At the NYT, the headline is: "With Loss of Its Caliphate, ISIS May Return to Guerrilla Roots." So, we have a great victory — don't we? — but we can't take a moment to feel good about it. Immediately, we plunge into doubt. Maybe we're even worse off if these people don't have their territory. That's the vibe at the NYT article. Here's how it begins:
Its de facto capital is falling. Its territory has shriveled from the size of Portugal to a handful of outposts. Its surviving leaders are on the run.Read the whole thing. It continues in that vein. It ends by saying that al Qaeda might win back the young hotheads who'd been attracted to ISIS and frightens/titillates us with the idea of a newer, younger bin Laden:
But rather than declare the Islamic State and its virulent ideology conquered, many Western and Arab counterterrorism officials are bracing for a new, lethal incarnation of the jihadi group.
The organization has a proven track record as an insurgency able to withstand major military onslaughts, while still recruiting adherents around the world ready to kill in its name.
Islamic State leaders signaled more than a year ago that they had drawn up contingency plans to revert to their roots as a guerrilla force after the loss of their territory in Iraq and Syria. Nor does the group need to govern cities to inspire so-called lone wolf terrorist attacks abroad, a strategy it has already adopted to devastating effect in Manchester, England, and Orlando, Fla....
The older group has been urging followers to pivot from the Islamic State’s focus on the battlefields of the Middle East and instead put an emphasis on attacks in the United States and other foreign lands. It has also been promoting a younger, charismatic new leader: Hamza bin Laden, 27, the son of Osama.I went looking for a picture of this charmer. Here:
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117 comments:
" I follow my well-worn path to The New York Times, where I still believe I'm going to get the official news, the real news, the professional news. "
Ann, you should know better by now.
ISIS and Al Quaeda are currently in the loser camp.
Losers don't attract lots of eager converts and support, typically.
A few more years of smacking them down when they pop their heads up and perhaps even the Times will figure it out.
(Or, elect a Democrat as President, and perhaps the future instantly becomes Great?)
Every war ends this way.
Here's the New York Times commenting on Appomattox Court House:
With Loss of its Capitol, CSA May Return to Guerrilla Roots."
The James-Younger Gang leaders signaled more than a year ago that they had drawn up contingency plans to revert to their roots as a guerrilla force after the loss of their territory in Little Dixie.
Aw c'mon NYTimes -- it ain't that hard to give credit where credit is due, now is it?
heh, heh.
On a more serious note, ISIS is a vicious band of murderers. So, it's undeniably a good thing to hit them hard, right?
Oh, I assumed they would acknowledge the success but give credit to the Obama administration and its policies in the Middle East.
Forget it Jake. It's only the JV.
The "Islamic State" is a dream, or rather dreams, not an organization, so yes it will pop up elsewhere all over the "Middle East" with different names and immediate goals.
It has been prophesied that there will be great war between Shia and Sunni Islam, and then the victorious side will gather all Islam for the final war against all infidels to the end of days, and they all believe in that.
So, if the Shia empire now reaches from Afghanistan to the Mediterranean, will the next news be war between Iran and Turkey on the north, or Iran vs. the Sunni Arab states on their south?
I seem to remember someone saying that people want to follow the "strong horse". Once that was supposedly Al Qaeda, then it was supposedly the Islamic State. Now it's a bunch of guys hiding in caves? Yes, they can kill people, but they haven't got a winning strategy.
AG Sessions told that talking point in front of the Senate Whatever Committee-- that things might initially get worse, not better, with the overthrow of ISIS.
Maybe it's like poking a beehive.
It's always fun to watch the tortured manner in which the media reports news that upset The Narrative.
Not that it would be smart to overplay this development. ISIS and the rest have nothing but time on their side. They have nothing better to do. They won't go away.
But, man, if you're pretending to cover a conflict, cover it.
Slate ran a piece this week that admitted that Trump wasn't screwing everything up. It was not received kindly.
You identify them, find them and kill them.
I follow my well-worn path to The New York Times, where I still believe I'm going to get the official news, the real news, the professional news.
Yup, and there's no such thing as a casting couch in Hollywood. That's just something the evil conservatives made up.
But keep in mind that our military under George W. Bush did take on -- and defeat -- the al Qaeda organization in Iraq. It took longer than had been assumed, but our military learned a lot. And a defeated organization in no way resembles the "strong horse" that supposedly attracts young men to fight and die for it.
Arabs are very big on lineage.
They have a serious aristocratic streak.
One more Obama created disaster has been removed from the face of the earth. The NYT going through the 5 stages of grief, has reached bargaining.
There is no substitute for victory.
"Some people just need killin'"
David Goldman has written that wars end when 30% of the military age males on one side are killed.
The African branch of ISIS, which is different people but still Muslim, are responsible for the SF soldiers killed last week.
“Read the whole thing”. Um, no thanks. Not even sure why you still read the NYT. Sounds like you know it won’t give you the truth. But you desperately WANT it to do so...
It’s garbage. Absolute garbage!
A long time ago (when Obama was kicking the can down the road on ISIS - way before Trump commented that he would defeat them) I started commenting that Obama’s didn’t want to win. The proof is this:
We have the greatest military in the world.
We can win any fight/war we want to.
We hadn’t won.
Ergo Obama didn’t want to win.
So if ISIS was the JV and O couldn't defeat it, what was O? And if Trump did, what is his team?
Anyway, leaving NYT "professional" propaganda aside, the ISIS breakup does present a challenge for European countries: the news there is already talking about returning jihadists (imagine, that's what they call them!) and the threat they pose.
You actually think you will get professional news there? I get much more honest news from your blog than I ever do at the democrat-times.
It is the Commander-in-Chief who gets the credit when the Generals he picked operating under his authorization to win smash a dangerous enemy. It is always thus.
Under Pres. Fifth Columnist, the US Military Officers were fired for winning battles against Muslims practicing their Religion of Peace.
I remain fascinated and confused as to why Althouse continues to flyspeck the New York Times. They did the same to Romney, to McCain, to Bush and Dole et cetera. You are kind of late to the party.
Brent (NeverTrump) Bozell's Media Research Center had been on the liberal-media beat longer than anybody. So I just subscribe to different news sources, and reduce my consumption of the Times.
I really should say, I have some considerable gratitude for you, regularly perusing the NYT, so that I don't have to.
One thing that I'd never say about the times, given its pervasive bias, is that it is "a great, great American jewel." You remember who did say that? That is, right after and right before he called it (inaccurately) "the failing New York Times."
"But rather than declare the Islamic State and its virulent ideology conquered, . . ."
That "virulent ideology" has a name.
Islam.
Everything ISIS did is sourced in the Quran. Ugly perhaps. But Islam is ugly.
" I follow my well-worn path to The New York Times, where I still believe I'm going to get the official news, the real news, the professional news. "
There was a time when producing the official news was profitable. Now, the only way for the NYT to stay afloat is to feed its remaining readers exactly what they want, which is to be told on a daily basis how great they are and how awful Trump is.
So, we have a great victory — don't we? — but we can't take a moment to feel good about it.
That's because it happened under a Republican president, and even worse, Trump. If Obama had still been president, or heaven forbid, Hillary..this would have been bigger than defeating Hitler.
"I remain fascinated and confused as to why Althouse continues to flyspeck the New York Times. "
I don't know about you, but it seems to me that monitoring the NYT is important as a matter of "military intelligence". Its important to know what your enemies are saying as that provides clues as to their intentions, worries and weaknesses, and to predict their behavior. These are the same reasons Kremlinologists monitored the Soviet press.
The NYT is also very important for this as it is the source of most of the official propaganda line. It is the sergeants pike and the drum beat for the rest of the propaganda battalion of Hessians. The NYT tells (much of) where they are going to march and when they will fire their volleys.
David Goldman has written that wars end when 30% of the military age males on one side are killed.
You win a war if and only if the other side loses the capacity to continue fighting. You can win a war of attrition, North Vietnam won by waiting for the US to get tired of fighting, the Allies beat Germany by occupying every square inch of that country, the US beat Japan by terrifying their leadership, and the North beat the South by forcing the Confederate armies to surrender unconditionally. Lots of ways to win.
ISIS is just the most recent exponent of malignant Islamist extremism, and its inevitable defeat certainly won't bring any kind of end to violent jihadism based terrorism. The next group may end up being even more vile and brutal. There's no shortage of psychopathicly angry young Islamic men who desire the savage excitement of being a pillaging conqueror in the name of Allah. New ones are being produced every day.
No matter what the NYT reports, Americans will never know who or how ISIS was expelled. These forces do not allow photographs, and certainly don't give interviews to the press.
These are the same forces that fought a 24 hour, bloodless war with the Kurds over Kirkuk. There will be a lot less war, and a lot more stability in the Middle East if Trump gets his 8 years in office.
"You win a war if and only if the other side loses the capacity to continue fighting."
Yes but Goldman's rule still applies where one side does not give up as we did in Vietnam,. That war was lost on American streets and campuses.
Middle East is still a mess. It's slightly better with ISIS destroyed. And a lot of Jihadist got killed, which is very helpful. Amazing what the US Military can do when allowed to do their job.
Open Issues in the Islamic World:
- Iran
- Yemen
- Syria
- Kurds in Iraq, Turkey, Iran, and Syria.
- Turkey
- Iraq
- Refugees in Europe from Middle East
- Religious minorities in Middle East
- Low oil prices (Yay Fracking) causing deficits
- Jihadist in Africa
- Afghanistan
- Funding of Madras / Wahhabi version of Islam across the world.
- Horrible economies / corruption / tribalism in most of Islamic World.
As buwaya says, reading the NYT gives one great incite into the mind of the well heeled liberal. It's an invaluable resource for combat preparation for the battlefield of ideas (one of the principal fields of combat in the Great Culture War).
exiled, Dude1394,
"Ann, you should know better by now."
Your sarcasm detectors are broken.
CJinPA,
"ISIS and the rest have nothing but time on their side. They have nothing better to do. They won't go away. "
They will if Mecca does.
I follow my well-worn path to The New York Times, where I still believe I'm going to get the official news, the real news, the professional news.
LOL, good one Ann!
Trump really didn't do much - he just loosened the leash on the military a bit and gave them the authority to fight to win.
Really he didn't do anything that any responsible, patriotic president wouldn't have done. You know, any president who was not his immediate predecessor.
One tenth of a second after a Seal Team Six member kicks in his door Little Hamza is going to wish that Obama & Sons had opened a falafel stand for the family business.
Seems like writing Truman beats Germany and Japan in months after years of talk from Roosevelt.
readering,
That statement says more about you than it does anything else--none of it complimentary.
...but the people who want to fight in that region have always had the option to do so as individual guerrillas, or in small loosely-organized groups, right? The big deal with ISIS was that they could credibly claim to have the equivalent of a STATE, with territory, solid finances (from sales of captured oil and humans/slaves),administrative functions, etc. That was their new thing--that's what made them different and more appealing to potential recruits and overall more dangerous.
Destroying that is a real victory. It doesn't mean the end of fighting in that region and only a fool--likely a bigger fool than anyone currently holding a position within the US government!--would argue that it will. To that extent the NYTimes' angle seems like little more than strawman bashing, motivated by sour grapes (to mix a metaphor or two).
Now: that unique/new threat did come into being during the Obama administration and as a viable pseudostate it did end during the Trump administration. How much you want to credit or blame those two admins. for those occurrences will probably map close to 100% with how you feel about those two admins politically and/or ideologically, so discussing "who should get credit" is likely not to be productive.
Excellent news. ISIS was a movement, one that attracted followers because they were winning. Now that they are known as losers, they will attract many fewer followers.
Couldn't be better.
Amazing what the US Military can do when allowed to do their job.
The job was accomplished almost entirely by Kurdish, Iraqi, and Syrians. There were no U.S. ground forces involved in the fighting. Yes, we did moderately increase air and artillery support (which resulted in the complete destruction of Raqqa and half of Mosul). But to say that Trump succeeded where Obama failed is just stupid. This was a war of attrition that stretched over years in both administrations.
Trump claimed he had a secret plan to defeat ISIS. Turns out it was just more of what we were already doing.
I see Freder and readering are trying to give credit where it is not due, namely to the previous administration run by the village idiot from Hyde Park. Believe what you want to, kiddies. The rest of us know what reality looks like.
Our plan for destroying terrorism is working like a charm.
That statement says more about you than it does anything else--none of it complimentary.
Yah, he loosened it for him.
Did I miss it, or did Chuck praise Trump on this positive accomplishment?
A victory? Perhaps that just strains credulity, to borrow a phrase from a great statesperson.
You should have read IBD. They recognize a win when they see one. What the NYT is rooting for is a guerrilla war. That's a lot harder to conduct in the ME than in the jungles of SE Asia. A year ago ISIS was going to establish a new caliphate across parts of Syria and Iraq. Now they are wondering if they can find a few idiots to blow themselves up here and there. If they know we are actually going to destroy them wherever they may be it makes it a bit tougher to recruit people who just want the romance of kicking sand in our face.
"Nor does the group need to govern cities to inspire so-called lone wolf terrorist attacks abroad"
Oh? Wouldn't potential "so called" lone wolf terrorists be more likely to back a winner?
What Trump did differently in Syria / Iraq than Obama - changes were minor, but had a huge impact:
1. Stopped micro management by National Security Council, it has been compared to how Johnson micro managed the Vietnam War. This change made the decision making process for the US military much faster and effective.
2. Empowered Mattis. He changed policy of allowing Isis to escape by Iraqis (used to 3/4 surround area), to 100% surrounding areas, and then annihilating them. This stopped Isis from fighting another day. Story I read was Trump was asked for a go ahead on some military mission, and he asked why he was being asked since he was not a military expert. After that he delegated.
3. Changed ROE for US Military and CIA in Iraq and Syria. US forces were much closer to the front line under Trump in Iraq and Syria. Under Obama ROE there had to be basically a zero chance of civilian casualties. So Isis took advantage of this.
The organization has a proven track record as an insurgency able to withstand major military onslaughts, while still recruiting adherents around the world ready to kill in its name....Nor does the group need to govern cities to inspire so-called lone wolf terrorist attacks abroad, a strategy it has already adopted to devastating effect
Sounds like the only way to stay safe is to identify people likely to be recruited and inspired, and ensure they're able to immigrate here in large numbers.
"Wouldn't potential "so called" lone wolf terrorists be more likely to back a winner?"
Actually, if you knew anything you would know that Islam is a suicide pact and the Islamic young males of military age are the most frustrated, sexually and otherwise, males on earth,
The older males, like Osama, put the young females in a]harems and the younger males are excluded. The incidence of homosexuality, evidence of sexual frustration in prison and in Muslim countries is high. They are frustrated enough to do suicide missions like the Chechen brothers in Boston and many other examples that result in death. All the assaults in France and England follow that pattern and it is not just the poor and uneducated who do this.
Clue: It's the religion and the cultural despair.
I've been saying it everywhere including here since 2004:
The financial demise and closing of the New York Times would easily be one of the best things that could ever happen to the social fabric of the United States.
@Freder - Well, US air support isn't much good when the planes land carrying the same number of bombs that they did when they took off. It also helps that we told our allies/proxies that we didn't just want them to take territory and prisoners, we wanted ISIS corpses stacked like cordwood. The best thing about dead martyrs is that they're dead, and not returning "home" to Europe or the US.
Trump didn't do much - he just fixed the malignant idiocy of the Obama Maladministration, and the US military and local forces did their jobs.
"Did I miss it, or did Chuck praise Trump on this positive accomplishment?"
Actually Chuck praises President Trump on a lot of his accomplishments. That is why I fail to understand his continual condemnations.
ISIS was such a robust engine of extremist recruitment because it claimed to be a restored Caliphate. That was an idea that a lot of Muslims would sacrifice a lot for. If the idea of a real live functioning Caliphate has been discredited (at least for now), it is plausible to speculate that support for the same old same old guerrilla warfare will be more tepid. But I'm no expert.
LiliTrumpians spiking the football on the 5-yard line, pissed that the NYT isn't cheering them on. I hope I'm wrong, but there is no cause for celebration yet as the US keeps manufacturing widows and orphans here at home.
Baron Trump will kill that terrorist pussy Hamza with his bare hands.
So Chuck, let us hear you say "good job" to Trump for the demise of ISIS and for Gorsuch!
Ficta said...ISIS was such a robust engine of extremist recruitment because it claimed to be a restored Caliphate. That was an idea that a lot of Muslims would sacrifice a lot for. If the idea of a real live functioning Caliphate has been discredited (at least for now), it is plausible to speculate that support for the same old same old guerrilla warfare will be more tepid. But I'm no expert.
Yes, well put--you said what I meant more concisely. Thanks!
I was listening to @NPR drivetime this morning, and Surprise! They were skeptical this was a dramatic victory, and had the same take since they were talking to an NYT reporter.
It was all, "oh no! Now they will be hiding out in the European Union and Turkey."
If we are fortunate (as we are now because Trump won) Years from now, we will hear outtakes of these criminals of JournOlism, and think "what a bunch of lying weanies."
Europe will regret the defeat of ISIS in the Middle East. If they can't impose their will in the ME, ISIS will create mayhem in Germany, France, the Netherlands and Sweden. Perhaps the US as well.
I hate the "whack-a-mole" analogy, but it fits.
You and I are reading different blogs, pacwest.
It helps to not send your own people to the back of the bus.
Eventually they will get around to economically targeting the families of suicide bombers - like they are doing with businesses that work with North Korea.
ISIS has been doing this anyway, so no change:
>Europe will regret the defeat of ISIS in the Middle East. If they can't impose their
>will in the ME, ISIS will create mayhem in Germany, France, the Netherlands and Sweden.
>Perhaps the US as well.
"I follow my well-worn path to The New York Times, where I still believe I'm going to get the official news, the real news, the professional news."
-----------
Michael Chrichton - “Briefly stated, the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect is as follows. You open the newspaper to an article on some subject you know well. In Murray's case, physics. In mine, show business. You read the article and see the journalist has absolutely no understanding of either the facts or the issues.
Often, the article is so wrong it actually presents the story backward—reversing cause and effect. I call these the "wet streets cause rain" stories. Paper's are full of them.
In any case, you read with exasperation or amusement the multiple errors in a story, and then turn the page to national or international affairs, an read as if the rest of the newspaper was somehow more accurate about Palestine than the baloney you just read. You turn the page, and forget what you know.”
The US is already fighting Jihadist world wide, and this will continue for a while. It's a long war. Part of this war was what happened to the US Soldiers in Nigeria.
What has to happen to end this war?
Nice to know that the Times uses that passive voice trick not only to protect unruly lefties (rocks "were thrown"), but also to insulate our President, or our military, from taking any credit (ISIS' capital "is falling," its territory "has shriveled").
I think in addition to being unable to face up to the nauseating (for them) fact that this Prez is making better decisions, at least on the ISIS front, than his sainted predecessor, lefties like those who populate the Times really are sincerely appeasers at heart.
Don't make their capital fall or their territory shrivel, else they might really get mad!
Fabi,
I've said it before and will again. Chuck Derangement Syndrome is alive and well on the Althouse blog.
Chuck has stated several times that Gorsuch is a great pick. (And then immediately denounces the President as having nothing to do with it).
He has praised the effort to clean up the voter roles. (While in the same breath saying that Trump's tweets had nothing to do with this finally getting underway).
He has said that he is behind multiple cabinet members in the Administration. (Immediately telling us Trump is incapable of making good choices without someone holding his hand).
He seems to think the recent drop in illegal immigration is a good thing. (And doesn't seem to be able to connect the dots to Trump).
With a little research I could go on with what Chuck has said about what a great job the current President is doing. (And never failing to point out what a buffoon Trump is in the same thought).
To me his criticisms seem shallow and wholly influenced by TDS, but I think a lot of his detractors need to look at his statements about what Trump is doing policywise, and filter out his TDS. It would help alleviate some of what think is CDS on this blog.
YMMV of course:)
I would also add that his comments are usually well informed.
After years of reading the unlimited horrors perpetrated by ISIS: the senseless murders of thousands of innocents, and the destruction of culture and assets, it's just pathetic that some people cannot see any loss of power by them as an absolute unadulterated success and reason for celebration. If your confusion arises out of partisanship, then you are especially pathetic. I would celebrate this if it happened under Obama, Bernie, or Hillary, but is that even remotely possible. You have to not only want to win, but understand how not winning is also losing, and how losing to such people is unacceptable. The Democrats do not understand that, which is why when asked, Hillary said the Republicans were her top enemy.
I asked a Saudi once, who had visited America once, what his first impression was. He said that we were very regimented.
He thought the way we drove our cars was idiotic. "You paint these lines, and the people, like they have no brain, stay between the lines. If a motorcycle comes up between you, you get hostile."
"They walk on the right, and if you walk on the left they get hostile."
"Any little thing, you get hostile."
It is a society of mad men.
If you've ever been to the middle east and watched them at a traffic light, you would laugh, because lines mean nothing, and the horns start blowing 1 microsecond after the light turns green.
The rule is, to not let them see the whites of your eye. If they do, then that means you acknowledge their right of way.
Anyway, this is the world we are trying to save from themselves. You have to ask yourself, who cares if they kill each other. It's called a f'n desert, leave them alone.
There is no win, there is only an empty treasury. Victory means we are broke.
Chuck gets credit for his occasional erudition, but the intensity of his TDS following any faint praise for Trump's accomplishments negates the latter, pacwest. De gustibus.
When you have elebenty million young males who think getting killed fighting for Islam - against heretics and apostates as well as infidels - is the greatest thing that could ever happen to them there is not goinng to be peace.
Arabs defeated ISIS.
Not McCain's Arabs. Mattis's Arabs. With few Western casualties. That happened because Mattis's Arabs trusted Trump. McCain's Arabs want perpetual war.
"Read the whole thing."
Thanks. No.
"A victory? Perhaps that just strains credulity, to borrow a phrase from a great statesperson."
Keep cheering the enemy, Inga.
It's what you do best.
Nor does the group need to govern cities to inspire so-called lone wolf terrorist attacks abroad, a strategy it has already adopted to devastating effect in Manchester, England, and Orlando, Fla....
So is this the first time that the New York Times has admitted that the Pulse nightclub shooting was Islamic terrorism, and not just anti-gay hate crime/gun violence?
You have to ask yourself, who cares if they kill each other. It's called a f'n desert, leave them alone.
There is no win, there is only an empty treasury. Victory means we are broke.
I tend to agree. Bush thought a try at a fee Arab state was worth a try and Iraq had had a middle class so I was OK with it.
What we needed to do after we won was the put some Iraqis in charge and get out.
That might have ended where we are now with Iran but 5000 guys would still be alive and Iran would not have gotten Obama's billions.
bago: Sorry to piss on your happy talk. It's necessary to be cynical that this war that has been hot for us since 1983 is at it's end. The US has been playing whack a mole with an endless string of islamic jihadi groups with countless names always lead by some shitbird named Al. What's going to be the next one after ISIS? Don't you renember "Mission Accomplished"? In baseball, premature celebration is a jinx. Knock yourself out, party like it's 1999.
readering: "Seems like writing Truman beats Germany and Japan in months after years of talk from Roosevelt."
Lefties take time out from saying "Obama killed Osama" to complain about Trump getting credit for policy changes Trump specifically put in place to actually win.
Field Marshall Fred"er"/"o": "....something something blah blah..."
Whatever.
But what made Al queda unique, there were many factions that arose out of Afghanistan,,it was a franchise operation that drew from the leading insurgencies, gia, Chechen emirate, Abe sayyaf, it was Ksm's technical and managerial skills that brought together the plotters. They mounted subsequent plots like Al suris *spectaculars in London and Madrid. But never an operation on the scale of 9/11
*Al suris model of leaderless resistances went back to the descanso bombing initially attributed to eta then hezbollah, inn1985 mantes Bradley has the back story.
Explicitly Islamic radicalism goers back to 1979, both the ship crescent and utaibis grand mosque siege, one fed off the other, he was the inspiration for bin laden a decade later. The PLO and their various outgrowth like the plp gc were nationalist outfirs
If we sent the Air Force they'd be in in the dead camp.
Howard: " Don't you renember "Mission Accomplished"? In baseball, premature celebration is a jinx. Knock yourself out, party like it's 1999."
Ah, another non-serving jackass exposes himself.
If you knew anything about the US Navy, it's "Mission Focused" orientation and how Navy units celebrate the completion the tours of duty and how all the paperwork is written up about the performance of that unit, you would understand that it was the USS Abraham Lincoln's personnel who wanted the banner up to proclaim the success of the Lincoln's Mission, which was very much indeed "Accomplished". The banner was not addressing anything to do with overall status of the conflict itself.
You, as a non-serving moron (about these matters, not others for which you often display solid knowledge and understanding) probably also believe "W" went AWOL (hint, he didn't), HW Bush didn't understand supermarket scanners, and every other made up "meme" by the MSM press against republican Presidents.
Here's a little something for you:
http://www.blackfive.net/main/2008/05/mission-accompl.html
snip: "Here is what Lieutenant Paul Updike has to say about it:
I thought you might like to hear the rest of the story that the media misinformed the nation about on what "Mission Accomplished" was all about.
My name is Paul Updike and I served aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln during the Iraq War. I would like to comment specifically about the controversy that surrounds the displaying of the "Mission Accomplished" banner during the time of the President's visit aboard my ship. It is my sincere hope that I will be able to clear up what appears to be a great misunderstanding about the true meaning behind the banner.
The "Mission Accomplished" banner was created to celebrate the return of the USS Abraham Lincoln to her home port in Everett, WA after an extended 11 month cruise. We were happy and proud to return to our families after such a long time away. The average cruise length for a naval vessel at that time was normally around 6 months. Our mission during Operation Iraqi freedom was accomplished with overwhelming success and thus this banner was created and proudly displayed to represent the USS Abraham Lincoln's individual accomplishments during the war. It certainly did not mean that the American mission as a whole had been accomplished in Iraq.
The media stationed aboard our vessel clearly understood the truth behind the banner yet fed the public a twisted version of this truth. I honestly believe that those opposed to the war saw an opportunity to spin the truth about the banner in order to attack the President. As an officer aboard the ship at that time, I found it to be hurtful and insulting that the media would use our specific accomplishments as a platform to attack our Commander-in-Chief. The President's visit to the USS Abraham Lincoln was a great honor to those of us serving aboard her at the time. It is shameful and reprehensible to see the tremendous spin that has been placed on this great event. I was proud to serve my country and I will always support my Commander-in-Chief. God bless America.
Yours very respectfully,
Paul Updike"
Posted by Blackfive on Friday, May 02, 2008 at 09:22 AM in Bust
Just so you know, every single Naval unit, when returning from deployment, speaks in terms of "mission accomplished".
Each unit, prior to deployment and during deployment, must report on their Mission Readiness status.
Each Unit has to file Mission Achievement/Accomplishment After-Action reports.
But hey, it's "W", so who cares about what's real.
Lefties NEED the MEMES!
Don't you renember "Mission Accomplished"? In baseball, premature celebration is a jinx. Knock yourself out, party like it's 1999.
I do and lefties like you completely distorted the message. The carrier had gotten back home. The captain had hung the banner.
You guys never give up even when your candidate is Hilary, the most corrupt presidential candidate since Aaron Burr,
So what if ISIS is beheading, raping, selling into sex slavery, beating and disfiguring, and bombing Christians and other religious minorities there and otherwise forcing them out of the region? Who cares about genocide? Those atrocities have nothing to do with us.
This attitude, which has been expressed by Hillary, Obama, the MSM and the rest of the left is yet another reason why they are beneath contempt.
Supermarket scanners and plastic turkeys are to the left.......
ISIS and Al Quaeda are currently in the loser camp.
Losers don't attract lots of eager converts and support, typically.
The enemy has been losing for a long time. That hasn't stopped them from waging war against us for nearly 1400 years.
Don't expect a just and lasting peace anytime soon. Certainly not in our lifetimes.
At least until they get another crypto muslim in the White House. Your trust in the NY Times really shows your age, but that don't worry me none cause baby boomers like you will soon be gone.
"Don't expect a just and lasting peace anytime soon. Certainly not in our lifetimes."
Nor our grandchildren's I would guess. I think the hope is we can force them into a low grade war. Individual attacks instead of armies. Of course nuclear non-proliferation has to be a large part any strategy like that.
@Mark, so the only route to a lasting peace is to kill every man, woman, and child who is a Muslim? That's pretty heavy stuff.
Who says there is a route to a lasting peace, at least in this world?
And by the way, don't put genocidal words into my mouth.
Of course nuclear non-proliferation has to be a large part any strategy like that
Problem is now North Korea is in the game. And with that, I think there is a 20-30 percent chance of my town (D.C.) getting nuked.
“So what if ISIS is beheading, raping, selling into sex slavery, beating and disfiguring, and bombing Christians and other religious minorities there and otherwise forcing them out of the region? Who cares about genocide? Those atrocities have nothing to do with us.
This attitude, which has been expressed by Hillary, Obama, the MSM and the rest of the left is yet another reason why they are beneath contempt.”
What an absolutely stupid comment.
Mark said...
Problem is now North Korea is in the game. And with that, I think there is a 20-30 percent chance of my town (D.C.) getting nuked.
The LORD said, "If I find in Sodom fifty righteous within the city, then I will spare all the place for their sake." - Genesis 18:26
D.C. is screwed.
So where was Hamza (who would have been nine years old in 2001), when Obama supposedly took out Osama in Abbottabad on May 2, 2011? Only the women survived the Navy Seal raid and the bad film showed an OBL to be far too short with a bulbous nose.
But a better question surrounds the real Osama bin Laden, who most likely died in December of 2001 of nephritis in Afghanistan where he had retreated with his pitiful Arab mujahideen mercenaries, a totally ineffective force against the Russians. But CIA Director George Tenet needed a face on the Muslim enemy that the Clinton regime needed in order to get Monica off the front pages and OBL was picked.
And no, Osama neither planned nor financed 911, but one of his on-tape impersonators supposedly admitted to the crime. Finally, who would believe that the "GREAT OBL" would live in secret with little wealth or apparent influence hiding from Obama - not me!
The surgery was a success, but the patient died. Mission Accomplished was a failed photo op with Dub flying in for a trap recovery wearing military flight gear just 90 miles from port. Unseemly and narcissistic. As bad as Obozo Hussein was killing wedding goers and drawing pink lines in the sand, Bush will wear the failed terror slaughter that set the entire ME on fire forever and forever around his neck.
So, we have a great victory — don't we? — but we can't take a moment to feel good about it.
What the hell purpose does it serve to feel good? We're talking about a pernicious series of beliefs that aren't ending any time soon, and certainly won't be ended through this violent skirmish here or that one there.
I will feel good about this when most Muslims either convert, reform their articles of faith, or do some other unforeseen thing that results in doctrines like jihad and dar al Harb no longer having any validity or resonance with so many millions of people.
Ideas can never be violently changed. Never. How stupid are right-wingers to not get that?
I follow my well-worn path to The New York Times, where I still believe I'm going to get the official news, the real news, the professional news.
=======
Let no one say that Ann doesn't have a sense of humor.
TTR,
Not to put words in your mouth, but it sounds like you think we should just turn the other cheek until this coming reformation of Islam?
"Problem is now North Korea is in the game."
Not yet. The clock is ticking though.
Generallisimo Howard: "Bush will wear the failed terror slaughter that set the entire ME on fire forever.."
Lol
It was an Eden before bushitler showed up, eh?
Too funny
Let me guess, fattened calves, streets running goods and candies, children playing and putting flowers in the barrels of guns, right up until Bush decided to strike the peace-loving people's of the middle east who had existed without war for millennia!
Sounds like an SJW giving us the sanitized history of the Aztecs.
You know Howard, maybe it would best if you put the bottle down and backed away slowly from the military discussion. You haven't exactly been "distinguishing" yourself here!
Imagine being so stupid you think artillery soldiers and marines aren’t “ground troops.”
"But keep in mind that our military under George W. Bush did take on -- and defeat -- the al Qaeda organization in Iraq."
There was no Al-Qaeda organization in Iraq...until we invaded Iraq illegally and ousted Saddam Hussein.
"We have the greatest military in the world.
"We can win any fight/war we want to.
"We hadn’t won.
"Ergo Obama didn’t want to win."
Your premises are faulty.
"Yes but Goldman's rule still applies where one side does not give up as we did in Vietnam,. That war was lost on American streets and campuses."
There was no valid or legal reason for us to be fighting that war.
"The job was accomplished almost entirely by Kurdish, Iraqi, and Syrians. There were no U.S. ground forces involved in the fighting. Yes, we did moderately increase air and artillery support (which resulted in the complete destruction of Raqqa and half of Mosul). But to say that Trump succeeded where Obama failed is just stupid. This was a war of attrition that stretched over years in both administrations.
Trump claimed he had a secret plan to defeat ISIS. Turns out it was just more of what we were already doing."
Ah! An intelligent comment!
"If you knew anything about the US Navy, it's 'Mission Focused' orientation and how Navy units celebrate the completion the tours of duty and how all the paperwork is written up about the performance of that unit, you would understand that it was the USS Abraham Lincoln's personnel who wanted the banner up to proclaim the success of the Lincoln's Mission, which was very much indeed 'Accomplished.' The banner was not addressing anything to do with overall status of the conflict itself."
Twist it all you like, but despite whatever it may have meant specifically and privately to the USS Lincoln's crew, the presence of Bush himself on that ship, wearing--ridiculously--a flight suit, with the "Mission Accomplished" banner featured prominently behind him as he spoke on television, was intended by the Bush Administration to give American citizens the impression that the "war in Iraq" (that we started) had been "won." Bush said, as his codpiece bulged: "Major combat operations in Iraq have ended. In the battle of Iraq, the United States and our allies have prevailed."
The White House eventually admitted they put up the banner, "at the request of the ship's crew."
It was classic propaganda.
Ritmo opines.
"Ideas can never be violently changed."
That will come as good news to the British, the Japanese and the Germans.
if the NYT admits that ISIS might continue with "a strategy it has already adopted to devastating effect in Manchester, England, and Orlando, Fla." then when will the NYT admit that it might just be a good idea to restrict entry to the US from countries in which ISIS has its adherents?
Paging Judge Derrick Watson....
There was no valid or legal reason for us to be fighting that war.
Of course you'd say that...you were on the other side.
"Of course you'd say that...you were on the other side."
Heh! I was on neither side. I was still in high school when Nixon called an end to the war. I hadn't given the war any thought one way or the other at the time.
But, there was no valid or legal reason for us to be fighting in that war. In fighting that war, we committed war crimes, tortures, and rape. We dropped toxins on the land that are causing birth deformities to this day. All for nothing and for no reason. The Vietnamese were no threat to the USA and had never made any threats to the USA.
Cookie,
You're so cute when you think (or pretend to think) that International Law is law in the same sense as the US Code or the Revised Code of Washington is law.
I'd recommend you go read this book but it's quite thick and I'm not sure you're up to the task of understanding it.
Kirk Parker,
You're not so cute when you try to imply that our actions in Vietnam were not crimes because legalisms.
The murder of millions, accompanied by rape, torture, carpet-bombing, the pouring into Vietnam of toxins such as Agent Orange that have been linked to illnesses in our own veterans who served as well as decades of birth defects in Vietnam were, however finely you may wish to split hairs, crimes.
I checked your link and read the introduction to the book as well as part of the author's own preface. It's not the kind of thing I normally read, but it actually looks interesting. If I find it in a bookstore, I'll browse through it and maybe even pick it up.
However, don't think I will come away from it, whatever it might say, having changed my mind about the crimes of war being crimes. As someone else has said, War is a crime. In the case of fighting for self-defense, it may be necessary, but fighting even in self-defense involves the commission of crimes in that innocents will be killed, maimed, rendered homeless, will be terrorized, etc. The problem is, we so rarely fight in self-defense, and almost always in offense to aggrandize our own power and wealth.
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