December 7, 2005
"Dean's take on Iraq makes even less sense than the scream in Iowa."
Says Rep. Jim Marshall, a Democrat. A lot of Democrats are worried about the effect of the Dean style of anti-war talk -- the effect on the fortunes of the party, that is.
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Dean is going to prove to be a disaster. Is it really that hard to focus on picking candidates and fund raising and just keeping your mouth shut????
Buck, you do realize that about half your audience stopped reading your passage at the word "Shrub". I know I did. Just thought I'd point that out if your goal is to actually convince people of your position and not just vent your spleen.
This makes about as much sense as Bill O'Reilly Jesus complex. Dean said nothing different from what Bush said exactly a year ago and this point should be driven home. Just because Bush has hired a new image maker who says appearance of victory is more important than victory does not unring the bell. Accepting the "Dean problem" as fact is just buying into insidious propaganda.
Okay, Shady, I cleaned up Buck's horrible posting so that you could actually make it through the entire entry.
And your take is...?
"Dean said nothing different from what Bush said exactly a year ago"
Nothing different? All righty then, case closed. Does that make Bush smart then or Dean stupid now?
I think that what Dean is saying is going to come back and hurt the Democrats in 2008, and maybe even in 2006.
The problem is what happens if the Iraqi security forces have been trained up by then sufficiently that most of the U.S. troops can, and will have been, withdrawn by then? Dean is left looking like he wanted to refight in (and recut and rerun from) Vietnam.
At that point, the 2005 polls are going to be irrelevant, and the Democrats who wanted to cut and run will just look like traitors.
Of course, things may not turn out that well. But if they don't, then the Democrats will have a natural advantage come at least 2008.
This is where I think Hillary has it right. Criticizing how we got into the war, maybe the intelligence, etc., but staying the course since we are in the war already. That, to me, is a much better long term strategic plan that pushing to cut and run, despite all the negative ramifications that would have. Heads she wins. Tails Dean loses.
What Dean, et al., don't address is what would happen if we did what he suggests - pulling our National Guard and Reserves out now, and the regular troops out in the next year or two. That would, of course, cut our troop strength in the country approximately by half.
Finally, enough of the country has been pacified enough, and the Iraqi security forces trained up enough, that we (Iraqi and US troops together) are able to seriously start pacifying the Sunni Triangle, and, in particular, the area between Baghdad and the Syrian border. This has been going on since mid-summer, and appears to be a success - though there is still a lot to do there.
What must be remembered though is that this is possible only because we have the U.S. and Iraqi troops available to do it now. This would come to a screeching halt with Dean's proposed withdrawl.
My worry is that if we did pull out right now, or even cut our forces by half, the country would disinigrate into sectarian violence, and essentially devolve into three countries, with the Sunnis ultimately providing a terrorist training ground like there was in Afghanistan before we invaded. Or, probably more accurately, another Lebanon.
Then you have to look at the bigger, long term, picture. My view, and that of a lot of us on the right, is that 9/11 was really a culmination of the trend that started when either Nixon pulled out of Vietnam, or probably more likelty, when the Democrats in Congress refused Ford's emergency request for military aid when North Vietnam reinvaded the South. This was followed by the Iran hostage crisis, Beruit, the WTC bombing, other terrorism throughout the 1990s, through the Cole, and finally with 9/11. In all of those situations, when the going got tough, we ran. And OBL has said essentially that - that he viewed us as a paper tiger. And pulling out now, before the job is done (or truly appears to be undoable), would just reinforce that perception - push the U.S. enough, and we would retreat, just like the (old) Europeans do.
Actually, despite my views on Hillary and her ethics, or, more accurately, total lack thereof, I am tending to believe that she really is being honest here.
One of the tidbits in Ed Klein's 'The Truth About Hillary' is that her father taught her to hit back, hard, when she was hit. Her father taught her to do it physically, but she later translated that into literal hitting. I think a good argument can be made that this trait of hers is why her husband survived his presidency. When he would want to retreat in the face of, for example, the Lewinski scandal, her natural tendency was to hit back even harder.
And I can see that this is possibly a big factor in her attitude towards this war.
Didn't Hamilton argue in the Federalist papers that a chief executive was needed to guide the people through periods of ignorance and passion (or somethign like that)?
Anyways, I recall that 80% of the USA was opposed to our involvment with europe during World War II. Despite this massive opposition, FDR continued to circumvent popular opinion by aggressively opposing hitler in anyway he could...in some cases FDR openly violated the law by allowing british ships to dock in our ports, reliving british outposts such as Iceland, and openly trading with the Allies.
The people said we should stay out.... 80% of them.
Being President means not always falling victim to the emotional sways of public opinion. Fortunately, President Bush is a leader who will stay the course the public elected him to do and not fall prey to the weakness of a fickle public.
Mark sounds like a DNC plant, but that's beside the point I guess.
Dean thinks this war is unwinnable period. He can qualify his statement, but his entire schtick has been this is a bad war, no plan, blah blah blah. Dean will do for Dems what McAuliffe did for Dems which is raise a boatload of cash from the tea-sip country club set and other rich libs while Republicans continue to win elections.
Can anyone yet describe a Democratic strategy that does not mean exposing our asses like a weak dog? Pull out now! is a Clinton intern exit strategy not a war strategy.
"All politics is local." -- Tip O'Neill
If Howard Dean had his way we would be back under English rule, Japan would still be Imperial and Europe would be under the boot of the various facists (real ones not the dumb Lib caricature) and communists. He obviously wouldn't want those specific results, but oddly... I find little comfort in his sincerity since his prescribed policy (whatever THAT is) would prove destructive.
Let's take Doctor Dean at his word. The idea that we can win the war in Iraq is wrong. Ergo, we cannot win. Ergo, we have lost.
Of course, he cannot support, let alone prove that assertion, but never mind.
So we have lost. Why then a strategic redeployment over two years?
The man is not serious, and can't be taken seriously. He's a political whore and not a very good one.
But there is a real chance that things may be more stable. We have now trained about as many Iraqis as we have troops there. Yes, they aren't up to U.S. standards yet, but, then again, many of our own units aren't either. In any case, the number is expected to double to almost a quarter of a million in the next year or so, and they are already making a difference.
Operation Steel Curtin had somewhere around 2,500 US troops (mostly Marines) and 1,000 Iraqi troops. And the combination apparently went very well. The Iraqis were able to be of great assistance, esp. in detecting things out of the ordinary, including identifying foreign born people (who are often terrorists in that area of NW Iraq), as well as reading grafitti on walls to tell whether or not Al Qaeda is active in towns they are entering.
My point is not that Iraq will be peaceful in a year or so, but that there is a real chance that it might be a lot more so than it is now. something might come along and disrupt things, but at present, things look better there every month, and that is what the military and the President are looking at when they think we will be able to start bringing troops home in 2006.
Chairman Dean is a Republican "Mole" and secretly the vanguard in the "60 in '06" campaign.
(There, I revealed the deep dark Roveian secret, go back to your usual business, there's nothing else to see here)
"....Also, whatever Bush and Co. say now, there will be reduction of troops in 2006. Why? Not because the situation in Iraq will be more stable; but because of the midterm elections in 2006...It's all politics-driven..."
So... if troops are withdrawn and things don't get worse, and in fact get better, will you admit that you were wrong and that it wasn't all politics? Hmmm....
Mark,
We may not be able to predict what is going to happen once we withdraw troops if done at an appropriate time.
But it is simple to predict what would happen if we followed Dr. Dean's suggestion and yanked half of our troops out immediately.
1) Short run, Iraq falls apart, probably into three somewhat autonymous feuding regions. A lot of sectarian violence, esp. Sunni v. Shiite. Kurds would probably be fat dumb and happy sitting there up in the north with all their oil revenue.
2) Long run, another 9/11 attack. Maybe not as bad. Maybe worse. Most likely in the U.S., but also probably strikes against us throughout the rest of the world. By cutting and running, as Dean suggests, we will embolden the terrorists. We will have shown that if anyone bloodies us enough, we won't stay around and finish the fight, because we, as a nation, no longer have the stomach to protect outselves and our interests.
But yes, troop levels will be reduced by the end of 2006, but not because of the polls back in the U.S., but because we don't need the troops there anymore. President Bush has shown no indication that he is following the polls or that he will change the conduct of the war because of them.
Former First Amendment Litigator Glenn Greenwald says what new is old. That Dean was right
"I've seen this before in my life. This is the same situation we had in Vietnam. Everybody then kept saying, 'just another year, just stay the course, we'll have a victory.' Well, we didn't have a victory, and this policy cost the lives of an additional 25,000 troops because we were too stubborn to recognize what was happening."
Whatever else one thought of Dean’s remarks, and whatever one’s views are on the propriety of analogizing the conflict in Iraq with Vietnam, Dean’s equating of the Bush Administration’s statements about the Iraq war to the statements which Americans heard from their Government throughout the duration of the Vietnam War was absolutely, indisputably accurate as a matter of historical fact.
He goes on to show that the promising statements we hear today are virtually identical to what we heard about Vietnam from our politicans, generals, and even the man on the street from 1962 to 1975.
Ann, this was when you were a young woman, from 12 years old to 25 years old. Doesn't this ring a bell?
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