Success in Iraq has never been difined and could not be difined by either Bushy or McCain.

I have heard success defined numerous times, since those on your side continually say it isn’t.

“Success will be when al Qaeda no longer has safe haven in Iraq and Iraqis can protect themselves. Success will be when Iraq can support itself economically. Success will be when Iraq is a democracy that can govern itself effectively in response to the will of its people. Success will be when Iraq is a strong and capable ally in the war on terror.”
-President Bush, May 22, 2008 Addressing soldiers at Ft. Bragg

Many people ask, how should we define success? Success in Iraq and Afghanistan is the establishment of peaceful, stable, prosperous, democratic states that pose no threat to neighbors and contribute to the defeat of terrorists. It is the triumph of religious tolerance over violent radicalism.
-John McCain

Still too vague for you, without meeting artificial benchmarks? We’ve met how many now? 15 or 16? (More than today’s Congress has accomplished) Takes time, patience, and a show of resolve and commitment. Success is happening, one step at a time….

Do you not think we are currently on the correct path? That we’re trending in the right direction?

National Strategy for Victory in Iraq

Executive Summary

OUR NATIONAL STRATEGY FOR VICTORY IN IRAQ:
Helping the Iraqi People Defeat the Terrorists and Build an Inclusive Democratic State

• Victory in Iraq is Defined in Stages
  • Short term, Iraq is making steady progress in fighting terrorists, meeting political milestones, building democratic institutions, and standing up security forces.
  • Medium term, Iraq is in the lead defeating terrorists and providing its own security, with a fully constitutional government in place, and on its way to achieving its economic potential.
  • Longer term, Iraq is peaceful, united, stable, and secure, well integrated into the international community, and a full partner in the global war on terrorism.

• Victory in Iraq is a Vital U.S. Interest
  • Iraq is the central front in the global war on terror. Failure in Iraq will embolden terrorists and expand their reach; success in Iraq will deal them a decisive and crippling blow.
  • The fate of the greater Middle East — which will have a profound and lasting impact on American security — hangs in the balance.

• Failure is Not an Option
  • Iraq would become a safe haven from which terrorists could plan attacks against America, American interests abroad, and our allies.
  • Middle East reformers would never again fully trust American assurances of support for democracy and human rights in the region — a historic opportunity lost.
  • The resultant tribal and sectarian chaos would have major consequences for American security and interests in the region.

• The Enemy Is Diffuse and Sophisticated
  • The enemy is a combination of rejectionists, Saddamists, and terrorists affiliated with or inspired by Al Qaida. Distinct but integrated strategies are required to defeat each element.
  • Each element shares a common short-term objective — to intimidate, terrorize, and tear down — but has separate and incompatible long-term goals.
  • Exploiting these differences within the enemy is a key element of our strategy.

• Our Strategy for Victory is Clear
  • We will help the Iraqi people build a new Iraq with a constitutional, representative government that respects civil rights and has security forces sufficient to maintain domestic order and keep Iraq from becoming a safe haven for terrorists. To achieve this end, we are pursuing an integrated strategy along three broad tracks, which together incorporate the efforts of the Iraqi government, the Coalition, cooperative countries in the region, the international community, and the United Nations.

• The Political Track involves working to forge a broadly supported national compact for democratic governance by helping the Iraqi government:
  • Isolate enemy elements from those who can be won over to the political process by countering false propaganda and demonstrating to all Iraqis that they have a stake in a democratic Iraq;
  • Engage those outside the political process and invite in those willing to turn away from violence through ever-expanding avenues of participation; and
  • Build stable, pluralistic, and effective national institutions that can protect the interests of all Iraqis, and facilitate Iraq’s full integration into the international community.

• The Security Track involves carrying out a campaign to defeat the terrorists and neutralize the insurgency, developing Iraqi security forces, and helping the Iraqi government:
  • Clear areas of enemy control by remaining on the offensive, killing and capturing enemy fighters and denying them safe-haven;
  • Hold areas freed from enemy influence by ensuring that they remain under the control of the Iraqi government with an adequate Iraqi security force presence; and
  • Build Iraqi Security Forces and the capacity of local institutions to deliver services, advance the rule of law, and nurture civil society.

• The Economic Track involves setting the foundation for a sound and self-sustaining economy by helping the Iraqi government:
  • Restore Iraq’s infrastructure to meet increasing demand and the needs of a growing economy;
  • Reform Iraq’s economy, which in the past has been shaped by war, dictatorship, and sanctions, so that it can be self-sustaining in the future; and
  • Build the capacity of Iraqi institutions to maintain infrastructure, rejoin the international economic community, and improve the general welfare of all Iraqis.

• This Strategy is Integrated and its Elements are Mutually Reinforcing
  • Progress in each of the political, security, and economic tracks reinforces progress in the other tracks.
  • For instance, as the political process has moved forward, terrorists have become more isolated, leading to more intelligence on security threats from Iraqi citizens, which has led to better security in previously violent areas, a more stable infrastructure, the prospect of economic progress, and expanding political participation.

• Victory Will Take Time
  • Our strategy is working: Much has been accomplished in Iraq, including the removal of Saddam’s tyranny, negotiation of an interim constitution, restoration of full sovereignty, holding of free national elections, formation of an elected government, drafting of a permanent constitution, ratification of that constitution, introduction of a sound currency, gradual restoration of neglected infrastructure, the ongoing training and equipping of Iraqi security forces, and the increasing capability of those forces to take on the terrorists and secure their nation.
  • Yet many challenges remain: Iraq is overcoming decades of a vicious tyranny, where governmental authority stemmed solely from fear, terror, and brutality.
    • It is not realistic to expect a fully functioning democracy, able to defeat its enemies and peacefully reconcile generational grievances, to be in place less than three years after Saddam was finally removed from power.
  • Our comprehensive strategy will help Iraqis overcome remaining challenges, but defeating the multi-headed enemy in Iraq — and ensuring that it cannot threaten Iraq’s democratic gains once we leave — requires persistent effort across many fronts.

• Our Victory Strategy Is (and Must Be) Conditions Based
  • With resolve, victory will be achieved, although not by a date certain.
    • No war has ever been won on a timetable and neither will this one.
  • But lack of a timetable does not mean our posture in Iraq (both military and civilian) will remain static over time. As conditions change, our posture will change.
    • We expect, but cannot guarantee, that our force posture will change over the next year, as the political process advances and Iraqi security forces grow and gain experience.
    • While our military presence may become less visible, it will remain lethal and decisive, able to confront the enemy wherever it may organize.
    • Our mission in Iraq is to win the war. Our troops will return home when that mission is complete.

every one on the right belives as McCain said: we must leave under the vail of success, What the heck is that, Please tell me so I can support your train of thought.

The veil- or perception- of success is critical. Just look here:

The leader of a jihadi group in Iraq argued Friday that the election of Barack Obama as president represented a victory for radical Islamic groups that had battled American forces since the invasion of Iraq.

The statement, which experts said was part of the psychological duel with the United States, was included in a 25-minute audiotaped speech by Abu Omar al-Baghdadi, leader of the Islamic State of Iraq, an umbrella organization that claims ties to Al Qaeda.

bin Laden propagandized a Soviet defeat at the Lion’s Den and used it as a recruiting tool for jihadis. The perception or actualization of a hasty American withdrawal on their terms and not ours, would signal that America has once again proved itself a paper tiger with no will to sustain the losses it takes to win wars.

Same thing with Vietnam and Somalia. It’s the perception of defeat that emboldens our enemies.

I mean, truly…do you think there’ll be as much protesting against the war in Iraq in 2009 as there was against it in 2007? I don’t. I think that protesting was mostly against Pres Bush, and done mostly by Democrats.

Obama was sincere in his mission and that purpose got him elected. People felt it was time to trust once again. Recall this is the only candidate that asserted openeness in administration. He will tell the people the hard truth and not play the game for some one sided approval.

Side note….being the political junkie that I am, and having always been tracking the election of the past 2 years, my 3yr old son came running downstairs yesterday, ran into my office, and said, “Dad! Dad! Barack Obama’s upstairs! He’s on PBS Kids!” Shocked that he could say Barack Obama, I asked him, “Who?!” “Dad! It’s Barack Obama. He’s out new President.”

kids….

My daughter will never know a pre-911 world, and my son will never know a pre-Obama history.

Amazing.

Wow, your last post convinced me that you are black. Why do you hide it? Do you think that it is a flaw? We don’t. We don’t care that your skin color is brown, white, yellow, red, purple or whatever. But we do care though about the stupidities that you write here. Can you see the difference?

I’m also assuming the thugs as you called them were black kids, because this is how you people normally characterize people of different race than you, especially blacks.

How “you people’” characterize people of different race??? I do believe you called Scott a racist in “obama-speak”.

I have a few words for you… but this is a PG site, for the most part.

What in my post did you assumed I was talking about hate crimes or mocking the innocent of Mr. Scotts daughter.

Answer:

I surprised she hasnt been threatened sooner, consider she so small and innocent.
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I’m also assuming the thugs as you called them were black kids, because this is how you people normally characterize people of different race than you, especially blacks.

The former was mocking of his daughter Katy and in the latter you clearly implied that Scott was being racist by his use of the general word “thug”, which has no racial stereotype connected with it. Had Scott used the “N-word”, I would not have come to his defense for you taking him to task for it, on the contrary others and I would have also come down on Scott for stating it. Therefore, I feel you owe Scott an apology.

As to your defense:

I only stated, Scott should be angry with his school board and not the “thugs” he so eloquent described in his post. I never heard of young children riding school buses with older kids, so I’m ASS_uming he lives in a small rural town. If this is the case, the fight should not be take up with the “thugs” but the schoolboard, who allow younger kids to be subjected to the ranting and ravings of older ones.

Perhaps you missed it in your haste to throw fuel on the embers of injustice and transform it into an attack a personal attack on the submitter, but Scott had already mention in post 4 & 6, he had taken appropriate action:

Local police are on it now
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I’ll be talking to the school tomorrow. Gonna stop by even though it’s a teacher’s day.

We fully accept and concede that Obama has defeated McCain. Yet, people like you feel you have a need to rub our noses in it and continue to degrade us. During the campaign, moonbats like you were constantly doing fly-by posts on FA not to debate the issues, but to charge posters supporting McCain-Palin as being; hicks, rubes,:

so I’m ASS_uming he lives in a small rural town.

bigots, racists:

this is how you people normally characterize people of different race than you, especially blacks.
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People really need to look at themselves and (including you) and pose the question, if Barack Obama was a white man, would I have any issue about him winning the election

rednecks, trailer-trash, inbred, racists, etceteras, ad nausium.

The Democratic party’s insistence on transferring their own feelings of racist guilt upon us is unfounded, unwarranted and unappreciated. After all, it has been the Republican Party for the last 150 years that has been the party for Civil Rights:

http://www.floppingaces.net/2008/10/11/democrat-civil-rights-leader-drops-race-card-bomb-on-mccain-palin/#comment-120281
http://www.floppingaces.net/2008/10/11/democrat-civil-rights-leader-drops-race-card-bomb-on-mccain-palin/#comment-120493
http://www.floppingaces.net/2008/10/11/democrat-civil-rights-leader-drops-race-card-bomb-on-mccain-palin/#comment-120508

If you had been following FA, you would find that we who opposed Obama did not do so because of his race, but for his socialist ideologies and radical ties. When the question was posed would we have supported a Colin Powell-Condoliza Rice ticket, the consensus agreed with me; “YES”. Powell’s subsequent endorsement of Obama two days after that question was posed, was a disappointment to many of us.

just because people are passionate about their canididate ( as you are about yours) does not make them a thug (black or white).

No. What would make them “thuggish”, is this:

(pre-teen kids) said that if we vote for McCain they’re gonna drop bombs on our house and our cars and kill us tonight.”

I’d say that “thuggish” pretty well covers it. Why? Do you have a better word? I could think of a number of alternatives.

I just know from experience (by the way I’m lily white) when the word thug is mentioned in a sentence 9 times out of 10 you’re talking about African American kids.

What part of the country do you live in? I’ve never associated “thug” as “9 times out of 10″ referring to blacks. That’s like saying if you use the word “criminal”, you’re thinking 9 times out of 10, “he’s black”.

This is how we come up with ridiculous PC labels to replace words that somehow “offend”. If I use the word “thug”, I mean it in the dictionary sense of the word.

Don’t project onto us, you’re own hang ups.

pose the question, if Barack Obama was a white man, would I have any issue about him winning the election and now is the President.

Do you honestly feel that the majority of us here are opposed to Barack Obama because of the content of his skin color?

Most of the conservatives I know have been post-racial for quite some time; the only ones stuck on race (and are thereby “racists”) are Democrats. They’re the ones who seem flabbergasted by glass ceilings breaking. For me? *Yawn* I’ve never doubted that a non-white president could ever be elected in this country; it was just a matter of time for “the right one” to come along that could captivate.

Read Shelby Steele’s op-ed in the LATimes.

Would you really be wasting your time ranting, posting and raving about him? What is the big deal.

Unless you suffer from reading comprehension, haven’t actually read most of the posts on this blog like you allude to doing; or just don’t have the mental capacity to wrap your mind around this: the reason we oppose Barack Obama is because he is the least vetted, most inepxerienced, far left, socialist-injected, most undeserving presidential candidate in U.S. history.

It’s a difference in political ideology. Period.

Why can’t people like you get over yourselfs and realize there is only one person in this world (and he is not of this world) can fixed any problems in your life and that’s GOD!

Great…..don’t lift a finger to do a thing in this world….it’s all in God’s hands. That makes sense.

Why can’t you get over your misguided sanctimonious white guilt lecturing to those who don’t care about race, and go take a hard long stare at your own self and ask why you are so obsessed over noticing skin color?

The sad part about it, you people will continue to put his life and his family under a microscope. If he pisses incorrectly you will blog about it.

That’s called “politics”. Do you deny Democrats haven’t done this to Bush for 8 years?

Personally if I was Obama, there is no way in hell I would have wanted to be President of such as racist (hidden racism I might add) as America. The land where the color of your skin does matter.

It only matters to Democrats. Get over it. Quit looking at the world through skin color. It will cease to matter when you quit obsessing over it.

Im also wondering if Scott was an Obama support and thugs were McCain supporters would have felt the need to post this story (which sounds so unreal).

Obama supporters have done that throughout the election. Or do you think only Obama supporters have behaved like thugs?

There are thugs in life, irregardless of political affiliation.