Brits to begin Iraq pullout

"had our military actually were the world's best" I meant "Had it been."

The AP article on the same subject is pretty good. The troops are being withdrawn from Southern Iraq, which has not had the violence of Baghdad. We'll see if the Iraqis can't hold it together there.

New Orleans is not a foreign country. It's our own country. Its problems are our problems, like it or not. Not so Iraq.

We learned something in Vietnam: American use of military force against Third World governments and movements cannot succeed, and leftist-supported insurgencies always win. That leason was unlearned in four stages: 1) Over the furious objections of the left side of the aisle, the US supported the governments in El Salvador and Guatemala and the leftist insurgencies lost 2) Over the furious objections of the left side of the aisle, the US invaded Grenada, was welcomed as liberators, and rapidly reestablished reasonably good order. 3) Over the furious objections of the left side of the aisle, the US ejected Saddam Hussein from Kuwait, was welcomed as liberators, and rapidly reestablished reasonably good order. 4) With the help of the left side of the aisle and the muttered objections of the far right, the US ejected the Serbs from Kosovo, was welcomed as liberators by the Albanians, allowed a cleansing of the remaining Serb population and rapidly reestablished an Albanian-dominated order. All four of these were cases where the "lessons of Vietnam" were invoked on the side of non-intervention. For better or for worse, that's how the "lessons of Vietnam" were unlearned.

"Cleansing of the remaining Serb population..." CPA | Homepage | 02.21.07 - 10:54 am | # Why not just call it what it was? The war that was supposed to put a stop to one genocide caused another, and all under the watchful eye of the UN.

CPA has his facts wrong regarding the left side of the aisle. Taking his points in order: 1) The left side of the aisle supported Reagan's anti-terrorism initiatives in El Salvador and Guatemala. It was in Nicaragua that Reagan supported terrorists over the objection of Democrats (this was the root of Iran-Contra). 2) Ditto. 3) The votes authorizing military force in Iraq in 1991 were 250-183 in the House and 52-47 in the Senate. Remember, Democrats had the majority at that time. It's also worth noting that the UN supported the first Gulf War (see UNSC Resolution 660), and that the coalition of armies included 34 nations, including most of the Arab world.

I disagree, Rob. For that to be true, you have to believe that winning or losing the war is not a matter of material reality, but of will. I simply don't see how anything short of massive and overwhelming force, of the sort that we wouldn't deploy even if we had it to deploy, which we don't, will keep the natural forces of ethnic and religious hatred from expressing themselves in civil war. In short, I don't think this war is winnable anymore. It might have been, in 2003, but I think it's gone beyond our ability to control. And that's not because the American people lacked the will to fight. It's because the American people lacked good leadership -- and because this was a war we were very unlikely to win, given the strategic and social realities on the ground in Iraq. The Hannity view, though, will insulate pro-war Republicans from criticism, if it's believed. They'll be able to say that we lost not because the war was ill-conceived or terribly managed, but because the media and the left sapped our fighting spirit.

Joel is the one with his facts wrong. Lets take the vote first, as its the most concrete. When I say left side of the aisle was against I don't mean it was ALL against, only that MOST of those considered on the left in US were against. Nor do I mean by "left" Democrats. Lloyd Bensen is not the "left" in my book. Ted Kennedy is, John Kerry is, Tip O'Neil was. Yes President Bush got a majority of the Congress to approve the first Gulf WAr -- by getting virtually all Republicans to join a minority of conservative Democrats. As for Grenada and Central America, the key votes went the same way. And major standard bearers of the left, notably Ted Kennedy opposed all the first three military actions I mentioned. So did Senator Kerry (who called the Grenada invasion the action of a "bully"). They're pretty mainstream in the American left I think. Now if you want to attack what I said, a much smarter tack than to deny that all of them were cause celebres of American imperialism to the left (I remember, I was there on college campuses at the time) would be to point out the horrific human cost of defeating the Communist insurgencies in Central America. That was real. But leftist support for actually defeating such insurgencies (in part of course because of the real criminal acts committed while fighting Communism there) -- that's not real, that's a fantasy Democrats made up after the fact.