War is unwinnable, Kissinger says
As Iraq slid closer to all-out civil war yesterday, calls to send thousands more U.S. troops to avert catastrophe in the region were matched by stark warnings that a military victory is no longer possible.
Senator John McCain, the Republican front-runner for the 2008 presidential race, suggested more troops. Henry Kissinger, the éminence grise of Republican foreign policy and a key architect of the Vietnam war, said the Iraq conflict is now militarily unwinnable.
"The consequences of failure are catastrophic," said Mr. McCain, an Arizona Republican and former navy combat pilot who was held prisoner for years in Vietnam. Unless thousands -- perhaps tens of thousands -- of additional U.S. troops are sent to Iraq to crush the insurgency and staunch the sectarian strife, violence will consume the country and inflame the region, he warned.
This is too ironic.
Didn't the neonuts say the same thing about Vietnam?
Now they are a trading partner and things are looking up.
McCain is just plain wrong.
Meanwhile ....
This is the best speech I have EVER heard.
I was just made aware of it today.
It happened on September 7th
by Ron Paul
house.gov
Big Government Solutions Don't Work/ The Law of Opposites
The Law of Opposites is just a variation of the Law of Unintended Consequences. When we attempt to achieve a certain goal-- like, “make the world safe for democracy,” a grandiose scheme of World War I-- one can be sure the world will become less safe and less democratic regardless of the motivation.
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Our failed efforts in Iraq continue to drain our resources, costing us dearly both in lives lost and dollars spent. And there’s no end in sight. No consideration is given for rejecting our obsession with a worldwide military presence, which rarely if ever directly enhances our security. A much stronger case can be made that our policy of protecting our worldwide interests actually does the opposite by making us weaker, alienating our allies, inciting more hatred, and provoking our enemies. The more we have interfered in the Middle East in the last 50 years, the greater the danger has become for an attack on us. The notion that Arab/Muslim radicals are motivated to attack us because of our freedoms and prosperity, and not our unwelcome presence in their countries, is dangerous and silly.
We were told we needed to go into Iraq because our old ally, Saddam Hussein, had weapons of mass destruction-- yet no weapons of mass destruction were found.
We were told we needed to occupy Iraq to remove al Qaeda, yet al Qaeda was nowhere to be found and now it’s admitted it had nothing to do with 9/11. Yet today, Iraq is infested with al Qaeda-- achieving exactly the opposite of what we sought to do.
We were told that we needed to secure “our oil” to protect our economy and to pay for our invasion and occupation. Instead, the opposite has resulted: Oil production is down, oil prices are up, and no oil profits have been used to pay the bills.
We were told that a regime change in Iraq would help us in our long-time fight with Iran, yet everything we have done in Iraq has served the interests of Iran.
We’re being told in a threatening and intimidating fashion that, “If America were to pull out before Iraq could defend itself, the consequences would be absolutely predictable and absolutely disastrous.” I’m convinced that the Law of Opposites could well apply here. Going into Iraq we know produced exactly the opposite results of what was predicted: Leaving also likely will have results opposite of those we’re being frightened with. Certainly leaving Vietnam at the height of the Cold War did not result in the disaster predicted by the advocates of the Domino Theory-- an inevitable Communist takeover of the entire Far East.
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The wingnuts will NEVER get it
Ron Paul for President
Mish |
