This is soooo 2003-2006

In the last comic, Wordsmith, we can’t tell whether the soldier has saved her life or just finished gunning down her family because somebody said an insurgent went into their building, but–oopsies!

Yeah, I’m sure that’s what Glenn McCoy had in mind: drawing his cartoon up for interpretation. Way to stretch.

And I’m sure we can’t tell whether the boy is running to this soldier for protection or to watch him gun down his famiily [/sarcasm]:

A boy seeks shelter behind a U.S. soldier as gunshots ring out following a car bomb explosion in Baghdad. At least 21 were killed in the bombing and 66 wounded, police and hospital officials said.
Khalid Mohammed- AP

This photo, which appeared on the front page of this morning’s edition of The New York Times, shows an Iraqi boy taking cover behind a U.S. soldier as civilians fled the sound of gunshots following a suicide bombing yesterday in central Baghdad that killed at least 21 people and wounded 66 others.Photo taken by Khalid Mohammed, AP

Tell me what the arguments are? Listen to the “man on the street” interview in the AP broadcast. Are their reasons to protest based upon the situation on the ground as it stands today

As long as money continues to be spent and lives lost in Iraq – even with a significantly improved situation in Iraq – it will raise protests. Irrespective of the anti-war brigade – I’m sure there are Iraqis who would like the US to leave sooner than later. Of course you and I disagree with their views BUT there are reasons to protest.

That is reasonable; however, the ones who are out protesting I believe, are the activist fringe who primarily are fixed not on the situation now, but on yesterday’s talking points. A single death will give validation to their inflexible, fixated belief, no matter what the contrarian statistics/current facts are.

Body counts and war-costs are mostly used by them to further a political ideology; do you think the ones I am speaking of would still not be out there protesting if those things were even 1/100th of what they are?

And I don’t think you can unshackle the whole lead up, justification, invasion, insurgency etc from the situation today. Yes it would be folly to throw up all the struggle to get to this point but the slate hasn’t been wiped clean. People will have to rebuild their shattered lives – in Iraq and in the US and it’s allies.

And how do you “rebuild shattered lives”? Not by packing it in, prematurely and give up the gains made.

The whole “lead up, justification, etc” reasoning is beside the point, as it relates to my post. We’re there now. That’s the point. You understand this, yet are trying to justify the protests who use that line of asymmetric reasoning. Let’s say the war was based upon lies: Oh…ok, since that’s the case, let’s just go home regardless of what’s happening now in Iraq. That makes perfectly sound, logical sense [/sarcasm]. It’s the “two wrongs don’t make a right” conundrum, you know.

but whether or not Obama now understands something he doesn’t; that he is privvy to information that has made the pragmatist in him realize that an “immediate pullout”- which is what these moonbats want- is not possible. Nor will it bring the peace they crave for, if they got their way.

Whilst I’m sure Obama has had some info from the generals it is also the difference between what people say on the campaign trail and what they do in office. How many politicians have been guilty of that? Reminds me of FDR promising that the US wouldn’t get involved in WWII. Easier said than done.

True. And he’s been experiencing some of that ‘read my lips” backlash (even expressed in the AP video).

How should I interpret that? You’re the one telling me it’s their “perfectly legit and democratic” right to protest….you set up the strawman, not I

I wasn’t implying that you wanted to legally strip away their rights but saying similar to ‘hey shut up you idiots’ is kinda of trying to silence debate. Of course not that anyone would listen.

I’d like to think I’m pretty careful about how I address people and how I conduct myself. But in the case of the anti-war hardcore diehards, I really see them, in general, as a dense movement of know-nothings.

If you think I’m “silencing debate” for calling them idiots, I disagree. If any of them wish to take umbrage with my post and debate their idiocy, they’re free to do so.

With the build up to war I remember there wasn’t enough critical debate on the war in the media- it was deemed in some quarters to be ‘unpatriotic’ to even question the intelligence reports and what we were fed.

I think you might be right regarding the media; but I also think they mismanaged explaining to the American public what the case for war was all about. The Administration was horrible at making its own case to the American public and a lot of confusion arose over how Saddam, wmd, al-Qaeda, and 9/11 were linked. The Administration was wrong in allowing the media to steer the focus on wmd possession; basically, they looked the other way and allowed the perception to happen, because it clearly drummed up public support for the war. But if you look at the language used, much of the case for war was based not upon saying Saddam possessed nuclear weapons, but upon the fear that based upon his history of intent and usage, history of deception and defiance, clear ties to terrorism, that we had to stop Saddam before he acquired wmd arsenal that could be delivered into the hands of terrorist proxies.

I disagree, however, that anyone at the time in the run-up to war was labeled unpatriotic. Sure you can point out the hard-right man on the street joe-schmoe; but point me to a politician who questioned anyone’s patriotism.

That’s a “duh”. But it’s not the reasoning they use. And it is 2003-2006; for as “your side” likes to point out and which I concede (at least in this thread for the sake of argument), it hasn’t been all roses, with the war “mismanaged”.

That’s the trouble with ‘your/my side’ – it sounds like there are only two polar views to Iraq.

Which is why you’ve taken it upon yourself to defend the anti-war activists, failing to perceive that I’m addressing a “polar opposite” viewpoint that is inflexible. You might not share their fringe inflexibility, but they are on “your side” of the fence, just as they stand on Obama’s side of the fence.

I think there are more views than that between those totally for the war, the reasons for going in and for staying the course and those totally against it from the start and want to pull out now. I was (and remain) against the war but I don’t support a hasty withdrawal.

And this post isn’t about “you all”. It’s about the fringe anti-war activists and those who are so ignorant, their line of thinking falls along the lines of simplistic “war is bad…mmmkay?” and “books not bombs”. It’s the kumbaya koolaid drinkers.

I wonder if you miss the point. You again bring up the non-issue of them having a “legit and necessary democratic voice”. They can bitch all they want and I can bitch about them bitching.

Again I don’t see it as a non-issue. I think their numbers of protestors are growing smaller BUT I believe there is a danger of the media and people in general forgetting about Iraq as if it’s all a bed of roses now and can be forgotten. The job is not done until the soldiers return home. I want to know the news – good and bad – from Iraq. I want US and the UK to draw lessons from this and see we can find better ways to resolve such issues. Yes and that also means reforming a corrupt and bureaucratic semi-funtioning UN.

I really think you’re misreading the point of my post and bringing to bear your own hang-ups and issues you care to talk about. It’s like you’re injecting peripheral issues into this.

When you speak of “the media forgetting about Iraq as if it’s all a bed of roses now”, well it’s the if-it-bleeds-it-leads media that is always happy to report the negative. The real crime here is in the lopsided nature of reporting negative news in blitzkrieg fashipn and remaining all but silent when things have taken an upturn for the better. That has a huge influence on the perceptions of the general public. And maybe there’d be greater public support and even more of a lessening of the anti-war crowd if the positives were fairly and more frequently reported upon with the same kind of fervor and proportion that the negative news has been reported upon.

I agree most of them probably are. And what I am arguing is that they are applying 2003 (pre-war arguments plus “no wmd”/”Bush lied”), 2004 (abu ghraib), 2005 (Haditha), and 2006 (so-called “civil war”) headlines and arguments against remaining in Iraq to the situation on the ground today in 2009, post Surge-success. It’s the kind of blinders on mentality that has them only highlight every set back, every negative, every flag-draped coffin, every penny spent, without seeing any of the investments and any of the gains, any of the successes, and any of the consequences we and Iraq might suffer from a premature and irresponsible withdrawal. It’s the same kind of mindset that has John Kerry and Jane Fonda not acknowledge that more suffering happened, not less, when we failed to honor our commitment to defending our South Vietnamese allies. The hippies had their way, but it didn’t bring about less killing; it didn’t bring peace. It had the opposite effect.

I agree to the extent that a lot of anti-war protestors seem to highlight the bad things and some may even want the US and UK to fail. There probably only a few who would actually praise Saddam’s regime.

Usually, it’s the obligatory “But”-monkey lip-service: “Yeah, Saddam was an evil guy…..BUT“. They say it, but aren’t really interested in hearing about the details of his murders and tortures and mass graves; similarly, those on my side tend to downplay the effects of the violence and “collateral damage” upon real Iraqi lives.

On the flip side – you also have people who only jump on everybit of ‘good’ news about Iraq over the last 6 years, who wear rose-tinted glasses, who post only pictures of soldiers giving sweets to Iraqi kids – who underplay the amount of lost done in lives that this cost. I guess you never seen that?

I see that aplenty and am one of the ones who push the agenda. FA is a partisan blog. MSM is not supposed to be, but is digested by the mainstream public for the straight news. It’s different in the UK.

My decision to post positive photos of U.S. soldiers helping Iraqis is offered up as a counterweight to all the abu-Ghraib and Haditha-type news stories and photos that sway public opinion into the perception that our soldiers are over there raping, pillaging, murdering, torturing Iraqi citizens. I get my daily dose of that from MSM and lefty blogs.

All I’m saying is that the debate is over polarised – that there are notable extremes on both sides and the truth most likely lies in the middle.

Yes and no.

As for Vietnam that draws an interesting comparison. The US got bogged down in that civil war for over a decade – inherited from the French. A lot of people in the US say it was a ‘draw’ which I think is wishful thinking. Certainly it cost many more US soldiers lives with little to show for it. And it was a Republican who withdrew.

The anti-war candidate, McGovern, was defeated in a landslide. His campaign slogan was “Come home, America”. He campaigned as the anti-war candidate who would end the war. Nixon campaigned on bringing peace with honor. And he was achieving just that.

Richard Nixon committed himself when he became president to the idea of “Vietnamization”, which was to train more and more South Vietnamese troops to become self-sufficient; and consequently, part of the plan was the steady troop withdrawal and intensified bombing. In ’72, when Nixon was running for re-election, and after Operation Linebacker II, he finally got the North Vietnamese onboard with the Paris Peace Accords. Part of the package included two secret agreements: one was billions of dollars in reparations, after the war. But the North did not get it, because they had broken their agreement by invading the South. The 2nd secret agreement was with the South Vietnamese. He gave them a solemn pledge, in writing, that if the North broke agreements, and invaded the South, America would get back in, and provide whatever aid the South needed; even troop support. Unfortunately for the South Vietnamese, Nixon was driven from office by the Watergate scandal. When the North Vietnamese invaded the South, an unelected President in the form of Gerald Ford pleaded with Congress to enforce our agreements and honor our pledge to our South Vietnamese allies. In 1975, more than one million innocent Vietnamese fled in terror from a massive invasion by the North. Congress and the anti-war movement did nothing to alleviate the suffering.

That’s the thought-out compassion of the anti-war left.

Hippies can protest all they want but you don’t have to listen to them.

Sometimes they’re difficult to ignore when they’re lying down in the middle of Wilshire Blvd, during rush-hour traffic. They are kind of “in your face” with their activism, you know? Yes, they can be ignored in many cases; but more importantly at times, is to counter them, which is what Skye and her fellow Sheepdogs do every Saturday. You don’t win arguments by just remaining silent to the propaganda shouted out by the other side.

You can bomb the VietCong as much as you want but it didn’t seem they were going to go away. With Iraq – this didn’t start as a civil war – it was a pre-emptive strike.

You’re going to have to draw me a map to the point you wish to make here, because you lost me. All I’m seeing is apples to coconuts.

I think the US can put in enough stability in Iraq so it can withdraw. What would be unfortunate is if a country like Iran stepped in once the US goes or if there is another coup internally within Iraq. Is the US going to continually yo-yo back with troops to ensure there is democracy in Iraq?

If we left prematurely, under the conditions of “defeat”, pre-surge, we probably would have expended more lives and more treasure to find ourselves going back in again. But soon, Iraq will be on its own to carve out its own future, on its own merits. No, we’re not babysitting their democracy into eternity. But insofar as their future affects our future, yes, I’m all for intervention that is tied into our own national security interests.

As Obama mentioned in his 60 Minutes interview, leaders often face bad and worse, and you make hard decisions based upon the cards you’re dealt. If Iran steps in there, we’ll deal with that if we turn that corner. What if, what if, what if… If we had never invaded Saddam’s Iraq in 2003, we’d still be dealing with what if scenarios. What if Carter had stood strong with the Shah of Iran in ’78-9? Would we then have had to make hard choices that saw Rumsfeld shaking hands with Saddam? And then later arranging for war against him, decades later? Would we be facing Iranian Shia-driven Islamic militancy today?

Absolutely. But what does that have to do with the situation on the ground TODAY???? What I am asking them is to face the reality of today. Not 2003. Those arguments about wmd and flawed intell and whether we were lied into war is irrelevant to dealing with where we find ourselves now. I think you understand this. Anyone making the case for withdrawal in 2009 because “no wmd found” and “Saddam had nothing to do with 9/11″ is stuck on stupid.

I agree but support for the war did drop when people believed that their governments hadn’t been entirely straightforward with them. That’s not a reason to go now.

But you do understand that the ones this post was aimed at ridiculing, are those who don’t understand this, right?

I’m sure some actually are; but we didn’t go to war out of concern for the Iraqi people any more than peaceniks are concerned for people by standing up for the Castros of the world. And by the West “propping up” Saddam…you mean France and Germany supplying him with the majority of his weapons, along with China and Russia? Basically, the ones who opposed our U.S.-led invasion for oil contracts and billions owed them by Saddam?

Of course Russia and France go their hand caught in the cookie jar. As usual they were posturing about how concerned they were for Iraqi people which was BS. They had massive contracts with Saddam. However the US and UK did give Saddam money and did very little to stop Saddam before the Gulf War.

Yes, for reasons similar to why we found ourselves in support of Stalin during WWII. It goes back to the pragmatist leader making choices between bad and worse choices.

The US and UK have geopolitical reasons to be in Iraq. It isn’t primarily about the concern over WMDs or Iraqi lives. Oil plays it part.

Yes. But not in the manner in which the fringe BDSers want to scream empty-headed “no blood for oil” slogans and “Halliburton” and “Bush just wants to get his rich friends richer by stealing Iraqi oil”.

No one I know…

No one you know personally or generally? Have you never heard such views where people are automatically pro-war and see any protest against war as being unpatriotics?

No one I know personally. Of course you can always find the nutcases in every crowd. But I also see where liberals have used the strawman “my patriotism is under attack” whining, caricaturizing the criticism that is actually being leveled at them.

And in some cases, yes, I do question the patriotism of those fringies who call for soldiers to shoot their officers or celebrate when insurgents kill one of our own. Who irresponsibly protest in a manner that does serve enemy propaganda purposes in a Jane Fonda-like way.

The cost has certainly been high. Far higher than anyone would have liked; but I don’t know any plan that is ever mistake-proof. And I still believe that the world is much safer now that Saddam and his murderous sons are pushing up the daisies. It’s a legitimate question to pose, as Peter Feaver points out in his blogpost. The case for removing Saddam centered much around his capabilities and intent to acquire wmd as much as the uncertainty regarding his wmd status. Marry that to his sponsorship of exported terrorism. Terrorist proxies + wmd = bad news.

By 2009, how many more Iraqi deaths under Saddam had he remained in power? Most likely not as many. But whereas I forsee improvements in Iraqi lives and possibly less senseless dying as time moves on, under Saddam and his sons succeeeding him, what would that future have held for Iraqis?

Well I don’t know the exact cost in dollars or lives but if someone had said it’s going to cost about a trillion dollars and going to cost over 100,000 human lives to remove one dictator out of many who represses his people and to find out that he was bluffing over WMDs – no thanks to dodgy intelligence – I wonder how many people would have wanted to spend that in cash & blood.

That’s the tricky thing about hindsight quarterbacking. I think based upon what we knew at the time, the irresponsible course of action was the status quo of keeping Saddam in power. Post-war information hasn’t changed my opinion on this. Nor the conduct of the post-war period (insurgency); those are separate if related issues to the original decision to invade. Was the insurgency inevitable? Perhaps. The thing is, you can stop the buck at any point in history to having cost the world any amount of dollars for poor decisions and lives “wasted”. If it weren’t for God, there’d be no human misery in the first place. So why not begin there, if you want to blame-hand?

I’m more concerned with Afganistan and Pakistan which I feel – along with Iran – have been neglected.

They have not been neglected, other than perhaps by media focus. Just as Iraq hasn’t been neglected simply because it’s no longer frontpage news but Afghanistan and Pakistan, and Iran are beginning to dwarf Iraq in headline news.

Saddam was boxed due to sanctions. He wasn’t the highest priority.

We were heavily criticized for sanctions as a cause for Iraqi children dying. Enter “Food for Oil”….a scam that enriched corrupt UN officials and Saddam’s coffers while his people continued to suffer.

I think it’s a strong likelihood that had things run its course, we would have seen a lifting of sanctions. Saddam was actively working toward this end, and he had friends within the UN and French officials who were working toward this end.

And as we now know, Saddam had wmd programs read and in place to be reconstituted once that happened:

The reports we had from U.S. intelligence officials on Iraqi WMD painted essentially the same picture that those officials had presented to the Clinton Administration. The CIA declared that Saddam had chemical and biological weapons stockpiles. The stockpiles catalogued by the UN weapons inspectors in 1999 were still unaccounted for, and were therefore presumed to exist. (p. 224)

[T]he Iraq Survey Group team concluded that Saddam had retained the ability to produce chemical and biological weapons rapidly (within a month or two). In the 1990s he had shut down factories dedicated solely to making such weapons, replacing them with “dual-use” facilities capable of producing both civilian products and chemical or biological weapons. That gave him deniability if inspections ever started up again, as Saddam evidently expected they would. (p. 327)

The Iraq Survey Group also found that Saddam had the intention to revive Iraq’s chemical and biological weapons programs once the sanctions were ended. He had preserved the necessary teams of technicians, who would be the key to reviving the programs quickly. (p. 327)

The public’s impression of the Duelfer Report on these matters was shaped by news media headlines to the effect that “nothing was found.” Those headlines were misleading (one might even say fundamentally false), because the ISG found substantial WMD capabilities in Iraq, including personnel, materiel, facilities, and intentions-but not the stockpiles of the weapons themselves. (p. 328)

In the end, there are only three possible explanations for the failure to find the WMD materiel that had been catalogued in detail by UNSCOM. Saddam might have destroyed it, he might have hidden it in Iraq, or he might have transferred it out of Iraq. To this day, we do not know for sure which explanation is correct. (p. 330)

The Iraq Survey Group confirmed that President Bush had grounds for viewing Iraq’s WMD capabilities as a compelling threat. The CIA’s unsupportable statements about Iraqi stockpiles and WMD activity did not justify critics in making unsupportable pronouncements of their own, to the effect that Saddam had no WMD ambitions or capabilities. (p. 330)

I can’t see a President (Republican or Democrat) launching a third war with Iran after the Iraq War. Iran exports far more terrorism than Iraq I believe.

At the time, wasn’t Saddam’s Iraq the #1 exporter of state-sponsored terrorism?

Due to his violations of the original Cease-Fire Agreement and 12 year violation of 16+1 UN Resolutions, when it came to eenie-meenie-minny-moe between the 3 Axis of Evil, I’d say Saddam was the likely candidate of choice. They’re all threats.

And I don’t see Iraq (unfortunately) becoming a beacon of hope and democracy for the Middle East where suddenly and magically the other rogue states around it will sudden have democratic revolutions.

I agree. Again, it goes back to making choices between bad and worse. And I think it’s a soft bigotry of low expectations for pundits to insist unequivocally that democracy is impossible to transplant. Some were nay-saying that Japan, which had never known democracy, would never successfully democratize. No one- including Bush- said that Iraq will have a democracy that would look like ours; and democracy has to begin somewhere and at some point in time. If you don’t start now, then when?

Who knows if Iraq will go north or south? Prosperity or hell? Friends with Iran or allies to us? Alliances and friendships between states are never permanent, sealed in a blood-oath of allegiance. We’ve warred with Britain, Mexico, France, Japan, Germany, etc, and are today allied. Doesn’t mean that something in the future won’t set us against one another again. We’re not BFFs. The future is ultimately unknowable.

Again – I feel the whole Iraq War has little to do with Iraqi lives.

Of course not. It has to do with America’s security; and a stable, Iraq and feathercap “win” for the U.S. is tied into our national security and “salvaging” of our international reputation “in the eyes of world opinion” for whatever that’s worth. Because in certain instances, I say “Eff world opinion.” It matters and it doesn’t matter.

That said, it’s cynical and untrue to believe that Americans who are for staying don’t care about Iraqi innocent lives. I think George Bush cares. I care. And at the same time, it is tied in to American self-interest.

We didn’t invade Iraq for humanitarian reasons; that’s a side responsibility. But you tell Iraqis that Americans don’t care about them when they receive soccer balls from American smalltowns, school supplies, etc. When our government, at the expense of American blood and treasure- not Iraqi oil- has stood by their side to try and make their lives better by rebuilding infrastructure, training Iraqi security forces, and nurturing a fledgling democratic government. It’s not perfect, but it’s the right thing.

How would the US feel/react if Iraq chooses to tilt heavily towards the Shite brand of Islam in an election, become anti-US, sell oil only to France & Russia etc? Or wouldn’t Iraq have that free will to truly do what it wanted. Would it be all worth it then?

I think George Bush and his Administration has already addressed that possibility. They’re free to make those decisions. But if it threatens our national security interests, don’t be surprised by American interventionism. Democracy isn’t being shoved down their throats. Many Iraqis have given their lives to support a democratic government.