Hiding in the Backwaters Just one more blog on the net.

Past and present mythologies.

Somewhere there is an Al Queda terriorist doing the happy dance because the U.S. took out Al-Zarqawi, and now he gets to be top dog and call the shots and prove his cunning and his devotion to Islam.

Not that Al-Zarqawi didn't deserve his end, but chopping off the head of a hydra isn't usually considered progress.

Aye, there’s the rub

Exactly my point:

If under those terms Don Rumsfeld or any other administration official ever came before the Senate and acknowledged a miscalculation of any sort in this large enterprise, would Mr. Biden or the others accept the admission in good faith and build from it, or would they flog it as an admission of failure and proof of a Vietnam-like credibility gap?

One more time: We are in Iraq, like it or not. Whether or not you think the war was justified is a non-issue now. Your personal feelings and beliefs about Bush and his radical right wing agenda, don't mean jack where Iraq is concerned.

We have only two choices now: finish the job properly and leave Iraq stable enough to govern itself, or do a half-assed job and then bail like we did in Vietnam. If we opt for the second choice, Iraq will almost certainly disintegrate into chaos, like Vietnam did—and we will spend the next 50 years wiping the egg off our face. Here's a clue for you: no one thinks of Vietnam as Johnson's war or his fiasco. No one thinks of it as Nixon's war. In fact, no one seems to remember or care that the violence began between the Vietnamese and the French, or that the first deaths of U.S. servicemen occurred way back in 1959, under Eisenhower, six years before U.S. troops officially arrived. The U.S. was there initially to support our ally who was defending its sovereignty over one of its colonies. The U.S. will be judged by the outcome in Iraq, just like the U.S. has been and continues to be judged by the outcome of Vietnam.

I think the Bush administration does need help in Iraq. But the notion at this point in time that Mr. Biden or the Senate Democrats wish to make a good-faith effort to provide it strains, in a word, credibility.

The job needs to be finished timely and properly. Name calling and finger pointing isn't going to achieve that. Set aside your (*)@#$*@ personal differences, act like grown ups for once and work together to get the job done and get us out.

I Stand Corrected

One individual has taken issue with my post yesterday, and I deserved it. I was incorrect in asserting that the US could have done something to quell the insurgency. There really is nothing we could have done, short of being complete and utter bastards. Many if not most of the insurgents are transplants and not even Iraqi. No military force would have been big enough to seal Iraqi borders. There is also the difficulty of determining exactly who the enemy is. Oh, dammit. Did I just make another reference to Vietnam? We could have adopted a "scorched earth" policy toward insurgents and leveled mosques from which they operated, etc. That would not have exactly endeared us to the Iraqi public whose attitude toward the U.S. seems best described as skeptical gratitude. So we opted for a "kinder, gentler" approach, to foster better relations with the Iraqi people. Maybe we did learn something from Vietnam after all.

I know all this. Some of my past writing will support this contention. It was just sloppy writing on my part and I was called on it. That's what I get for having a friend who occasionally re-posts my entries on his own (much more widely read) blog. The six readers of my blog generally aren't so critical.

However, that does not invalidate the point I was making that Bush did not have the balls to approach this war properly. There is no excuse Bush for caving to political pressure and reducing troop strength in Iraq. It was done more to save face than anything else, if you ask me. It was done to "prove" that his sunny assessment of Iraq is correct. It does not excuse the Pentagon and the administration for failing to equip our troops for guerilla warfare. Warfare they had to know was inevitable. Warfare that is costly in every sense of the word.

There is no excuse for the constant spin about progress in Iraq. The now famous "the insurgency is in its last throes" quote is only the latest in a string of spin that does little to reflect reality in Iraq. Talk about trying to polish a turd. From the very beginning the administration he has downplayed the threat of the "insurgents." That in itself is some euphemism. Why don't we just call them terrorists? Because we are fighting a "war on terror" and getting nowhere against terrorists is bad PR, so they are not terrorists. They are "insurgents." Whatever.

The rising price tag isn't very popular either. Frankly, money should be a non-issue, but no one has the balls to cut domestic spending to fund the war in Iraq. Would I support tax increases (which are coming whether support them or not) to pay the bill? I would not be happy about it, but yes, I would. We are not talking about spending money on Iraq, people. We are talking about bringing our sons and daughters home safely. We have lost 1589 lives since "mission accomplished." If only one more solider comes home safe, the cost is worth it. And, back to my point, if Bush didn't have the balls to stand in front of the American people, give an honest assessment of the situation and ask them to tighten their belts so we could afford to do the job properly, then he shouldn't have started the ball rolling in the first place.

The debate over whether or not we should be in Iraq is moot at this point. It's done. The current violence is not a battle we can win, but we should be doing our damnedest to ensure the safety of our troops who are doing their best to maintain some kind of order until Iraq is stable enough to assume responsibility for their own safety.

One Nut Wonder

The debate about Iraq is heating up again, mostly thanks to all the sunshine The White House is blowing these days. I don't suppose it should surprise anyone. The policy machine has been spinning yarn inconsistent with assessments of the commanders in the field from the beginning.

I hesitate to draw comparisons to Vietnam, but there are lessons that should have been learned that were not. First and foremost, the decision to go to war may be a political one, but once that decision is made, politics are over and everyone must be focused on an effective campaign and a decisive victory. As soon as our troops put their feet on Iraqi soil, those in Congress who disagreed with the President's decision, should have said, "We disagree with the President's course of action, but we as a country are now committed to this act. Our supreme and overriding concern is to provide our troops the resources and support necessary to affect a quick and decisive victory and bring them home as soon as possible."

But, no. It was politics as usual. Instead of making tough decisions and getting the job done, something we used to call leadership, policy has been designed to placate the dissenters. Now we have a lingering problem with insurgents that should have been dealt with a long time ago. What will the price tag be by the time it's all over? Had we done the job right in the first place, I'd be willing to bet the final cost would have been lower, not just in terms of dollars, but loss of life as well.

Bush had balls enough to start the war, but not to actually fight it effectively. That would have required a honest assessment of the price tag up front. That would have required a much greater commitment of troops and cash. That would have meant sacrificing domestic goals to achieve his goals abroad. Any fool who knows anything about history and war knows that military success isn't the hard part. It's maintaining order afterward. But Bush was not willing to risk re-election to do the job properly, so he shied away from unpopular decisions to make sure his ass stayed in a cushy chair.

I'll bet there are men who really are missing a testicle who have more balls.

Balance?

I've read two reactions to the vote in Iraq. One from The Opinion Journal and one from The Nation. Basically they're polar opposites of each other. I'll start with The Nation.

The election results are in: Iraqis voted overwhelmingly to throw out the US-installed government of Iyad Allawi, who refused to ask the United States to leave. A decisive majority voted for the United Iraqi Alliance; the second plank in the UIA platform calls for "a timetable for the withdrawal of the multinational forces from Iraq."

Does this surprise anyone? The Iraqi's want to feel like they are running their own country. Of course they're going to vote out the temporary government. But that's not Iraqi's asserting their independence, it's Iraqi's sending the U.S. a "single digit message." Does this mean Iraqis want U.S. forces to commence an immediate withdrawal? I don't read that in there. They want a timetable. A plan. Bush refuses to set some arbitrary date. He's been lambasted every time his predictions for a turn of fortune turn sour. Now they want him to make another one? Still, I doubt that the U.S. would object to sitting down and making a concrete plan for training and deploying Iraqi military forces.

Iraq's elections were delayed time and time again, while the occupation and resistance grew ever more deadly.

Wait a minute. Every article I've read says it was the Iraqi's requesting a delay. Well, the Sunnis mostly. Their reason? They are concerned about security at the polls. What a touching change of heart. Just a few months earlier they were going to boycott the election because of the U.S. led offensive against Falluja. But wait. Wasn't Falluja the largest center of terrorist activity? Isn't it terrorists who are causing security problems at the designated polling stations? If the Sunnis are really concerned about security shouldn't they cease to harbor Baathists and foreign jihadists like they've been asked?

...if it weren't for the invasion, Iraqis would not even have the freedom to vote for their liberation, and then to have that vote completely ignored.

Who said the vote is being ignored? Just because Bush won't give some arbitrary date for withdrawal? In case you haven't noticed, the terrorists have been targeting other Iraqis. Sure we could drop a ton of weapons and ammunition at the door of the new parliament and say, "Here you go! Have a good time!" How long do you think it would take before it degenerated into a blood bath? Maybe that's why Bremmer "summarily shot down" early spontaneous, disorganized attempts at elections. On what authority would they have taken place? Who would have recognized them as more than local power grabs?

And that's the real prize: the freedom to be occupied.

Occupation. There's that word again. The Webster definition that seems to best fit the intent here is "the act or process of taking possession of a place or area." Since when has the U.S. ever intended to take possession of Iraq? The U.S. is there to maintain some semblance of order while a fledgling government tries to get its feet on the ground. Maybe there was a reason Iyad Allawi "refused to ask the United States to leave." Where do you think Iraq would be right now without U.S. forces? Would they be holding elections? Hell no. It would almost certainly have degenerated into chaos with the group with the biggest guns and most ammunition winning out. You think that would have been the 8.5 million poor, unarmed Iraqis who voted? Yeah, right.

The Opinion Journal article is essentially a run down on the election results, what it means for each of the groups vying for power.

...the coalition of Shiite parties, known as the United Iraqi Alliance, took 48.2% of the 8.5 million votes cast ... this falls short of what the Shiites had hoped for, which means they cannot dictate terms to anyone and will have to make compromises to form a working coalition government.

Sounds like tyranny of the majority which was brought up by alarmists isn't going to happen.

Then there are the Sunnis. Their candidate slates are barely represented in the new parliament--in part because many Sunni parties boycotted the election, and in part because the comparatively low Sunni turnout did little to help those that took part. As a result, prominent Sunni figures like State Department-favorite Adnan Pachachi did not even win a seat in the parliament.

Talk about cutting off your nose to spite your face...

Do you notice a pattern here? Is it just me or does one article sound much less inflamatory and editorial than the other? If you haven't seen it thus far compare the following two quotes:

We hope the Bush Administration looks at all this with confidence rather than concern, and that it especially resists the (CIA) temptation to play kingmaker or otherwise try to influence the result. The next Iraqi government will surely make some calls with which the U.S. is going to disagree... As it is, it's difficult to imagine a democratic Iraq being any more hostile to basic U.S. interests than, say, France.

The Opinion Journal

So what's the prize? An end to occupation, as the voters demanded? Don't be silly--the US government won't submit to any "artificial timetable." Jobs for everyone, as the UIA promised? You can't vote for socialist nonsense like that.

The Nation

The left seems hell bent on bringing our troops home now. There's really nothing wrong with that. No one wants our men and women in uniform in harms way any longer than is absolutely necessary. And yet, the left has been carping from the beginning about the loss of American life on Iraqi soil. If we pull out prematurely and Iraq goes to hell, then the deaths of those who were fighting to free Iraq from tyranny really will have been for nothing. To assume the terrorists will hang up their guns and head to the polls if the U.S. withdraws from Iraq is naive and foolish. The U.S. is simply the symbol for the very thing they fear and hate: democracy, the ability for a people to determine its own future and not have it dictated to them by someone with the will and the power to do so.

Oh, he’s good.

Today in the Wall Street Journal's Opinion Journal, Brendan Miniter comments on Germany and France's sudden support for democracy in Iraq...now that most of the hard work has been done. Capitializing on and continuing with the George Bush as cowboy metaphor, Miniter likens the European nations to wayward cattle and Rice as Bush's most trusted hand bringing in the strays.

That is so perfect. Europe loves painting George Bush as a feckless, impetuous cowboy. And where do they end up in this picture they have painted? The cows. Priceless.