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Politics : View from the Center and Left -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Sam who wrote (36693)	4/22/2007 8:16:34 PM
From: Cogito	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 541926

Sam - I think your point about our general security being weakened instead of strengthened by the invasion of Iraq is an important one. Not only was Saddam not a threat worth wasting lives to eliminate, but we have created more enemies and strengthened existing ones, according to our own Intelligence people. Even worse, we are continuing to create new enemies. - Allen

To: Sam who wrote (36693)	4/23/2007 3:38:23 AM
From: Elroy	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 541926

I have a question: why are you--and you aren't alone in this I appear to be alone in this on this board! --so insistent on asserting that "we won the war militarily"? That's my view of the portion of our involvement in Iraq that most closely resembles a traditional "war" - the part that was the coalition versus Saddam's regime. We won, they lost. The part that followed, which was an effort (poorly planned and executed) to create a civil democracy from scratch and stabilize the country, doesn't seem like a traditional "war" to me. It's certainly not like a traditional war where one side tries to destroy the other side and replace it with it's own government, as in WW2 where Germany sought to claim as much of Europe as its own. It's closer to but not like a war of independence where the locals try to overthrow a colonial government in order to install their own, as in the Algerian war of independence from France. The "post major military operations" in Iraq has the US trying to help the local population to set up a local form of Iraqi governance that is more suitable to US interests than Saddam's former government. That doesn't sound like a "war" to me. And the decision might be made, when WE decide to make it, that that that effort isn't worth the price. So we may pick up and go home. To me, that doesn't sounds like losing a war - it sounds like adjusting US foreign policy to better serve US interests. Basically, losing a traditional war should be forced upon a country by the winner, not a voluntary decision by a departing force. This seems to be a mark of pride somehow. I simply don't understand this. It's not a matter of pride, I just think it is a better use of language. There are better words in the English language to describe a US decision to lower or remove our presence in Iraq than "losing a war". As I've written many times, countries which lose wars generally at least lose some land and often get destroyed by the winner. Saddam's regime lost all control of Iraqi land and was destroyed by the winner, us. That's why I say that in that part of the campaign, which looked and smelled like a traditional war, we won and they lost. You don't win wars militarily in isolation from any political goals. If you don't achieve the political goals, you have lost the war, no matter how many casualties you inflict on the enemy or how few you yourself have suffered. Well that's your choice of how to express things in Iraq if you want. It sounds like under your definition, there was a war between the US and (who?), and everybody lost. Let me ask you this - what about my writing implies that there is some matter of "pride" that I think the US won the war with Saddam's regime? To me, that's obvious common sense, whether I'm American or Swedish. I think during that part of the Iraq activity 99% of the people on the planet would prefer to have been on the coalition's team than on Saddam's team, the reason being that the coalition's team won, and Saddam's team died.