Amen! ahaha!

When I post this I will probably have reached 20k in the hit dept. For us bloggers of questionable talent it is a milestone of sorts. Bleeding Brain has a cool Freedom Index Cowboy Blob goes into detail on how…

-interfering neighbors

-young democracy,

-support [and understanding of the mission].

General Abizaid, head of CENCOM, put it good:

“American soldiers fight best when they know the people back home are behind them.

“We are fighting for all the right reasons, against one of the most despicable and dangerous enemies this nation has ever faced. We need to know that the people are with us.”

Just like Israel, Iraq is a democratic state under seige in a desert of tyranny. The President of Iraq is not just repeating the need for assistance just for nothing. We are at war with cold blooded assassins and suicidal fanatics, and to leave the Iraqi people at their mercy would be an absolutely horrible mistake.

There is good news and there is bad news in every war.

—-

We sleep soundly in our beds because rough men stand ready in the night to visit
violence upon those who would do us harm. — George Orwell

Night, night.

The Sunni issue is a complex one. Personally I think the allies made a bad error by alienating the Ba’athists from the get-go; designated “villain” playing cards give the wrong message. These guys were the aristocracy of Iraq for decades, they needed to be handled more intelligently. They weren’t all genocidal nutbars.

Your comment on the Iranian connection is also well taken. When al-Jaafari went to Tehran the dignatories were lining up to kiss ass. Recently when an Iranian diplomatic mission visited Baghdad they were strolling around without much in the way of security concerns. By contrast when Condoleezza visited she was trussed up in a flackjacket.

The campaign was mishandled. Powell is right - there needed to be more guys on the ground from the start and they should have anticipated civilian disorder. Also the apparent descent into dysfunction in Abhu Ghraib should have been stopped faster. It’s one thing to torture a guy to find out where a bomb is located, prior to a few hundred civilians being taken out … it’s quite another thing to torture and humiliate captives in a gratuitous fashion with no particular purpose in mind except heir humiliation. If Bush presumes to export “freedom and democracy” to other lands then he better damn well ensure his representitives don’t morph into low grade thugs.

This is a deep hole, I’m hoping we can dig out fast and turn it around. Talibani’s positive attitude goes a small way toward setting the compass.

In any case, what we have here from HP is a letter written by the elected leader of Iraq, a Kurd, begging the American population (or at least those of us who are contemplating leaving) not to cut and run.

It’s interesting that up through the numbered points in your post I was right there with you. I was thinking, wow, here’s a guy who knows his stuff — he’s following the progress in Iraq and wants to make sure our work doesn’t go down the drain. It’s real refreshing to see such criticism — not from the antiwar side, but from those who supported the war and require that it proceed, as you say, in our best interest.

Then you seem to set a switch off in your head around the word “debacle”. Do you truly believe the number points you wrote above that section? Because those are the number points of a supporter.

So: I don’t follow how you’ve jumped ship.

And then you say something about oral sex as if were Clinton still in the White House (for an unconstitutional third or fourth term), still getting hummers, we wouldn’t have to worry about things like international terrorism or the nexus of it with anti-Western rogue states. Feel free to not think about NYC ‘93, Khobar ‘96, Luxor ‘97, Dar es Salaam and Nairobi ‘98, LAX thwarted ‘99, USS Cole ‘00, etc., etc., etc., and focus on the b.j. and how good everything was back then, if that floats your boat.

Succinctly: Would your wish to end this “cycle of American bloodshed” conflict with your wish that Iraq’s domestic policy is in line with “US best interest” as laid out in points #1-#5? Are you calling for a pull out now? And finally, how do you think the situations you mention in #1-#5: women’s rights, minority rights, self-sufficient security, less religious interference — where do these head if we leave right now? Would that be an end to the “cycle of American bloodshed”?

In Iraq, maybe.

[And for the record, there are legislators in DC with the sack to propose a draft: Rep. Chas. Rangel (D-NY) and Sen. Fritz Hollins (D-SC), but I bet you already knew that.]

1- Include the sunni minority in the government.
2- Not allign itself entirely with the Ayatollahs of Iran as the current government is leaning towards.
3- Not have a constitution in which democracy is subservient to the Koran and Islamic teachings as the current constitution is structured towards.
4- Get serious about training Iraqi’s to protect themselves. 2 and a half years after the US led invasion and only 2 of 130 Iraqi combat brigades are battle ready.
5- Give real rights to women.

Nobody can honestly say that this debacle is going as planned. I am still waiting for the roses thrown at our heroic American GI’s. Weren’t the proceeds from oil sales supposed to be paying for this whole thing. Weren’t we supposed to have begun withdrawing significant numbers of troops by the end of ‘03.

This whole war has been run by a bunch of incompetent out of touch idealist, who ignored all of the advice of the military personell who had any real life experience. Now we are stuck with a situation where the only way to win this war is to throw hundreds of thousands more soldiers into this war zone, which would require a draft if we want to keep the National Guard for their stated purpose of protecting the homefront in crises. We know there is not a legislator in Washington with the sack to propose a draft. So instead we can continue to have 10 to 20 heroic American soldiers sacrificed to these low-life insurgents in the name of this poorly planned Neo-con experiment or we can start to seriously think about ending this cycle of American bloodshed.

This will unfortunately be another mess that the grown ups (democrats) will have to clean up along with the deficit, sluggish job growth, spiraling gas prices, racial inequity, spiraling poverty rates, a govt run by patronage etc. Thank god we don’t have the important stuff like flag burning or oral sex in the white house however.