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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Hawkmoon who wrote (128584)	4/7/2004 12:11:51 AM
From: Don Hurst	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

>>"Did we put a limit on the number of casualities we were willing to accept during WWI or WWII? No..."<< Hmmm.....really good point...sure....but you have to help us here.....did we start either of those two?

To: Hawkmoon who wrote (128584)	4/7/2004 12:34:11 AM
From: Bilow	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 281500

Hi Hawkmoon; Re: "Did we put a limit on the number of casualities we were willing to accept during WWI or WWII? No." I'm not asking for a limit on the number of casualties in the whole war, I'm asking for the number in the campaign to pacify Iraq. And the generals of WWI and WWII most certainly DID put limits on the number of casualties that were acceptable in the individual campaigns. There's only so much manpower available. They ran games to get estimates of what the totals would be and then modified their plans accordingly. The reason I'm asking this question is because it is the same question that will soon be widely debated in this country. If you don't have an answer for it, the other side will eat you alive. I already know your answer, and if the swing voters find out what it is, they're going to vote Democratic. Re: "And I have a personal problem myself with the current administration. I don't think they properly explained to the American people exactly what I've been discussing out here about the fight we have in front of us, or the degree of steadfast support and will we must have in order to eventually succeed." Your political opinions are rare. If the Bushies had known how bloody your version of the campaign in Iraq would be, they wouldn't have gone in. The Bushies are effete yuppies. They only went into Iraq because they thought that it would be quite cheap. Maybe if you'd realized how extreme your viewpoint was, you'd have realized that the US, as a nation, wouldn't stick it out in Iraq, and consequently, that it would be a defeat for us and that we should not have gone in. The other day I gave you the metaphor of a general who orders his soldiers to make an attack and the soldiers fail. From the point of view of improving the efficiency of military command, one must always pin blame failure on the commanders and never on the commanded. If the soldiers had morale problems, then their commander should have known this and modified his plans accordingly. If his soldiers weren't well trained, then their commander should have provided time for their training. If the commander knew that the attack was hopeless but did it anyway because his commander ordered him too, then it's his commander's fault. But failure in war is NEVER the fault of those who are commanded. (Uh, don't let the grunts know this or they may take advantage of it.) For your part, what you did was to send US troops into a fight that the US public didn't have the stomach for. I told you that this was the problem before the war. Let me remind you of it: Bilow, April 1, 2003 Our population consists of effete SUV driving yuppies that are afraid of getting into a bar fight, much less losing their lives in some pointless war on the precise opposite side of the planet. #reply-18784670 The neocons went on and on about what effete (chocolate making) cowards (surrender monkeys) the French and Germans are, but they failed to understand the undeniable fact that *the American people have a hell of a lot more in common with the French and Germans than they have with the Iraqis*. No competent commander would lead a bunch of effete yuppies into a nasty guerilla war like Iraq. Hope is not a plan, and hoping that the effete yuppies will suddenly toughen up is not a plan either. Maybe if we had a couple of cities radiated the public would toughen up and support your version of the war on terror. But look around you. Al Qaeda doesn't seem to be trying very hard to radiate our cities. Maybe that's for a reason. -- Carl

To: Hawkmoon who wrote (128584)	4/7/2004 12:44:40 AM
From: Sam	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

It's more than just about Iraq. It's about trying to create positive change in the region, even if we have to pummel every militant leader into submission in the process and make them frightened to confront us. The problem is--who are the "militant leaders"? The military used to say that there were only about 5000 or so people who were actively opposing us. Just as they continue to say that we've made such great progress in capturing or killing about 2/3 of the the leaders of Al Qaeda (I just read a different quote to that effect saying that we've killed or captured about 2/3 of Al Qaeda). Do you believe what they are saying? Do you think that they believe what they are saying, even if they may have (foolishly) believed it once? It is nonsense. And what many people who opposed this from the beginning surely has come to pass--that the number of "militant" leaders and followers has grown, shot off into many directions, and has become even more dangerous than it was before. And it sure doesn't help when we have people like yourself, Hans Blix, and the intransigent French complicating the problem by claiming that the region was "safer" prior to the US overthrow of Saddam.. Because that's just BS.. The militancy has been there for years. All we've done is unveil and expose it. And since it's this militancy that is the source of Islamic terrorism against the US, then it's a legitimate target for a war on terror. As you can tell, I don't believe it is BS. Yes, some militancy was there. But Saddam was waving his magic wand of illusions, fooling everyone into believing that he was strong when he was really the Wizard of Oz, but nonetheless achieving a strange sort of stability in Iraq. Yes, it is nice that he is gone; especially nice that his sons are gone. But we've complicated an already complicated situation. The degree of militancy has increased. We haven't just "exposed" it, we've increased it, fanned it. And there are all sorts of still unexploded bombs ready to go off in the area. The Shia bomb is only one. The Kurd bomb is laying in the distance--when the Shia confront the Kurds on the issue of who gets what and how the government will really be run--that will be a looloo of a fight. The Kurds will assert themselves, the Shia will assert themselves, the Iranians and Turks will likely get involved somehow to keep the Kurds down and protect the Shia and the Turkamen. This is realism, IMO, not the following: We have to fight the militant movement, but at the same time, it's our responsibility to show the muslim world that we care enough about them to provide them an alternative solution that will provide hope for their futures. You act like the "muslim world" is some monolith. "They" are a fiction, though many people including many muslims pretend otherwise. All politics are local. It is stunning to me that the Bush admin neglected that principle.

To: Hawkmoon who wrote (128584)	4/7/2004 4:02:40 AM
From: Maurice Winn	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 281500

<This is what the Saudis fear most, a Shiite state that might cause their own Shiite population (some 10 million) to attempt to overthrow the royal family. And Iran might feel some need to support the Shiites against the Sunnis and Wahhabists. Thus, if we fail in Iraq, it sets the possibility that we'll support the re-establishment of an authoritarian ruler who can quash the various elements of the society.> Wow Hawk, that seems to me like a lead up to World War 1, with paragraph 2 the lead up to Hitler's attempt at unifying Europe. With various alliances springing up to defend their interests and align with allies in Iraq, it looks like the positioning before WWI. Now we just need the archduke to be assassinated [maybe that Sadr guy] and it'll be all on. The analogy with WWI fails in that Nato, the USA, the Cow, the UN, a possible NUN didn't exist at the time, so there is a lot of counterbalance to a WWI style event. But that's what the political shenanigans in the region look like to me. I don't imagine the USA would want total conflagration across the vast oil producing areas of the region, so in the grand scheme of things, I suspect the current disturbances in Iraq are too small to cause serious disruption to continuing Cow activities in conjunction with Iraqi political development. Mqurice