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Politics : Don't Blame Me, I Voted For Kerry -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Alan Smithee who wrote (15833)	4/18/2004 7:31:49 PM
From: cnyndwllr	Respond to of 81568

Alan, you say that the "North could not have won without its regular army." The real truth, however, lies in the fact that a foreign occupier never "wins" an occupation when the occupied are sniping and killing the occupiers. The only question is whether the price paid is worth the mounting costs. If the benefits are great and the cost is small, we're willing to spend the amount of lives and resources to continue our adventures. If the benefits are small and the costs of lives and resources are high, we're not willing to expend the resources. In Vietnam we said we were there to "fight communism." As we ultimately learned, we had a much poorer grasp of the limits of our military power to control the course of a proud and nationalistic people than we anticipated. 58,000+ deaths taught us that lesson. In view of the "doability" of the task in Vietnam, even one life was too many. In view of the non-event of an ultimate outcome of allowing a communistic Vietnam, even one life was too many. There are, sadly, many millions of people who now are unable to live through weeks without the gut wrenching agony of regrets and grief for the lives cut short and changed forever in Vietnam. This should have told us something about the wisdom of invading and occupying Iraq and about the wisdom of continuing the occupation. I think that if we look at our lessons from Vietnam, the French lessons from the Sudan and Vietnam, the Soviets Union's lessons in Afghanistan and if we look at what we've learned since we invaded, our course is clear. We need follow the Iraqi's lead, not attempt to coerce them through the use of military force. That doesn't mean that I fully disagree with your statement that "[l]ike it or not, we need to hunt down and kill the leadership of the Islamic militants. The world will be a better and safer place for it." I think that we need to act with deadly force against those that plan and carry out attacks against us. If, however, we intend to act as judge, jury and executioner in areas and cultures where we know little and understand less, we'll do more harm than good. If we intend to invade and occupy entire nations with millions of people, we may as well recognize that we're not only going to have to fight the bad guys, we're going to have to fight hundreds of millions of passionately motivated fighters. And we're going to have to continue to do that until we finally pay enough of a price that we give it up. I don't see how that makes America a better and safer place, do you? The FIRST thing in war is to recognize who your enemy is, the SECOND is to understand him, the THIRD is to make an effective plan to kill or neutralize him, and the FOURTH AND FINAL step is to have the will and the character to carry that plan out. As Clarke said "when the Japanese attacked in Pearl Harbour, we didn't invade Mexico." It seems to me that Bush and his friends, in fighting the war on terror, never even got past the first step. Our enemies in terror were not in Iraq, they were in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Sudan, Saudi Arabia, Europe and Indonesia as well as in pockets of Southeast Asia and Africa. Bush surely never got to the second step of understanding his enemy or he would have never created the now-fertile environment of support and recruitment that exists as a result of our invasion, occupation and killing in Iraq. I've seen some effective steps to neutralize terror and terrorists but the steps we've taken that actually address that issue were the simple, obvious steps. As far as having the will and character to carry out an effective anti terrorism plan, NEVER underestimate the courage and character of Americans. We will DO whatever is necessary and we'll do it up right. But we aren't forever stupid and we have to see the right of it and the worth of it. We'll only follow false trails for a short while. Too many of us learned that lesson the hard way. We'll not support dying and spending hundreds of billions for a people that are so opposed to our forcing them into "liberty" that they're killing us and dying in the process. The Iraqis will ultimately decide their own fate, their own form of government, how they'll treat their women and whether religion will control their government. The sooner we have the wisdom and humility to understand that, the sooner we'll be able to move forward against our real enemies.