Iraq's "defining moment"

I agree. I don't think Bush is cognitively capable of conceiving the possibility that he could ever be wrong.

Yes, may God preserve your brother-in-law and all our servicemen and women, subjected to repeated, and unprecedented, deployments. We will be paying for this folly in many ways, for a long, long, time.

But what of you, Mr Dreher? You who supported this war in the beginning? You who supported the Israeli invasion of Lebanon, not so long ago, and who posted links to articles calling for nuclear strikes, decrying just war limits, and even genocide (I think Podhoretz' suggestion that we should have killed all male Sunnis between 15 and 35 qualifies)? Have you learned anything?

I wonder; you still demonize the Palestinians and defend the Israelis, even though roughly ten times the Palestinains have been killed by Israelis than the obverse.

Lord have mercy.

But what will those who currently say this is terrible and never get better do if the situation improves in Iraq and they become a relatively successful democracy next door to Saudi Arabia who morphs into more of a UAE style country?

What then?

Don't worry about this. The chance of that happening is only slightly more probable than me sending Golden Gate Bridge to the Moon using my willpower.

There are no successful Islamic democracies. Sharia and democracy are not compatible.

There are failing Islamic democracies like Pakis and Indonesia and somewhat better democracy in Turkey based on state suppressing Islam.
Who knows how long Turkey will last as (semi) democratic country.

marginal mystic sez:

I wonder; you still demonize the Palestinians and defend the Israelis, even though roughly ten times the Palestinains have been killed by Israelis than the obverse.

Marginal, lets say you are in you home with your wife and baby daughter. You went into garage and upon returning you see 10 charming resistance fighters bravely raping your wife while your baby daughter is dead on the floor with her throat cut.

You, as any real man would, reach for your old trusted Uzi and dispatch brave Jihadis to their 72 virgins.

So, galant resistance fighters killed only your baby daughter. But you killed 10 of them.
By your own logic, you are the terrorist.

Are you insane or just simply antisemite?

As with Mr. Dreher, I supported this war from the outset. Since we now see the folly, should we be precluded from saying so? It's so much worse not to speak the truth, that this war is a debacle, and the surge is but a bandaid on a sucking chest wound.

If there's going to be a reassessment of what conservatism means it's goning to start with an examination of all these foreign entanglements as Washington warned us about over 200 years ago. Why should American soliders as per NATO's latest expansion folly be on the line if Albania or Croatia is attacked? Bush and the internationalists in both parties have to be stopped.

Thanks for that, Treebeard. I asked my brother in law last week in his visit home from Iraq if the Iraqis miss Saddam. He said no, not at all, no matter how bad it now is there.

I don't believe one has to affirm that Saddam was better in order to have regretted the Iraq war. I see the US stuck in a terrible situation, with no good outcome, only less bad ones. We oughtn't have done what we did. We don't have the responsibility for stomping out evil in the world. If we assume we do, we get into a world of trouble that we can't easily get out of.

Could it be that the clearly spur of the moment attack was to prevent word of the time and place of the offensive coming to Sadr? Considering the state of the Iraqi government and divided (to say the least) loyalties of many in it, it may have been a good idea for them.
Although the Sadrists were hurt and hurt badly, they remain in control of the areas they were in control of a month before. The Iraqi army has shown itself to be marginally untrustworthy, and unable to fight without massive American support.

Welcome to 4th and 5th generation warfare. The insurgents can win by not losing, the occupiers lose by not winning. As Napoleon said, "If you say you are going to take Vienna, take Vienna"

V

When self described conservatives turn into country hating liberals, one has to wonder what, truly, you have been drinking, Rod. Your logic, your words, are the precise same as the non-thinking, emotion-driven, unreasoned knee jerk reactionism as the left has.

I am apalled at your utter lack of any dedication to what you know. Ok, so we dispatched a dictator. There's been bumps in the road after the fact. Were you one of those ignorants who thought it would go easy? If this were the American Revolution, you'd have turned Tory on us already. THAT bit of warmaking went badly ALL the way to almost the end before it turned around.

Geeze, Rod, WE WON ALREADY. Yes, Saddam is gone. We won. Got it yet?

So, now that the dictator is dispatched, the press can report the grisely normality of the middle east life, and the barbarity with which they wantonly slaughter each other, you suddenly go "My GAWD, I WISH WE"D LEFT SADDAM IN PLACE". That was so nice and simple and easily packaged. We didn't have to know in such personal terms, the horror that is ORDINARY LIFE to the middle east. It was all "over there" and hidden behind iron curtains of controlled press coverage and barricades of information management.

Your commitment to freedom is no deeper than "gee, it got deadly and hard and we keep making mistakes, maybe freedom for Iraqis was a mistake. No, if that's your thinking, freedom FOR YOUR KEYBOARD IS A MISTAKE. How DARE you turn traitor to the cause of freedom!!!

I have never seen such a huge assortment of utterly juvenile and gutless pandering to emotion as this thread. The Iraqi army (how many months old?) gets into a tough situation and has to call for backup. This is proof the war was a mistake and that Bush has been the anti-Christ? How on earth can you live a semblance of a life if this is the utter and total lack of thought you put into anything more complex than gumball machine?

You bring shame to the notion of Conservatism with your utterly horrible tripe you're passing off as "thought". This isn't thought. This isn't the stern stuff of a conservative. This is the gutless, unprincipled, unreasoned, and uncommitted blather of an emasculated, pandering liberal.

And yes, I am proudly in support of our continued doing WHATEVER IT TAKES AT ANY COST WHATSOEVER to prevail in Iraq. And Afghanistan, AND EVERYWHERE ELSE IN THE WORLD OPPRESSION REARS ITS HEAD. Even if my children volunteer and end up doing the fighting. My father did just that. And he never gave up faith or conviction, like you have so casually tossed out the window. He fought the enemy in Europe, his uncle jumped out of an airplane to land in in the middle of the night in a country called France, near the ocean and occupied by Germans. Dad followed shortly after. Both survived. Many didn't. Not a one of them EVER even questioned, even though many of the French they were there to liberate had become collaborators and allies to the Germans.

Whoever thought freedom was free easy, they deserted the cause like you have. The blood of too many men to count cries up from the ground at you - "You'll give up on so easily, what we paid so much to give you???"

You ALL shame the name "American", with your utter lack of any principle or conviction, and have sacraficed ALL on the alter of political expediency. Your attitudes and words bring FAR more fear into my heart for the future than any threat of financial collapse or claimed ecological mayhem. You've given up on the only thing that makes us able to take those on and prevail.

May God save us from your fake "reasonableness".

I think the take home here is not so much the inadequacy of the Iraqi Army and Maliki, but rather how entwined Iran is in Iraq now. Iran has ties with all the major Shia players now, not just Sadr. There is still no love lost between the Sunnis and Iran. Sadr has shown himself adept at getting out of things if they look as though they are going to go bad.

If I were in Iran's position Id be pushing the Shia to stop fighting each other and work on getting the casualties down. The neocons running this think we have won anyway. Reinforce that opinion, then as soon as we leave its all there for the taking. Oh, if you are interested in following iraq/Afghanistan events the Small Wars Journal blog lists all the war relevant articles in major publications everyday.

Steve

Steve, yeah, that would be the smart thing for Iran to do.

The Watcher
Geeze, Rod, WE WON ALREADY. Yes, Saddam is gone. We won. Got it yet?

You know, it's people like this that inspire decidedly unChristian thoughts in me.

Hey, buddy. The point isn't 'to win'. If we wanted to win a war, we should have invaded Cuba. We would have won that one easily.

There are only two reasons to fight wars, and none of them are 'to win'. The first reason is that the country is empire-building, and the second is to solve a serious internal governmental problem, like stopping someone else from empire-building or stopping genocide.

Those are the only two rational reasons you'd send your army into someone else's country. Note I haven't made any claim about morality or ability or what qualifies as a 'problem'...just that those two are literally the only reasons rational leaders of countries would go into other countries. To gain control of the country, or to alter that country's behavior.

Winning the war is a means to those ends, not an end in and of itself. You can win a war and not accomplish either of those goals, you can lose a war and still accomplish those goals. (Most 'border disputes' result in the invading force retreating back and thus technically 'losing', but a statement is made about what the invading country will tolerate and where the line is, so they 'win' in what they are trying to accomplish.)

In Iraq, even if you assume there was some sort of serious problem there to start with (Saddam was nowhere near the worse dictator in the world, and most of the daily problems people faced was due to sanctions, not Saddam.), there's no one way that we can reasonable be interpreted to have stopped said problems. The point wasn't to win the war, the point was to stop the problems. We didn't do that. We gave them a lot more internal problems. We have not succeeded in Iraq.