Thursday, August 31, 2006

I have a question



Bush is going to be making some speeches on Iraq. That got Gale and me talking. He said that he thought Bush was being way too nice not only in Iraq, but with some of the other crazies in the world. He asked me if I thought that the people who did the news and made policy etc had any idea what the average guy in the boonies was saying and I said "Probably not." Gale has always supported Bush [as much as he can support any politician] because he felt he was more genuine than the other guys. I wonder how much of Bush's fall in support on Iraq is not from the left, but the right, from guys like Gale who want him to kick some ass and get it done.

I think maybe the Democrats read the polls and their answer is Ned Lamont when in fact it should be Harry Truman. But then again, the country abandoned Harry Truman.

So my question is given the choice of staying in Iraq and winning or just running away, which would most Americans choose?

20 comments:

Pastorius said...

I've recently decided that it is likely that we will fail in Iraq if we don't change our course.

I am livid over this prospect. And, I am angry at Bush.

For a long time, I subscribed to the poker player theory, which states that Bush holds his cards close to his vest, so he likely has strategies that we are not privy to.

However, the fiasco of the Hizbollah peace treaty and the mismanagement of the Iran crisis has left me believing that Bush does not have a plan, or at least none that goes in what I would believe to be a realistic direction.

I have resigned myself to the idea that this was will leave million, if not tens of millions dead.

Until the last few months, I believed we had a chance to win with relatively little blood spilled.

Pastorius said...

Knucklehead and Fresh Air,
I will admit up front that I may be ignorant of military strategy, but it seeemed to me the President was angling towards being able to join the war against Hizbollah. I think he saw it as his ticket to be able to attack Iran. Why else would he have made such blatant statements about Iran and Syria supporting Hizbollah?

When the war broke out, Israel and the United States made bold statements, and Israel made the bold gesture of having an F-16 buzz the home of the Syrian President.

As the days wore on, Israel and the United States became more tentative. Clearly, something broke down.

My hunch is Bush lost confidence in the Israeli leadership and at the same time lost confidence in his own ability to sway Congress and the people of the United States to do what needed to be done.

Syl said...

The Right has to STOP THIS SHIT about what went wrong in Iraq.

It doesn't matter now. What matters is that we finallly WIN.

I watched Bush's speech today on MSNBC because I wanted to see the Left's reaction to it.

Nora O'Donnell rolled her eyes as usual.

It's all political framing for November that the Reps know what the real deal about Iraq is and the Dems don't.

But Nora pointed out that the Reps are complaining almost as much as the Dems so that doesn't work.

She's right.

The other thing she was all excited about was her guy in Baghdad saying the military brass in Iraq are telling him that al Qaeda in Iraq is essentially toast. The insurgency has all but died out. And what's left is sectarian violence.

She was delighted because to HER and the left that means Bush is lying about the importance of winning in Iraq and that Iraq is about the war on terror.

She's wrong. The point in Iraq is to leave only when the democracy is secure--and it doesn't matter what is causing the violence right now, if the government should fail al Qaeda will be right back in there.

Not to mention the perception in the muslim world that we can't finish what we start blah blah blah.

But this is how the left is going to frame it.

(1)Reps don't agree with Bush, so don't listen to his framing of Iraq in terms of Reps vs Dems.

(2)Iraq isn't about al Qaeda, it's about civil war.

Pastorius said...

Terrye,
You say, "The Right has to stop this shit. - the important thing is we have to win."

Yeah, but the problem is, if we don't change our strategy, I don't think we will win. And, the only way to get the Administration to change their strategy (which they've been pursuing for five years now) is to say what we think is wrong, and voice support for what we think is right.

Generally, all the complaining on the right is about how we need to use more force, and be bolder.

Certainly, if voiced clearly that doesn't hand any cred to the Left, does it?

Unknown said...

pastorius:

Syl said that not me, but I do agree with her to some extent.

For instance a great many people on the right are assuming that Bush is control of everything all the time.

I would have been happy to see alSadr go, but the Iraqis had other ideas, perhaps they were afraid he would become a martyr like his dead family members. But it is not over yet.

As for Iran and Hizbellah, come on. Bush is a president, not a king, there are limits to what he can do and he can not make Israel fight and he can not just go into Iran and blow the place up without support.

People may be disappointed in Bush, but I am disappointed in a lot of people on the right who stayed with Bush just so long as it was easy, but when things got tough and they realized this was not going to be over in a couple of years, they bailed.

I look at history and how long it took the south to recover from the Civil War and how long it took to settle the west and how long it took to make South Korea and Japan modern countries with a democratic government and I wonder if we could do it today or if our collective attention spans have just gotten so short that we are not capable of hanging in there anymore.

Unknown said...

alan:

Stupid? That is harsh, really.

A couple of things, there things you don't know and it might well have been that if the US forces had taken out Sadr then they would have made a martyr of him, the same way Saddam did when he killed other Sadrs in time past. That might well have created an even greater backlash.

Unknown said...

Pastorius:

I forgot to say, yes it does help the left. very much so.

Pastorius said...

Have I really "abandoned Bush" if I would vote for him again, if I had the chance. There are no politicians I would trust more at this point.

Pastorius said...

Have I really "abandoned Bush" if I would vote for him again, if I had the chance. There are no politicians I would trust more at this point.

Unknown said...

I think the thing that troubles me is that here I sit in my little house at my computer hammering away on my keyboard when I should be cleaning the kitchen floor.

And I am willing to admit that there are all kinds of things I don't know. I don't know if Bush failed in Iraq, because I don't know exactly what people think success is supposed to look like nor do I know what is really possible to accomplish. I am not an expert, but I do know that Bush wants to succeed, his legacy and his fortunes are at stake. And he is in a position to know a lot more about what is going on over there than we are. So before I give him advice or scold him for not getting rid of alSadr or whatever, I have to ask myself, do I really know any better than he does or than Casey does or all the experts he has at his disposal what the best and right thing to do is. No, I don't know. I think there are a lot of people who are under the impression they know more than they do.

Syl said...

alan

Sheesh, man.

All this crap about more force and killing Sadr and blasting through Baghdad with guns blazing is..

IDIOTIC.

Iraq has a government now, or didn't you notice?

We are working WITH the government and the Iraqi forces now, or didn't you notice?

Let's just do a Dresden on Baghdad and be done with it?

Your solution is as utopian as the left's one of leaving then all will be fine.

Pastorius

You want to punish Bush for mistakes made a year ago, or two years ago? Right, do it now! Turn over the House to Pelosi. That'll learn him!

Sheesh

Syl said...

Knuck

Back when this all started there was no end of screaming that the Iraqis needed to stand up and fight and die for their own nation against the murdering thugs within it. Yet somehow the more that becomes reality the louder people scream that everything is screwed up in Iraq.

::applause::

Unknown said...

alan:

You have no way of knowing. none.You are looking at facts and assuming that if this and that had been done two years ago then voila! there would be no militia. That is not true, Iran would have found someone else. The point is the Iraqis have to do a better job of dealing with their own.

Unknown said...

alan:

No one is ignoring anyone. You do not know that. My point is Sadr does not exist within a vacuum. He is not the only one of his kind. His family members were killed by Saddam. They are already martyrs. Sadr city is named after them.

If we want to go back in time and arm chair general the war we could just as easily say that if Zarqawi had been caught before he managed to kill so many Shia and if the Sunni had been willing to become part of the process at the beginning Sadr would have remained a marginal figure in terms of national importance...Sistani cautioned against responding in kind, but Sadr said go after them, fight back and that gave him more of a following.

I am saying there are a dozen scenarios we could come up with and none of them might be right. We can not know what would have happened.

Unknown said...

alan:

What do you suggest, Bush declare himself King and nuke Iran?

Unknown said...

alan:

We have to stop this second guessing and constant bitching. The truth is we have created a situation here where a couple of thousand crazy people can bring down a super power. We did that, not them.

We did not "allow" Sadr to excape. No doubt the US military has known where that little bastard was every moment since he came back into Iraq. He did not go anywhere without them knowing it. If the US military were to go over the top of the Iraqis and kill that bastard, it might well do more harm than good. I do believe that if the President were told by Casey and Abizaid tomorrow that they think Sadr should be taken out, he would be.

Unknown said...

Oh yes, answer to your question, when did we ever let them live to fight another day: Pancho Villa, the Mexicans got him..not Pershing. Because after all, he was Mexican.

luc said...

I just wonder what is the meaning of Iraq has gone bad. Everybody seems to have an answer to that. But let’s ask the opposite question: What would the situation in Iraq be for people to say Iraq that was really a successful endeavor?

Just for a moment do the exercise and write down the answer to this question. Once the answer to what a successful situation in Iraq would look like has been firmly established and written down then and only then ask the next question important question:
Is it reasonable to expect that outcome?

If the answer to the second question is negative, I suggest that what people expect out of Bush is not a possible thing to accomplish! In such case Bush should not only be cut some slack but should be praised for what he has accomplished to date in spite of the overwhelming lack of support.

gumshoe said...

a friend
paraphrased a Bush II quote
the other day:

"hindsight isn't vision,
and second-guessing isn't leadership."

leadership has become a "bad thing"
in the PoMo worldview,
but the navel-gazing
and self-loathing that gets you,your family and your neighbors killed is way worse in my book.

anybody here wish Jimmy C.
was back in office?

knuck said it well:
...Bush is dealing with the realities of global
events and a democratic society.

and our enemies inside and outside
the country are attempting to leverage every advantage they can get out of both.

Unknown said...

gumshoe:

Agreed.

And Jimmy C is what they will get if they are not careful.

A half dozen attacks a day can make for ugly pics on TV but we can't expect bush to just make all that go away.