Sunday, November 12, 2006

Double Down

Dafydd says Bush should send more troops to Iraq. So does Bill Stuntz , drawing historical analogies to the Civil War. Only about 30% of the population supports a complete and unilateral withdrawal. But would they support doubling down? And is it necessary or will time just have to do its work in Iraq?

6 comments:

brylun said...

The New York Times agrees.

Anonymous said...

Well I don't trust leaks, because the leaker always has a motive and unless I know for sure what it is, I can't be sure that what I am hearing is right.

For instance, people say we can not "divide Iraq" into autonomous regions. Exactly what does that mean? We are divided into 50 seperate sovereign regions right here.

I still believe in the transformative nature of democracy, but there also has to be stability. Without that people will just assume that democracy equals chaos and that would be counter productive to the ultimate goal.

gumshoe said...

excerpts from brylun's linked NYT article above:

"....And while there has been horrific ethnic cleansing, it hasn’t yet got to the point that boundaries could be drawn without driving many more people from their homes.

Such ideas deserve a full discussion, something the United States has not had since its troops first rolled into Iraq."


"horrific ethnic cleansing...that hasn't yet gotten to the point..."


"something the United States has not had....since its troops".


could any of you here imagine yourselves so detached,so lacking in compassion,or national identity
that you would feel comfortable
talking in the voice of "a disembodied,gaseous vertebrate",
the way the writer of that screed just did?

when does horrific ethnic cleansing "get to that point"?

when the entrance to Zabar's is blocked??

and whose troops do the NYT editorial staff imagine will protect them if they are directly attacked?
Zimbabwe's??

i'll stick with
"disembodied" and "gaseous",
and remove the "vertebrate"
descriptor.

MeaninglessHotAir said...

We'ver heard the drumbeat of "failure" in Iraq more or less since the beginning. I remember distinctly the NYT running "quagmire" articles more or less from the getgo.

I discount the propaganda, but people who hear it incessantly tend to start to believe it because it infiltrates their minds below the conscious level.

Let's stipulate that there is a problem, that still begs the question of the solution. There are two extreme opinions on this which have made the rounds repeatedly in the last few years: no troops and more troops. The "Left" has from time to time during the last few years advocated both. That tends to indicate that they don't have frickin clue, no more that I or Bush does.

I'm far from convinced that the current number of troops isn't the exact optimum number—who the heck knows—but I'm willing to give the Democrats their head.

Syl said...

Yeah, what nobody mentions is that all this talk of pulling troops and our 'failure' over there has caused the shia to take matters into their own hands.

The Democrats haven't a CLUE that their words have meaning to someone other than American citizens.

Back during WWII it took a while for headlines to cross the pond. Today everyone with a computer anywhere in the world can read every word coming out of politicians mouths in a matter of seconds.

You can be sure that the shia memories of our previous betrayal has an influence too.

Anonymous said...

syl:

No doubt, If the Shia had beleived that the Sunni could be and would be controlled I don't imagine we would be dealling with the militai today. These folks intend to survive with or without us.

Like it or not however, we have a two party system and sooner or later the Democrats were going to end up running something again. Now let's see what they do.