A CHALLENGE TO ALL REPUBLICANS ON ELECTION DAY

@Phil:

Sorry. While I will continue to be civil and polite, I cannot pretend that this does not hurt me to the core.

You know, I have as much distaste and anger toward many in the Democratic Party as guys like you and Harry; but when you have this kind of unwillingness to respect the Democratic process of a majority win if that majority happens to not include you….why should the other side ever respect the election process when we win?

I fear your counterparts on the other side of this, should McCain pull this off; because I see the potential for violence should Obama supporters fixated on the race issue, perceive an Obama loss as attributable to class oppression and American racism.

We live in a representative democracy. We should act like it, and respect the election process.

@Craig:

if Obama wins and the terrorists attacks you, which sides will he be on? Remember what he wrote in his book: “I will stand with the Muslims should the political winds shift in an ugly direction.”

Craig, I think you are distorting the meaning of the quote, taking it out of context. I don’t think Senator Obama understands the nature of the war we find ourselves in; he is like many typical liberals in his approach to American foreign policy. But to suggest that if America were attacked, he’d side with terrorists is just….obscene.

Phil,

Upon re-reading your comment, my response might be a bit too harsh. I’m really speaking in general, regarding those of us who are unwilling to do as Scott suggests and “be good sports” in losing an election and showing respect due the other side. If both sides behave as “sore losers”, our country will never be whole, even as we share differences. The only way we’d ever be whole would be to purge our country of the other side.

And that road would lead to the end of America.

Americans likes to be “the good guy”… that irritates me. Good guys are sucker, tolerant and have no backbone spine.

Yeah, I’m a “good guy”. I am too spineless to challenge “my own”, when I perceive my political allies to be “in the wrong”. I’m way too tolerant….

I don’t think anyone would suggest that simply because a leader of an opposing political party is now president, that we now abandon our political beliefs and support his policies, unequivocally. What I do think, is that we don’t engage in the same kind of incivility; the same kind of political sabotage that does not look out for country first. If we do this, then we have no right to bitch about such things as how State Dept and CIA officials, who are supposed to serve at the pleasure of the president, instead engaged in partisan politics over professionalism.

Regardless of who sits in the big chair, the Office of the Presidency itself should be respected.

The country DID give Bush both respect and the benefit of doubt which every newly elected President deserves. You may recall job approval ratings in the 90s in the aftermath of 9/11. President Bush did begin his Presidency with a nation united behind his leadership.

Larry, I can agree to your other points. But on this, I think the support he received in the aftermath was “fair-weathered” I think any sitting U.S. president would have had the nation rally to his side and unite against that which threatens us all. Support began eroding almost right away- even with just Afghanistan as the focus.

Many Democrats have never gotten over 2000. Never accepted President Bush as the legitimate president.

In my opinion, President Bush has been dragged through the mud unfairly. His administration did horrible at communicating the war to the American public and terrible at defending itself against media distortions, failing to challenge the popular narratives.

@Craig:

First of all, unity is an illusion. Only in child nurseries they will tell you that everyone is your friend. But it is a lie. In real life, you have enemies. The solution, if there is one, would be I guess education. But first we would have to kick out all the leftist teachers out of college and all the leftist MSM that corrupts people mind.

If USA becomes a socialist country, I could not see myself (if I was an American) having lunch with my stupid neighbor who voted for Obama and who is partly responsible for that socialist mess. If you cannot understand that Wordsmith, there in no reason for me to explain you more in detail. It will be a “cul-de-sac”.

Craig,

If everyone looked at life through your worldview, life would be nothing short of far right and far left polarization. Fortunately, not everyone thinks like you.

I interact on a daily basis with those I politically am in disagreement with. They are not “evil”. I am not “evil”. I teach their kids. They trust me, even knowing I’m everything they disagree with, politically.

Reagan and Tip O’Neill disagreed vociferously on politics; but could still go out for a beer afterward.

Bush #41 and Clinton #42 are on opposite sides of the political divide; yet don’t let that division keep them from joining together for good causes.

I don’t see this type of unity as “child nursery” stuff. I have solid friendships amongst a number of liberals with vast chasms of political exchanges and irreconcilable differences.

But we are all Americans, when all is shouted and done. They love my country every bit as much as I love their country…..sort of. 😉

Boldest online prediction I’ve seen since I predicted, in early March, 2003, that no WMD would be found in Iraq.

Larry,

Did you know that Rumsfeld warned that not finding wmd stockpiles might be a distinct possibility?

@Larry Weisenthal:

I think it’s very clear that the idea that Saddam shipped the phantom WMD off somewhere for “safe keeping” was fanciful on its face and, in any event, thoroughly discredited.

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/01/24/60minutes/main3749494.shtml

You might be interested in checking out Scott’s series of posts:

Did Saddam’s WMD Go to Syria? Part I

Did Saddam’s WMD Go to Syria? Part II

Did Saddam’s WMD Go to Syria? Part III

Did Saddam’s WMD Go To Syria? Part IV

Did Saddams WMD Go to Syria? Part V

U.S. official: Iraqis told me WMDs sent to Syria

I simply keep an open mind on this issue, as unresolved. 🙂

Bush never said that Saddam was complicit in 9/11. But what he did, in the run up to war, is never once talk about Saddam and not juxtapose “9/11″ in the speech at least a half dozen times. It is a fact that, on the eve of the invasion, polls showed that 70% of Americans believed that Saddam was complicit in 9/11 — a misunderstanding which persisted for more than three years thereafter. This was a misunderstanding which I personally felt was intentionally fostered by the Administration.

Larry, you might be interested to check out my post on the matter. You might not agree with my argument and what I concluded, but I do bring up interesting points of contention.

It is perpexing to me, why on earth there is any confusion regarding Iraq and 9/11 being made in the same breath (other than lack of repeated communication and clarity on the part of the Administration). They are tied together in the war that President Bush stated early on, which was more than simply using the law-enforcement approach to going after only those directly responsible for 9/11.

The Administration’s mentality wasn’t to seek revenge; it was asking how best to safeguard the U.S. from the next terror attack.

In regards to the Rumsfeld quote, I actually was referring to the “Parade of Horribles” memo Rumsfeld drew up, detailing everything he could think of that could possibly go wrong- a worst-case scenario list. It appears in Feith’s book, War and Decision. It’s in my car at the moment, and I’m too lazy to step out and go grab it. But essentially, this link looks to provide the relevant excerpt:

The ‘Parade of Horribles’

Rumsfeld resolved to give the President a comprehensive list of possible calamities in the event of military action against Iraq. The decision on war was pending, and Rumsfeld, of course, would be associated with it. Weighing risks had naturally been part of the policy-making and planning processes on Iraq all along, but Rumsfeld thought it would be valuable to review all together the major problems we could anticipate, to get them in writing and air them with the President and the National Security Council— well before irrevocable decisions were made. No one asked him to do this, but an exercise of this kind was an important check on the assumptions underlying our planning (1).

Rumsfeld had shown me a version of this list back in August, and I had given him some written comments in response. Now, in mid-October, Rumsfeld called a “drop everything” meeting with Wolfowitz, Myers, Pace, and me. As we sat down at his office conference table, Rumsfeld handed each of us the draft of his list of possible problems and disasters, which had been substantially revised since the August version. Highlighting roughly twenty items, it made for grim reading.

After letting the four of us absorb it for a minute or two, the Secretary asked us to sharpen the list, add to it, or otherwise improve it. We spent more than two hours in intense discussion reworking the paper. To relieve some of the tension inherent in the task, I began referring to the memo as the “Parade of Horribles.” By the time we finished with our revisions, it had grown by another ten items or so.

The ultimate version of the Parade of Horribles memo was dated October 15, 2002. Its key political warnings can be summarized as follows:

• The United States might fail to win support from the United Nations and from important other countries, which could make it harder to get international cooperation on Iraq and other issues in the future. We might fail here by not properly answering the question: If the United States preempts in one country, will it do so in other countries, too?

• The war could trigger problems throughout the region: It could widen into an Arab-Israeli war; Syria and Iran could help our enemies in Iraq; Turkey could intervene on its own; friendly governments in the region could become destabilized.

• The United States could become so absorbed in its Iraq effort that we pay inadequate attention to other serious problems—including other proliferation and terrorism problems. Other countries in the Middle East and elsewhere might try to exploit our preoccupation to do things harmful to us and our friends.

• The war could cause more harm and entail greater costs than expected, including possibly a disruption in oil supplies to world markets.

• Post-Saddam stabilization and reconstruction efforts by the United States could take not two to four years, but eight to ten years, absorbing U.S. leadership, military, and financial resources.

• Terrorist networks could improve their recruiting and fundraising as a result of our being depicted as anti-Muslim.

• Iraq could experience ethnic strife among Kurds, Sunnis, and Shia.

Most of these dangers, Rumsfeld noted, would become more likely and more severe with a longer war, underlining the tactical importance of speed and surprise (2). This was one of the factors arguing for a smaller force.

In addition, the memo included these three notable items:

• “US could fail to find WMD on the ground in Iraq and be unpersuasive to the world.”

• “World reaction against preemption or ‘anticipatory self-defense’ could inhibit US ability to engage [in cooperation with other countries] in the future.”

• “US could fail to manage post-Saddam Hussein Iraq successfully, with the result that it could fracture into two or three pieces, to the detriment of the Middle East….”

This was a serious and disturbing memo. The concerns it listed included military, diplomatic, and economic matters. The list was more wide-ranging and hard-hitting than any warning I saw from State or the CIA— even though their leaders are widely viewed as the Administration’s voices of caution on the war. Even so, this memo did not anticipate postregime violence of the type that we have encountered in the insurgency—an effort organized, financed, and directed largely by former Baathist officials, in strategic alliance with al Qaida fighters and other foreign “holy warriors.”

Rumsfeld distributed the Parade of Horribles memo at a National Security Council meeting and discussed the items one by one. (That meeting was “principals only”—I was not present.)

One of the standard accusations made against the Pentagon’s leadership (and other Administration officials who supported the President’s war policy) was that we “cherry-picked” intelligence. The term implies that we tried to manipulate the President by highlighting bits of information that argued for war while obscuring or hiding other material. The fact is that Pentagon officials were not in a position to cherry-pick. We did not control the flow of intelligence to the President; he received it daily, directly, and voluminously from the CIA.

But, more important, Rumsfeld and his team did not operate that way. The Parade of Horribles memo was typical of how we viewed our responsibility to advise the President. Had we worried that our views required protection from inconvenient facts, we would not have embraced those views in the first place. Our strategy in interagency debates was to put forward our own ideas together with countervailing thoughts. We often heard the comment that we set out the case against our own ideas more compellingly than our opponents did. We figured if we showed how our analysis withstood strong criticism, we could be more effective—not to mention more honorable—than if we tried to keep the President in the dark about relevant facts or analyses. Our approach, as reflected in this important memo, was precisely the reverse of cherry-picking.

Beyond its influence on the rest of the Administration, the work on this list helped guide our own Iraq planning efforts. For example, when the Joint Staff briefed the Principals Committee two months before the war, its presentation of “Some Potential Post-War Challenges” mapped more than a dozen issues of concern, many of them rooted in Rumsfeld’s memo. In particular, the list of dangers sharpened our appreciation of the value of tactical surprise and of maximizing the speed of major combat operations. A number of the potential calamities—humanitarian crises, Saddam’s destruction of Iraq’s oil fields, regional instability, and terrorism by Iraqi agents against the United States, for example—were likelier to happen, and to be more severe, if the fighting to overthrow Saddam were prolonged.

The fact that we anticipated various problems, of course, did not mean the Defense Department or the Administration could avert them all. Even the best planning cannot ensure a problem-free war. Nevertheless, it’s fair to ask whether the department and the Administration took the exercise seriously enough and performed all the practical follow-up work that was called for. This is a subject that deserves comprehensive review, building on the several “lessons learned” studies that have already been done by the Joint Staff, the Joint Forces Command, and other military organizations.

(1) Rumsfeld noted at the end of the memo that it would have been possible, of course, to write a similar memo listing the dangers involved in leaving Saddam in power.

(2) Speed and surprise did indeed prove important: Our troops found that Iraq’s bridges and oil fields had been prepared for demolition—but the wiring had fortunately not been completed.