More Good News from Iraq

[Lena]

FOX News .................Not only did they show the made up photo of bin laden , Kennedy , and saddam hussein but they also reported Barack Obama went to moslem school run by fanatics but they also called for a tourist boycott of Canada they hate for some crack pot reason .

Valley Forge .................George only had the British , not 3 groups all not trusting each other , foreign interferance , a collapsed economy , and civil war . He had it better ...................

[MM6]

Hi Lena

[quote="08pooled"]I choose to look on the bright side. Its not easy to set up a stable government. It took Japan seven years to do that. And it took us 15. Patreus said the surge is working, and I have no reason to doubt him.

you are very trusting.

Patreus is trustworthy. The left isn't.

His military background and his intelligence are not in doubt. What seems to be in doubt in the American media is the discrepancy between his record in Iraq and his subsequent rise to power.

To wit: This January he was promoted to Supreme Commander and OverLord in Iraq (ok thats not his title but you get my drift) despite being previously and relatively recently responsible for some embarrassing cock-ups in Iraq. He was in charge of securing Mosul (in 03) and he did it. But the insurgents captured Mosul again a few months later and the police that Patraeus appointed either deserted or changed sides and $40m worth of weapons were lost. He also implemented the training of the Iraqi army. But today it is totally incapable and corruption is rife. And most of the Iraqi procurement budget of $1bn was embezzled with the Iraqi soldiers having to to rely on inadequate equipment.
You could say the collapse of the Iraqi army isnt his fault and that he was just giving the Iraqis autonomy on how they spend their procurement budget. But if he's not going to follow through on the job he's been given then who is. In business you dont appoint a manager and then let the staff run wild with the credit card. The surge wasnt his idea - he inherited it and so far it hasnt been responsible for anything of note. Baghdad is still the most dangerous place on earth (would you like to live there?) with the numbers of Iraqis fleeing rising every month and the US increasing their use of air strikes. The reason the number of sectarian killings is down is simply because Baghdad is now a Shia city and there is nobody from the Sunni faction left to kill.
Im not saying the MoveOn.org ad in the NY Times was fair (actually "General Betray Us" was rather funny) but the controversy that followed it was fairly extreme to say the least - voting in the Senate to "strongly condemn personal attacks on the honour and integrity of General Petraeus" - if you cant question the Supreme Commander and OverLord in charge of your most controversial war since Vietnam then what happened to free speech?

I would argue that too much was put on Patreus's shoulders. In the Civil War, Grant had William Sherman. In WW2, Eisenhower, Patton, and MacArthur ran things. But in Iraq, its a one man show. Your manager analogy works, but Patreus was put in charge of an enormously difficult task. It was a huge mistake by the Bush administration to not put one or two more 4 or 5 star generals out there-assuming men of those standards even exist. Also, I want to touch on something you said:

"The reason the number of sectarian killings is down is simply because Baghdad is now a Shia city and there is nobody from the Sunni faction left to kill."

That didn't just randomly happen in the last 6-8 months. I would say the surge deeply contributed to it. One last thing:

Bagdad is most certainly a dangerous place. But its less dangerous now then it was 6 months ago. That's a good thing, IMO. It shows progress. Things were getting bloodier every year, and for the first time, violence has decreased over a prolonged period of time. The surge is mainly responcible for that.

Personally, I think we should try another surge.

[08pooled]

Valley Forge .................George only had the British , not 3 groups all not trusting each other , foreign interferance , a collapsed economy , and civil war . He had it better ...................

Uh. Honey. You might need to take a lesson on U.S history. Washington's troops were on the verge of total defeat. The temperatures at valley forge were negative 20. The troops hardly had any food and clothing. For God's sake, they had to eat cats and dogs just to stay alive! Our army has plenty of food and clothing. Our army is not at the mercy of one general 10 miles away. If William Howe wanted too, he could of invaded valley forge and masacred the few hundred men that Washington had. But he decided to stay at his comfy home in Philadelphia for the winter. The United States military in Iraq has held their own. They haven't come remotely close to being defeated.

It is naive to claim that Washington had it better. Compared to valley forge, Iraq would be a dream situation for George Washington. I can only imagine what he would have done to Great Britian with our technology! Can you say, beatdown?[/b]

[08pooled]

Yes I agree with your point on the enormity of the task - he has too big a job - but when he was doing all the stuff in Mosul he was under the command of General George Casey. There was another 5 star General there to back him up. Dont forget Patraeus only became overall Commander this year and he took some heavyweights with him, the "Petraeus guys". He has some brilliant military strategists around him but this peace wont be won by the military in my view. I think the military can win this war, but it's going to take some more time. Now given, if we don't want to establish a peaceful democracy, we can just bomb the S*** out of them, take their oil, and get it over with. I say that if the secterian violence continues to plague Iraq over the next 5-7 years, we should do just that. But right now, I think we can still setup a peaceful democracy.
Baghdad as I said is now a Shia city and thats a catastrophe. Conciliation between Sunni and Shia Muslims is whats needed or they'll just end up with a sectarian divide along the lines of protestants/catholics in Northern Ireland with all the attending bloodshed and then relying on occupying forces (us and you guys) to keep them from blowing each other up. Its a mess and its going to take diplomacy, not guns, to sort out. They won't listen to eachother and they won't listen to us. Diplomacy is out of the question.

[Lena]

General Sanchez is sure no optimist about Iraq and he ran the show there...................

I get soldiers from PFC's to colonels in the bar about everynite and for years none of them say we're going to win , and many have been there................

It's a complex situation there , a civil war really . We can never win as leaving a stable government and making peace between the people .

Time to quit throwing men and soldiers away and come home !

[azraelle]

Time to quit throwing men and soldiers away and come home !

Agreed. Let them stew in their own damn mess. Blow away Iran instead.

[ZiaAries]

Time to quit throwing men and soldiers away and come home !

Agreed. Let them stew in their own damn mess. Blow away Iran instead.

Wow. Blow away? That horrible. As far as Iraq, "their damn mess" ahhh, I'm not sure about that one. Looks like we 'the Americans' have helped make this mess.

My God have mercy on us if we touch Iran.

[ZiaAries]

Well, I don't want to get into a mudslinging war about Fox News vs. everyone else, but consider this: in every war we've been in pre 1960, the government controlled what the media said. Heck, in WW2, the media never knew about the American death toll of +100,000 until AFTER the war had ended. Sometimes the media's job is to feed propoganda, and in a time of war, it WORKS. I do not believe that we would have succeded in the Civil War or ww1 and ww2 if the media was allowed to report whatever they want.

Looking at a war in a positive light is never unrealistic. If Washington could do at at Valley Forge, we can do it in Iraq.

I can't see a positive light to this. It was all about taking out Saddam. Sorry, I really believe that. I love my country dearly but American and Arrogance is starting to be a little too synomomous. What a F******, expensive nasty mess this is.

[azraelle]

Time to quit throwing men and soldiers away and come home !

Agreed. Let them stew in their own damn mess. Blow away Iran instead.

Wow. Blow away? That horrible. As far as Iraq, "their damn mess" ahhh, I'm not sure about that one. Looks like we 'the Americans' have helped make this mess.

May God have mercy on us if we touch Iran.

The Shiites and Sunni have been at each other's throats for hundreds of years, pretty much like the Serbs and Croats, or Brits and Irish for that matter. And they both hate the Kurds. The only thing we can REALLY be blamed for is liberating them from Saddam, who kept a lid on everyone with his totalitarian regime, sort of like Tito did in Yugoslavia before he died. Now they're killing each other, and any allied soldiers who get in the way. It is their own damn mess, and they will stew in it after we leave. Pre-emptively "blowing away" Iran will at least eliminate a major terrorist agitator, and arms and insurgent supplier to the Shiites, allowing the Iraqi people rather than only Shiites to determine, one way or another, their own fate.

Since clearly most Americans don't have the stomach to continue with the war, we should at least ensure that other countries keep their hands off as well. Obviously traditional diplomacy hasn't deterred Iran, what other means are available? As Clauswitz said, war is merely diplomacy carried on by other means.

[MM6]

It is within the remit of the allied forces to set up a power sharing agreement between the different factions in Iraq. Its been done in war torn places before vis: Burundi and the DRep. Congo and Liberia (and currently in Pakistan, to prevent an escalation of violence, with Musharraf and Benazir Bhutto) which gave group autonomy and recognised the claims of minorities. This is where diplomacy is essential. I dont think cut and run is the solution and neither is "bombing the S*** out of them".

Iraq needs the rule of law - a plan for devolved Government on a stable and inclusive basis - an Equality commission and a Human Rights Commission, (these are fundamental tenets of a civilised society) which will measure law, policy and practice against internationally accepted rules and principles. The protection of human rights needs to be adopted and applied. It can be done. Those that have said the Sunnis and Shia's will not listen to diplomacy underestimate the desire of these ordinary people for a peaceful solution and to live in a land free from violence.

[08pooled]

MM6, if the sunni's and shittes don't listen to eachother, we will have no other choice but to blow them away. We either establish a peaceful democratic government there-and I don't think diplomacy will accomplish that-or we blow them away into oblivion. As harsh as that sounds, it would be a horrendous decision on our part to cut and run and let them duke it out. Now, you didn't propose cutting and running. Lena, you have. I think that would be a terrrible decision. The American death toll will reach the tens of thousands if we pull out. The surge has stabilized things some what. I say we try another one.

The status quo is our only chance of establishing a peaceful government, and considering we've only lost 3500 lives as compared to the hundreds of thousands we lost in other wars, the status quo is not as bad as Keith Olberfuck and his minions at media matters and moveonDOTorg make it sound. However, the fact is, until the surge, domestic violence was getting out of control. If it gets out of control to the point of absurdity, then we need to flex our military muscles, kill them, and get the hell out of there. But if it doesn't, there is definitely hope.

As for iran, I don't care what happens in Iraq-they need to go. They are a threat to our oil supply-above all else. Lena, you had said that they would be forced to sell it. But to whom? Not us! China, Russia, or somebody else would get it. I don't think we would be attacked if we took out Iran. Besides, didn't they just try to assassinate Vladimir Putin?

[Noliving]

08pool there is a reason why you don't bump threads that are over a month old that has no replies in them.