MSM Ignoring The Victory In Iraq

@Barleymash

Your argument is that we had every right to reduce our casualties in Afghanistan by moving the battlefield to a more practical location, in effect using Iraqi civilians as human shields.

Wasn’t us using civilians as shields. Wasn’t us fighting from schools and mosques. That was your team. As for location? I personally wouldn’t care if we had chosen Saudi Arabia, Iran, or Syria. As far as I’m concerned every one of those countries contributed to 9-11 as much as Afghanistan and Iraq. I’m not a diplomat nor a politician, for me it was a “them” or “us” situation. I won’t apologize to you or any other beta male out there. If D-Day occured in the modern media driven world we live in now, people like you would have screamed bloody murder. And yes, location is vital in any military operation. As for me, I choose the lives of the men and women in our military over appeasing code pinkos.

You should read MacArthur’s autobiography and maybe some Sun Tzu instead of Salinger.

That should also answer your question about my “moral compunction.”

Wow. Don’t you “alpha males” ever sleep or go to work?
I swear it’s like playing Whack-a-Mole in here.
Aye, you might not want to be so quick to claim you “pummeled” me. The problem is, you don’t even understand your own proof-points. Yes, as you establish ad nauseum, Tenet sId the case for WMDs was a slam dunk. The CASE for WMDs. As I’ve said all along, Tenet said he’d be able to support the WMD argument for going to war. That’s not the same thing as saying the TRUTH of WMDs is a slam-dunk.
And to clarify the Alpha Male thing: first, I’m pretty sure that if you have to type on a blog that you’re an alpha male, well then, you ain’t. More importantly, alpha males lead and protect the pack. The behavior this pack has in general been endorsing is the slaughter of children and women as a tool to secure their personal safety. In fact, someone referred to the Iraqis as cockroaches. That’s more akin to PREYING on the pack. Behavior that would identify you as the Omega males — the outcasts, scavengers, pariahs. Funny thing about Omegas — they THINK they’re Alphas and so they slink around the edges of the pack at night displaying faux-alpha behavior until they get challenged.
So, on to Saddam. He was secular until nearly his downfall, at which time he played the religion card to scrape up some support in the Arab world. I would dig up sources for this, but I’m fairly sure you dug past dozens of them already on your way to the apocryphal and meaningless “Q’uran of Blood!” (Cue Night on Bald Mountain). (“Hey, didya know Adolf was a devout Christian? Yeah! he had the Spear of Longinus so it must be true.”)

like I said, it’s like playing whack-a-mole in here, but unlike you alphas, this poor beta actually has to work. I’ve found out what I was curious about. You don’t feel there’s a moral component to war. You consider foreigners to be expendable cockroaches, and you don’t mind being lied to by your government. (that last one, by the way, would identify you as the ” subservient” rank in the wolf pack. Just FYI.)
Later!

@Mata
I know, but I caught this in post #55 and knew arguing numbers with BM was a lost cause.

Of course, this wasn’t the Iraqis war.

With that statement, he justifies every casualty in the war was our fault.

As for GaffUK’s post and your reply…I’m not a politician. If I were advising the CinC I would have referred to Sun Tzu:

Sun Tzu said: We may distinguish six kinds of terrain, to wit:
(1) Accessible ground;
(2) entangling ground;
(3) temporizing ground;
(4) narrow passes;
(5) precipitous heights;
(6) positions at a great distance from the enemy.
Ground which can be freely traversed by both sides is called ACCESSIBLE. With regard to ground of this nature, be before the enemy in occupying the raised and sunny spots, and carefully guard your line of supplies. Then you will be able to fight with advantage.
Ground which can be abandoned but is hard to re-occupy is called ENTANGLING. From a position of this sort, if the enemy is unprepared, you may sally forth and defeat him. But if the enemy is prepared for your coming, and you fail to defeat him, then, return being impossible, disaster will ensue.
When the position is such that neither side will gain by making the first move, it is called TEMPORIZING ground. In a position of this sort, even though the enemy should offer us an attractive bait, it will be advisable not to stir forth, but rather to retreat, thus enticing the enemy in his turn; then, when part of his army has come out, we may deliver our attack with advantage.
With regard to NARROW PASSES, if you can occupy them first, let them be strongly garrisoned and await the advent of the enemy. Should the army forestall you in occupying a pass, do not go after him if the pass is fully garrisoned, but only if it is weakly garrisoned.
With regard to PRECIPITOUS HEIGHTS, if you are beforehand with your adversary, you should occupy the raised and sunny spots, and there wait for him to come up. If the enemy has occupied them before you, do not follow him, but retreat and try to entice him away. If you are situated at a great distance from the enemy, and the strength of the two armies is equal, it is not easy to provoke a battle, and fighting will be to your disadvantage.
These six are the principles connected with Earth. The general who has attained a responsible post must be careful to study them.

It is not the job of a military to go somewhere with a serious disadvantage and hope for the best. It is the job of the military to gain the advantage and destroy the enemy. Back in the day, we would have had so many B-52’s in the air as to blot out the sun. They would have bombed every military target around; roads, bridges, industrial complexes, and ports. The collateral damage would have been enormous. Now, we have precision bombing that can drop a bomb on a gnat’s butt. In my opinion, this war has been fought with honor and respect for the people whose land we temporarily occupied. I would make no apologies for the actions of the CinC or the Joint Chiefs and their staff.

Hey,Aye — Aqua started the the alpha/beta discussion in post 61. Simple search, amigo.

As I said, I don’t want to mess up your little playground. I DO live in a lovely colorful world where people take responsibility for their actions. They don’t sit behind their keyboards and quote Sun Tzu while real people are dying in a war THEY cheerlead for. And yes, Aqua, if WE start a war then that war IS our responsibility. How could it not be? In what world does shooting first not count for anything? Oh yeah — the world where foreigners are expendable cockroaches.

You guys are clearly having fun nitpicking and parsing your post-facto justifications. But you’re completely uninterested in the bigger, more important questions of “Why?” and “At what cost?” In my colorful little world (i.e. the real one) The decision to go to war is infinitely more important than the strategies employed once the war begins. But that’s what you folks would rather discuss. Go for it. I’m never going to persuade hard-core “people are cockroaches” types anyway. What comforts me is the fact that most of America agrees with me. It’s our side that’s laughing, Aye.

@Barleymash:

So many canards, such little time.

We supported and armed the Taliban, which sheltered to Al Qaeda. That’s “proxy.

The Taliban was formed in 1994 by Mullah Omar:

The reclusive Mr. Omar, believed to be about 60 years old, lost an eye fighting the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan in the 1980s. In 1994, he led a small band of armed students from Islamic seminaries — “Taliban” means “students” in Afghanistan’s Pashto language — to fight the violence and corruption that had overwhelmed the country.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124562262680835357.html

The Taliban emerged in the early 1990s in northern Pakistan following the withdrawal of Soviet troops from Afghanistan.

A predominantly Pashtun movement, the Taliban came to prominence in Afghanistan in the autumn of 1994.

It is commonly believed that they first appeared in religious seminaries – mostly paid for by money from Saudi Arabia – which preached a hard line form of Sunni Islam.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/1549285.stm

We didn’t found or fund bin Laden or his thugs, either:

Former CIA official Milt Bearden, who ran the Agency’s Afghan operation in the late 1980s, says: “The CIA did not recruit Arabs,” as there was no need to do so. There were hundreds of thousands of Afghans all too willing to fight, and the Arabs who did come for jihad were “very disruptive . . . the Afghans thought they were a pain in the ass.” I have heard similar sentiments from Afghans who appreciated the money that flowed from the Gulf but did not appreciate the Arabs’ holier-than-thou attempts to convert them to their ultra-purist version of Islam. [Freelance cameraman] Peter Jouvenal recalls: “There was no love lost between the Afghans and the Arabs. One Afghan told me, ‘Whenever we had a problem with one of them we just shot them. They thought they were kings.’”

Al Qaida’s number two leader, Ayman al-Zawahiri, has confirmed that the “Afghan Arabs” did not receive any U.S. funding during the war in Afghanistan. In the book that was described as his “last will,” Knights Under the Prophet’s Banner, which was serialized in December 2001 in Al-Sharq al-Awsat, al-Zawahiri says the Afghan Arabs were funded with money from Arab sources, which amounted to hundreds of millions of dollars:

Read more:

http://www.america.gov/st/webchat-english/2009/May/20090505134735atlahtnevel0.5280725.html#ixzz0K1C0XUpS&C

Read more:

http://www.america.gov/st/webchat-english/2009/May/20090505134735atlahtnevel0.5280725.html#ixzz0K1AmdGaE&C

Gary Bernsten, recently interviewed, was on the ground in the opening of this Afghan war leading his CIA agents through the mountains to lazer critical sites for bombing. Authored “Jawbreaker” his account of those days.

Roberts: Yesterday on Capitol Hill, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton accused Pakistan of abdicating responsibility of taking care of the Taliban and other extremist elements. She also pointed some fingers at the United States.

“We’re wondering why they don’t just get out there and deal with these people. But the problems we face now, to some extent, we have to take responsibility for having contributed to,” Clinton said.

Bernsten: In her statement she also stated the United States created the Taliban or participated in the creation of the Taliban, which is a ridiculous statement. We created and worked with the Mujahideen a decade before that, and they were defeated by the Taliban, which were created by ISI, the Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate of the Pakistani military. And of course, the reason the Taliban were created was because there was a civil war going on among factions of the Mujahideen who had come to power.

http://amfix.blogs.cnn.com/2009/04/24/taliban-not-going-anywhere/

@Barleymash

I was in the Air Force from 1979 until 1990. I got out because Bush I and congress were trying to remove dependents from our medical coverage, and still paying us little or nothing. When Gulf War I broke out, I volunteered to return but was never called up.

My little brother (Navy) did multiple tours in Iraq during Gulf War I and Iraq and Afghanistan in Gulf War II. He has two Air Medals and multiple other commendations.

By the way, I realize flying an airplane into a building doesn’t constitute “firing the first shot,” but I’m going to go out on a limb and say it could possibly be the start of a war. Once a war is started, we, the U.S. are allowed to do what we see fit to win it. If that means invading a complicit country in the interests of logistics, so be it. After WWII, Patton said we should turn our tanks north and take care of Russia. Turns out, he was right.

Actually, Missy, thanks — that’s great info. I’m going to read more of that when I have the time. I appreciate it.

Aqua, thanks, I suspected you were; you sounded like someone who understood military life better than some of the armchair generals. But I fundamentally disagree with the idea that ” Once a war is started, we, the U.S. are allowed to do what we see fit to win it.” I’d love to know how we get a free pass to drag noncombatant nations into our shooting wars. Is that your personal opinion, in which case, well, there’s nothing else to say except I disagree, or are you relying on some legal authority? The International Red Cross, for instance, cites this rule as fundamental to waging war: “Neither the parties to the conflict nor members of their armed forces have an unlimited right to choose methods and means of warfare.” You probably don’t agree, but to what license do you refer? I mean, you do recognize our obligations under the Geneva Conventions, don’t you?

And Aye, you really have to stop declaring Mission Accomplished. It didn’t work for your hero Dubya and it won’t work for you.

B

@Aye Chihuahua:

“Dubya” never declared Mission Accomplished.

So, how are we supposed to interpret THIS?

@Mata

1: the discussion was about military strategy and theatres after Afghanistan. Therefore the “cockroach theory” relates not to Iraqis, but the jihad movements that fought with AQ, Taliban, etal. And that includes members of all different nationalities.

2: the cockroach theory is that when you disturb their nest, they scatter to other digs nearby

Perfect.

@Wordsmith:

Regardless of what it actually tactically or politically meant, and I’m aware of your position of it as a “bogus talking point”. and am not necessarily bringing it up to refute you; but how do you expect any average Joe to look at that and think anything of it as anything other than a declaration that “we got the job done”?

@Aye Chihuahua:

(Was that respectful enough?)

Imagine that I wrote in the same tone to you, and tell me yourself.

@mata:
It’s why I call them human cockroaches…

Your words. And the context doesn’t help at all. When you equate the disposal of bugs to the eradication of humans, well, then, you’re referring to human beings as the tactical equivalent of cockroaches. That’s just completely f’d up.

And I know you’ve got this long convoluted explanation for why the banner was there, and how Dubya didn’t notice it, and so on and so on and so on. On this one, I’m simply calling bullshit. In the non-blog world, leaders make speeches in front of banners they’ve approved. Leaders take responsibility for the props their own employees deploy. Even Rumsfeld acknowledged that the banner was a White House prop. He successfully pulled the phrase from Bush’s speech, but didn’t catch the banner. That says two things: Bush INTENDED to say Mission Accomplished until Rumsfeld stopped him, and yes, Bush’s staff is even more incompetent than we suspected.

http://www.defenselink.mil/Transcripts/Transcript.aspx?TranscriptID=3744

I can only work with information in the public domain. Rumsfeld said “I took Mission Accomplished out.” In fact, he specifically CORRECTED Woodward when Woodward suggested he had done something else. I rarely hear people correct a specific with a “catch-all.” Especially when that “catch-all” is already a specific part of the conversation — a specific PHYSICAL ITEM already referred to.

Sure, the ship’s mission was accomplished. But the phrase was in the speech about combat operations. Why would you suspect the banner referred to the ship, while the exact same phrase in the speech referred to something different? Why would anyone do that? Even if you’re entirely correct about the genesis of the banner, and that’s entirely possible, the Bush administration used it as a PR prop AS IF they meant it for the entire Iraqi operation until months later, when conditions on the ground were making them look foolish.