Re: Three generations of Iraq hawks


"Alan Lothian" <alanlothian@xxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:100920071858457643%alanlothian@xxxxxxxxxx
In article <bP2dneKDi7L7fHnbnZ2dnUVZ_qOknZ2d@xxxxxxx>, Ray O'Hara
<mary.palmucci@xxxxxxx> wrote:

"David E. Powell" <David_Powell3006@xxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:1189399297.840725.269710@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
On Sep 9, 5:14 pm, Jack Linthicum <jacklinthi...@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
We have now gone from the War Hawks to the Pottery Barn Hawks and
now
we have the Chaos Hawks. Where leaving Iraq is worse than staying.
Yeah, for them. Ask a dead soldier how he feels.

Why don't you? Maybe the first wave at Normandy took too many losses
and the US should have pulled out of there too. Maybe Little Round Top
was too hard so the Union should have called it a day at Gettysburg.
Look at the graves at those places and ask those dead if the US should
have pulled out there too.


d-day and little round top wgere commanded by competent leaders

Hmm to that. Determined leaders would certainly be true, all the way up
to the White House. I don't envy Bush his job, and I'm not going to
indulge in the usual Bush-sniping, but not even his most passionate
supporters consider him a new Lincoln.



plenty of wingnuts compare the chimperor to lincoln{as disgusting as that
sounds}





,
they won through having a plan

Hmmm very much squared. On both sides, the plans rapidly evaporated on
contact with the enemy. Little Round Top should have been in
Confederate hands before the serious nasties started, if plans had been
plans, and the 20th Maine didn't rely on a plan to defend it and drive
the Alabamans to hell. They just bloody well did it. And bloody, sadly,
is the word.



i was refering to the union. lee was basically clueless to the union
deployment. meade was sending troops to his left before lee advanced late on
july 2nd.

the 20th maine was but one regiment of about 10 union regt,{the brigades of
o'rourke and vincent} and the CSA had a similar number of troops, 2 entire
brigades {law's and robertson's} and parts of a third.
the 20th gets good PR but others there fought just as hard.




. not just slogans like "stay the course".
in iraq we don't have competent laders, we have g.w.bush.
unfortunately in iraq we are the germans in normandy and the CSA at LRT.

I have to agree about competent leaders, but there are two erroneous
analogies here (you didn't start them).
Gettysburg was a big, in-your-face battle. None of these in Iraq.
Nazi Germany was a very real threat and danger. Iraq was merely a pain
in the arse.


iraq was nothing but bush ego run amok and neo-cons dragging us into
israel's war.


Myself, I supported the war at the outset -- not without misgivings,
mark you, but I thought our Prime Minister should be given the benefit
of the doubt. Last time for him, let me tell you. I do think I was
entitled to believe that the aftermath of victory would not be handled
with such grotesque incompetence. I still think we have a duty to stay
and fix things at least somewhat: who said, "If you break it, you own
it"?


i thought from the get go it was stupid and i was appalled by the shock and
awe.
you never blow up anything before it is nessessary. all that lost
infrustructure is costing us now.
if the power was on and water running things might be different. iraqis
want what everybody does. to live in peace,







like all neo-con chicken hawks you just point out losses but not the
futility of those losses. throwing live bodies after dead bodies is not
how
wars are won.

Define 'won'. That's the big problem, really. But to give up just
because Looniemouth Flakjacket, broadcasting in his Shirt of Many
Pockets, from just outside his air-conditioned and armour-plated hotel,
says we have lost....



the fact that the reporters you denigrate can't move around in safety backs
up their point.






What you really need in Iraq is the Indian Army, which provided most of
the 300,000 or so troops the Brits used to sort the place out (not all
that well, but well enough) in the 1920s, when Iraq's population was
something like a quarter or a fifth its present size and Looniemouth
Flakjacket wasn't around. Alas, that Indian Army no longer exists. And
the one that does isn't working for the Brits, no, siree.

one could act with great brutality in the 1920s,
that isn't the case today.
the iraqia weren't armed as well back then and they didn't have allies like
the saudis and iran who could feed them ammo and explosives.
the sunni and shia are going to have it out, the best we can do is get out
of the way and then deal with the winner.









Jack, surrender here would get more people killed than fighting and
move the battles from that soil to soil closer to home. If you can't
figure out why I can't help you any more.


ahh yes, the domino theory.iraq is about 1000 years away from having any
chance of attacking the USA.

Only assuming that 99% of the US population spends the next millennium
smoking dope and downloading InterNet porn; even at that, it would
likely be a close call.


right. so bush's if we fon't fight them there we'll fight them here is just
so much bull***.







The strange thing is that the American Left had the table set to say
that they wanted Rumsfeld out, they got that, and things improved.
They could have stood on that strength but instead have so committed
to failure they risk being seen as wanting it rather than success not
out of policy concern or concern for life, but only concern for their
vanity. It is a mistake on their part.

the fact is the american right has been wrong on every point in iraq and
yet
you still think doing more of the same will win.
bush is like hitler in the fuhrer bunker coinng slogans, declaring all
who
don't think s he traitors and moving paper armies on paper maps.


being a true believer is nice, but it doesn't win wars, if it did we'd
be
speaking german.

What wins wars is killing people and inflicting unsupportable
destruction. Clausewitz is quite good on the general subject of
'winning'. It is very hard to kill people when Looniemouth is about.
The Iraqi 'insurgents' (it's more like an n-sided civil war, where
sides change sides at the drop of a dinar, in a country where it's
easier to find an AK-47 than a taxi) will give up when it is too
painful to continue, and not before. They're human beings: we are all
like that, it's just that we have different pain thresholds. In WWI,
3,500 dead would have been small change. In WWII, grimly accepted as
the cost of doing business. Today it is neither of these things.
Personally, I consider that an improvement.

"Went the day well?
We died, and never knew..."

a great myth of WWI was that it was deadlier than WWII. sure there were
spectacular events like the somme . but the campaign in northwest europe in
1944 had a similar daily loss rate.


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