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

To: Katelew who wrote (257467)	2/24/2008 2:25:57 PM
From: Nadine Carroll	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

Tony Cordesman has been a fierce critic of the Bush administration in the past. But he know what the entire Democratic party is denying - the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan have high stakes. Winning will bring large benefits for the US and the global economy, losing large costs. Hillay and Obama refuse to even entertain this notion: Two Winnable Wars No one can return from the battlefields in Iraq and Afghanistan, as I recently did, without believing that these are wars that can still be won. They are also clearly wars that can still be lost, but visits to the battlefield show that these conflicts are very different from the wars being described in American political campaigns and most of the debates outside the United States. These conflicts involve far more than combat between the United States and its allies against insurgent movements such as al-Qaeda in Iraq and the Taliban. Meaningful victory can come only if tactical military victories end in ideological and political victories and in successful governance and development. Dollars are as important as bullets, and so are political accommodation, effective government services and clear demonstrations that there is a future that does not need to be built on Islamist extremism. The military situations in Iraq and Afghanistan are very different. The United States and its allies are winning virtually every tactical clash in both countries. In Iraq, however, al-Qaeda is clearly losing in every province. It is being reduced to a losing struggle for control of Nineveh and Mosul. There is a very real prospect of coalition forces bringing a reasonable degree of security if decisions such as Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr's announcement Friday to extend his militia's cease-fire six months continue over a period of years. Military victory is far more marginal in Afghanistan. NATO and international troops can still win tactically, but the Taliban is sharply expanding its support areas as well as its political and economic influence and control in Afghanistan. It has scored major gains in Pakistan, which is clearly the more important prize for al-Qaeda and has more Pashtuns than Afghanistan. U.S. commanders privately warn that victory cannot be attained without more troops, without all members of NATO and the International Security Assistance Force fully committing their troops to combat, and without a much stronger and consistent effort by the Pakistani army in both the federally administered tribal areas in western Pakistan and the Baluchi area in the south. What the situations in Iraq and Afghanistan have in common is that it will take a major and consistent U.S. effort throughout the next administration at least to win either war. Any American political debate that ignores or denies the fact that these are long wars is dishonest and will ensure defeat. There are good reasons that the briefing slides in U.S. military and aid presentations for both battlefields don't end in 2008 or with some aid compact that expires in 2009. They go well beyond 2012 and often to 2020. If the next president, Congress and the American people cannot face this reality, we will lose. Years of false promises about the speed with which we can create effective army, police and criminal justice capabilities in Iraq and Afghanistan cannot disguise the fact that mature, effective local forces and structures will not be available until 2012 and probably well beyond. This does not mean that U.S. and allied force levels cannot be cut over time, but a serious military and advisory presence will probably be needed for at least that long, and rushed reductions in forces or providing inadequate forces will lead to a collapse at the military level. The most serious problems, however, are governance and development. Both countries face critical internal divisions and levels of poverty and unemployment that will require patience. These troubles can be worked out, but only over a period of years. Both central governments are corrupt and ineffective, and they cannot bring development and services without years of additional aid at far higher levels than the Bush administration now budgets. Blaming weak governments or trying to rush them into effective action by threatening to leave will undercut them long before they are strong enough to act. Any American political leader who cannot face these realities, now or in the future, will ensure defeat in both Iraq and Afghanistan. Any Congress that insists on instant victory or success will do the same. We either need long-term commitments, effective long-term resources and strategic patience -- or we do not need enemies. We will defeat ourselves. The writer holds the Arleigh A. Burke Chair in Strategy at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. He recently returned from the front lines in Afghanistan and Iraq.

To: Katelew who wrote (257467)	2/24/2008 3:48:05 PM
From: Nadine Carroll	Read Replies (4) \| Respond to of 281500

But I believe I already said that I, like you, recognize the mania of the Obama movement. This may be the only thing you and I ever agree on. I find the irrationality of the movement very troubling. Obama has done nothing for these voters (unlike many populists in the past, who had given patronage to their followers) and he promises nothing very specific, except some implausible transcendence and unity. You'll notice that when Obama drops out of uplift mode to talk about policies, much of the magic seems to be gone; that's not what his followers are hungry for. I am reminded of Evan Sayet's theory of Modern Liberalism, which is that Modern Liberalism, as opposed to classical liberalism (he calls them "big L" vs. "little l"), has replaced striving for justice & individual rights with striving for indiscriminateness, having decided that everything wrong with the world has resulted from man's attempt to discriminate between good and evil. So the answer is to refuse to discriminate, so you can arrive at the world of John Lennon's song Imagine. No countries. No religions. No wars. Universal Peace. That is so much the mindset of the Modern Liberals. It's not that they are not aware of all the things that we're aware of; it's that they need to reject them in order to remain in this five-year-old's utopia that they've been told is the only hope for mankind: a mindless indiscriminateness. So what you're left with is not really adults, but citizens of voting age who cannot judge their own positions but are virulently antagonistic to any position other than their own. Why? Because when you've been brought up to believe that indiscriminateness is a moral imperative, any position other than their own must have been arrived at through the employment of discrimination. This is why Bush is Hitler; this is why Reagan is Hitler; this is why Giuliani is Hitler. heritage.org I know you won't like this idea, but don't laugh it off. There has to be some powerful factor at work that gets millions of people who call themselves "liberal" and "progressive" to march in the streets to protect a mass murderer like Saddam Hussein. To make it easy for these same people to call George Bush a "fascist" but impossible to call Saddam Hussein a "fascist". Evan Sayet is a former liberal, btw. He says the reaction to 9/11 crystallized his conversion to conservatism: I tell a story. It's not a true story, but it helps crystallize my thinking that brought me to become a conservative. I say: Imagine being in a restaurant with an old friend, and you're catching up, and suddenly he blurts out, "I hate my wife." You chuckle to yourself because he says it every time you're together, and you know he doesn't hate his wife; they've been together for 35 years. He loves his daughters, and they're just like her. No, he doesn't hate his wife. So you're having dinner, and you look out the window and spot his wife, and she's being beaten up right outside the restaurant. You grab your friend and say, "Come on, let's help her. Let's help your wife," and he says, "Nah, I'm sure she deserves it." At that moment, it dawns on you: He really does hate his wife. That's what 9/11 was to me. For years and years I'd hear my friends from the Left say how evil and horrible and racist and imperialistic and oppressive America is, and I'd chuckle to myself and think, "Oh, they always say that; they love America." Then on 9/11, we were beaten up, and when I grabbed them by the collar, and I said, "Come on, let's help her. Let's help America," and they said, "Nah, she deserves it." At that moment, I realized: They really do hate America. And that began me on what's now a five-plus-year quest to try to understand the mindset. How could you possibly live in the freest nation in the history of the world and see only oppression? How could you live in the least imperialist power in human history and see us as the ultimate in imperialism? How could you live in the least bigoted nation in human history and, as Joe Biden said, "see racism lurking in every dark shadow"?