Well, I'll keep this short and sweet. Want to win the war in Iraq? Vote McCain. Even last-ditch Ken doll turned Repub Romney acknowledged this.
McCain will win the war in Iraq. End of story.
Why do I care about this? I was part of OIF-1. I lost friends there and friends on subsequent rotations. I got out in late '03, and went overseas as a contractor, and met with thousands of service members transitting to and from Afghanistan and who had participated in OIF and OEF pumps past my tenure. Another reason I have for concern is my younger brother, currently a PFC (USMC) with 1st Bn 3rd Marines, looking forward within a month to a Westpac and subsequent OIF or OEF augment or deployment. Oddly enough my younger sister (USA) may be involved in a pump out in the CentCom AOR as well.
The fight against radical Islam trumps all the silliness about percieved slights in my humble opinion. If you believe that capitualting in Iraq - which WILL result in increased pressure in Afghanistan as fighters swing to a already buckling EU deployment - will somehow pin the blame on Dems, you are F'ing wrong, end of story. They began this war. Radical Islam began this war long ago, before Beirut, before Khobar towers, USS Cole, etc. They have signalled that they are ready to die for their cause.
Are you ready to campaign for ours?
Aaron out
Posted by flashoverride at February 12, 2008 01:28 AM | Email ThisWhat is OIF and OEF and CentCom and AOR? PFC is a term that has been around for awhile.
BTW, we are voting in November, not today. McCain says he has some work to do and I am waiting. The speech last Wednesday was a good one.
Personally, I thought Romney would be able to do a better job on the war front than McCain. Sorry.
Posted by: swatter on February 12, 2008 07:08 AMIf there's a reason to vote McCain, this is definitely it. Although Hillary is between a rock and a hard place in that she voted for the war. If she's elected, it won't be the all out surrender of Obama, but a more gradual retraction in the style of Clintonion face saving.
Posted by: Jeff B. on February 12, 2008 09:04 AMMcCain's not just the best candidate on Iraq. He also the best candidate on taxes, government spending, judicial appointees and healthcare.
Posted by: Palouse on February 12, 2008 01:44 PMCriteria for a win? See: South Korea.
Aaron
Posted by: Aaron on February 12, 2008 06:35 PMAre you f'ing serious? I read your bio. While you were busy taking classes at Spokane Falls Community College, I was busy raising my right hand and swearing to fight, kill, and possibly die for my country.
You may find this odd, but us military folk take this war business pretty seriously, and believe it or not we're fantastically good at it. One thing positive in McCain's favor is that he was against that horseass Rumsfeld's view of how the war would play out, which of course was not in sync with any reasonable view of reality. Rumsfeld was one of those smartest guy in the room type warfighters - kind of like McNamara - and he didn't listen to the guys who would be out where the metal meets the meat (some of whom had, you know, done this sort of thing before), and so we got screwed into a corner. Didn't help that our "Allies" the Turks bogged the 4th ID in a corner right before the war, causing us to have to pull an entire division off of the largest border of Iraq and opening up a northern escape route for the idiots we would have otherwise succesfully pincered.
We should have gone in MUCH MUCH heavier, which would have quelled or prevented most of the violence. Bremer should not have dissolved the Iraqi Army - another fantastically idiotic move. We should have moved in with the Army Corps of Engineers, Americorps, USAID, Dept of Agriculture, and every other economic and devleopmental expert we had and we could've been - in large part - out of there by now. Instead that dumbass Rumsfeld bamboozled everyone with this "let's win it on the cheap!" mentality, and we pulled out of the cities except for the occasional moving target patrol, and let the insurgents/terrorist/peace-loving freedom fighters or whatever wording you're into take hold of the cities of Iraq. Booboo. Meanwhile the populace turned on us, because they figured once we got rid of Saddam that their lot would improve. Once it didn't and it became relatively clear to them that it wouldn't they started turning to exterior elements. That only started changing this year, as people came to realize that if you have to choose between siding with a bunch of murderous thieving child killing bastards or the world's largest superpower, you might want to start speaking English.
The surge isn't so much about an increase in troop numbers as it was about changing the whole way our operations worked - yes we had more guys, but instead of living in the palace outside town and occasionally providing a Target of Opportunity, we moved into the cities and towns. And brought money. We moved from a wait-and-see operation into full blow Counterinsurgency ops - we convinced the locals that we had as much of a stake in their well-being as they did. Is progress slow? Of course. But it IS progress. Not just that, but our 30k-40k increase is dwarfed by the plus-ups in the size of the operational Iraqi Army and Police forces. They don't have our logistical capabilities, but they are fighting side by side and often taking the lead.
You don't follow up progress - hard fought and won progress, paid for in blood - by abandonding it all in place and vacating to placate a small, vocal minority within your domestic population, virtually garuanteeing wholesale slaughter and reinforcing the widely held belief outside the States that we are "bitchmade".
Victory means convincing the majority of Iraqis that it is in their best interest to succeed and by holding the peace long enough for them to put in place the foundations of a system that will allow them to do so. You may remeber that our own past is rarely so smooth as it seems - Shay's Rebellion, the Indian wars, French American war, Spanish American war, Mexican American war, Civil war.... etc etc etc.
Victory means that little Iraqi boys and girls can go to sleep at night feeling at least half as safe as you and your wife and kid do.
Posted by: Aaron on February 13, 2008 06:47 PMWe can be like the democrats and support the war when the war is popular and oppose the war when the war is unpopular, or we can have some damn principals and finish the job. :)
McCain '08!
Posted by: AD on February 14, 2008 03:18 PMWhy can it not be won? Because the whole point of winning is protecting americans. So long as we are there we are creating more terrorists every day and giving them more reasons to want to attack us. More terrorists that want to attack america is not my definition of winning. McCain thinks that because attacks went down when we sent more troops that it must mean there are less terrorists. Terrorists are evil, not stupid. They are just waiting.
Posted by: Lysander on February 14, 2008 06:19 PMTerrorism is a behavior which is inherently exploitative and oppressive. Your words imply you believe that terrorism is a reasonable and rational response to our actions in that region, hence your opinion that just being there creates more of it. It's a stunning oversimplification. Terrorism is not a simple if/then equation. Saying coalition troops create terrorists is like saying the LAPD creates gang wars. A wonderful talking point, though, so kudos on that.
So, Lysander, I'll stick with my misconception. :)
Posted by: AD on February 14, 2008 06:44 PMIf we want to help establish our beleif in freedom, tolerance and pluraism in Iraq would be much more successful doing so by setting an example of such a state in the US and also at the same time showing them our beleif in non intervention.
Posted by: Lysander on February 14, 2008 07:07 PMCongratulations on your choice to serve in our nations Armed Forces. The tradition you chose to follow is a proud one - one that both of my grandfathers chose to follow, in the US Army Air Force, and the US Navy. My mother's father served on a warship that was present in Tokyo bay on 2 September 1945 for the signing of the Japanese surrender. My dad's father was a prisoner of war in Germany for a brief time after his B-17 was shot down (he was a top turret gunner).
I hold their stories and deeds in high respect. They defended their nation with distinction. That is to be honored, just like your service.
I personally chose to go into a life of production with what means I could. Now that you're done implying that my education and life path is somehow inferior to yours, let's look at the reason I said what I said.
You say that we need to 'win' in Iraq. The problem is, you aren't fighting a war where the other side can give up. There is no set criteria for winning this 'war on terror', and there cannot be, because of the structure of the enemy.
Our enemy operates, supposedly, in cells that are decentralized. Much like our decentralized economy turned out superior to the Soviet's centralized, planned economy, their paradigm of defense has turned out to be superior to our centralized method of finding them.
Now sure, we can find individual cells, and we may even eventually find Bin Laden or other 'leadership' figures. But what Americans don't seem to understand in our culture of consumerism (Yes, I say that with disgust, but not because I'm against Americans, but because I would rather we be a culture of production and moderate consumption) and short attention spans, is that we are dealing with a group of individuals who actually are willing to die for what they believe in.
If a family member of one of these individuals is killed, you can bet that vengeance will be exacted. When we martyr these people (not intentionally, to be sure, but that's the effect), that is turned against us to recruit even more enemies.
In effect, the more we kill, the more we create.
The worst part about it all? There is no way to go in and force surrender. There is no general that can sign an armistice or instrument of surrender. This isn't like WWII. It's a new kind of war, and it's a war without end, unless we change our thinking.
Posted by: Andrew Brown on February 15, 2008 07:55 AMI went to the RNC in new york in 2004 and my most vivid memory is a young leftist girl standing on the street corner shouting as loud as she could at the delegates "YOU'RE ALL FASCISTS! YOU'RE ALL FASCISTS!" I chuckled, because if we were actually fascists, she wouldn't have been standing on the street corner (with police protection) shouting whatever crossed her mind. She didn't understand what real fascism is. You don't understand what life without freedom is.
And you want us to show Iraqis our belief in non-intervention? Funny. Non-intervention is not an American value. America's darkest hours were when we refused to intervene while evil gathered.
Posted by: AD on February 15, 2008 12:15 PMNo I do not believe we are as free as we should be but comparitably speaking we are very free. My point however is not to comment on how free we are but rather to discuss the way to make less free places such as Iraq freer.
My suggestion is that we do so by setting a good example. Our government should concentrate on making us more free. This will result in our nation becoming more prosperous. Other nations would see this and with time connect the dots and follow suit eventually.
Or we can spend hundreda of billions of dollars waging war and occupying other nations with the hope that eventually we can convince enemies to give up century long feuds, make peace, and create a stable freedom loving democracy.
Given our current government has no money and the number of countries that need help, I suggest the peaceful approach is the only choice we really have. Thankfully it is also the more effective approach.
And non interventionism is american. All our founding fathers advocated it and nothing else for foriegn policy.
Posted by: Lysander on February 15, 2008 05:06 PMI think Obama will not have a strategy has he is a true "liberal" believer. Hilliary would get my vote as she will defend America.
McCain will fight as that is the only conservative position he seems to be consistent on.
Posted by: John McDonald on February 16, 2008 03:02 PMI think Obama will not have a strategy has he is a true "liberal" believer. Hilliary would get my vote as she will defend America.
McCain will fight as that is the only conservative position he seems to be consistent on.
Posted by: John McDonald on February 16, 2008 03:02 PMWhat is yet to be told is if they will apologize to Dr Paul for saying he was not a conservative for saying the SAME message his entire career rather than changing his tune when the GOP got in power.
Posted by: Lysander on February 16, 2008 04:06 PM