention it because Rose's real purpose was not to tie up loose ends and unsettled questions about Vietnam, it was to argue that George Bush is even worse than Johnson or Nixon - which is, at minimum, mathematically impossible.

But before that, Mr. Rose says that Vietnam ended with a whimper because the American people got tired of it, and the (Democratic) Congress cut off funds, which is true - if you consider that to be the end of the Vietnam war.

The trouble is, it wasn't for the Vietnamese or for a whole lot of (future dead) people in Southeast Asia. just as our pullout from Iraq (which Rose doesn't care to get into) will only be the beginning of a "struggle" (what it becomes after we leave) between sectarian factions (average Iraqis, Christian Iraqis, peaceful Kurds, and other groups too small for liberal radar be damned).

The wind-down of Vietnam for us thus meant turning our backs on friends and innocents, and liberals have shown no qualms about doing that again - and this time it's even despite the fact that many of those whom we're fighting will look to fight us elsewhere, continue to advance their ideology, and seek to expand their control of territory - to the entire world.

And so it is that a liberal has to draw his argument to an artificial and premature conclusion because to continue would mean getting into indefensible territory and awkward moral positions, not that they know the meaning of that word.

What do you do when you have so much to say, and so little interest in saying it?

Invading Iraq was the exact right thing to do, and that has proven to be indisputable. That hasn't stopped lots of people from trying, but their arguments such as Bush lied, no WMDs, we should have gone after bin laden, or Saddam would never have aligned with al-Qaeda are not only unsupportable, they are irrational to the point that merely acknowledging gives them entirely undeserved status.

Yet we're forced to deal with these people who hold absurd points of view because they just might succeed in accomplishing something that would lead to genocide, instability, and Americans being far less safe for generations to come - and that something is our abandonment of Iraq.

President Bush hasn't helped our cause much because he's been far weaker than those of us who supported the Iraq war had ever imagined he would be. And I should qualify that further because, amazingly, most people who believe in staying the course in Iraq still refuse to assign primary blame for current conditions to the President himself.

I had a short exchange this week with Jack Kelly, an otherwise astute and experienced commentator on Middle East matters who had written a terrific column in which he compared Iraq to WWII, the last war in which we accepted nothing less than unconditional surrender from our enemies. Mr. Kelly mentioned that President Bush had admitted he'd made mistakes, and Mr. Kelly proceeded to detail some of the major ones, but in the end, he returns to the familiar "we" as in, we, though presumably not you and me, collectively failed (to this point) in Iraq, and he concludes with a sentence I found utterly astounding: "It sounded Wednesday night as if President Bush is at long last prepared to light a fire under Mr. Maliki."

I told Mr. Kelly that he, along with virtually all other commentators who share his views, have failed to hold President Bush singularly accountable, and that the President's conduct of the whole Iraq situation had been reprehensible.insofar as he'd failed to define what he wanted done, failed to demand that his generals carry out his aims, and failed to allow the military to prosecute the war to a.successful conclusion - one that would likely have occurred long ago had we been less concerned about collateral damage and world opinion.

Mr. Kelly wrote to say:

"'Disgraceful' is way too strong.  Bush has been heeding the counsel of his generals.  The policy we have been pursuing in Iraq is largely what has been recommended by Gens. John Abizaid and George Casey."

Are you as shocked as I was?

I replied: If we are to accept your characterization, not only does Bush look weak and ineffective, but the generals do too. They, of course, were ineffective, but it's Bush fault. He, like Lincoln, should have made demands on them, not taken advice from them. That is to say, he should have  weighed their input, then told them to get done what  he wanted to happen

I added that I believed I'd used the word, "reprehensible," not "disgraceful," though both
would apply in lieu of a stronger word.

In my experience, it's primarily ex-Colonels, Ralph Peters, Jack Jacobs and David Hunt who have been willing to call a spade a spade in assessing all aspects of the Iraq war, and none of them are optimistic that Bush understands what it will really take to affect a satisfactory outcome.

But to get back to my opening point, There is no argument the wacko left can mount against Iraq that makes any sense, and what's worse, if they were to prevail, our world will be far more dangerous. Or to put it in terms some of these idiots might understand, Rich Lowry asked, if we leave Iraq, and a bloodbath ensues, will George Clooney then demand we go back in on humanitarian grounds?