i-node, I can't let the Iraq war thing go just yet.
You wrote; "And to his credit, George Bush had the guts under the most difficult circumstances imaginable to make the surge happen and win the war."
That's misleading in terms of what actually "won" the war. ("Won" is a little farther than most of us would go).
The so called "surge" was effective only because we made a hard U turn in terms of our policy towards the Sunnis. Bush/Cheney had been using our forces to quash the Sunni's resistance, basically using our troops to aid the Shiites in what was essentially a civil war.
The Sunnis understood that to allow the brutal Shiites control over them was unthinkable, they weren't going to stop fighting and the Bush administration finally figured out that we can't use conventional military power to suppress an insurrection where the insurgents have the support of the general population. They had to change course.
The power of the so called "surge" was that we paid the Sunnis off with arms, billions of dollars and information in return for their cooperation in what was basically a cease fire. In effect, we made them an offer they couldn't refuse.
We then were, in effect, the paymaster and the arms supplier for both the Shiites and the Sunnis (and, of course, the Kurds).
We could have done that at the outset but your "gutsy" Bush was too busy reveling in the tough guy power that came with commanding the most powerful military in the world, and he had no friggen idea of the limitations of the use of conventional force in a foreign country where the population wasn't providing "actionable intelligence."
From the beginning he should have seen that the Sunnis were more of a potential ally than the crazy, fundamentalist Shiites. In any event, I suspect that we'll eventually see the result that Biden predicted; Sunni, Shiite and Kurdish separate entities in what was once Iraq. They've basically self partitioned even now and if they can avoid the even more bloody civil war that's been on hold I'll consider them lucky.
Finally, you wrote: "I would say only that Democrats were totally spineless when it came down to it. From the Clintons to Feinstein and Rockefeller, everyone had the same intelligence, and these people supported the war right up until the time it started.
I agree and you can add Biden to that list. In the aftermath of 9/11 the neocons stirred up so much fear and anger against Iraq that it would have been political suicide to swim against the tide, and, shamefully, they didn't even try.
The only profile in courage throughout that entire debacle has been Chuck Hagel. Because of his principled stance his political career was ruined but he was right, he said what needed to be said and he had the courage to walk point even when no one had his back. Ed |
