Runaway Howard…
Wars are generally fought in the hearts and minds of men.
Contrary to the simplistic impression of war, it doesn’t end when an army stands on top of a hill and plants a flag. It ends when one side or the other decides it can’t fight any longer, when one side loses its will.
In a “low intensity conflict,” a fight against terorrists, insurgents, or other sporadic irregular fighters, this is especially true: it only lasts as long as both sides care to fight.
It’s like the ultimate low speed endurance race. You only lose if you give up. As long as you can hang in there, you haven’t lost.
Well, as of today, officially, one half of the United States, the party that represents one half of the U.S. anyhow, just gave up in Iraq. I don’t say things like this often – those of you who are regular readers know that I’d rather not personalize political fights – but I hate that irresponsible, egomaniacal, unthinking, faux intellectual son of a bitch Howard Dean. His little declaration of surrender (along with Murtha’s and Pelosi’s) will embolden the worst elements of Al Qaida, the Baathist scum and common criminals hoping to profit in Iraq. It will encourage them to fight harder. His gutless comments will cost American lives, not to mention the lives of Iraqi civilians, who now bear the brunt of the terrorist butchery. I despise that sad, destructive, arrogant little fool of a man.
Here’s the whole article discussing Howard Dean’s articles of surrender. Unbelievable. And because some of our posters won’t believe this, and because the article is likely to get pulled when the MSM figures out how damaging it is to the Dems, I snagged a copy of the text, which is enclosed below. This is supporting the troops, huh?
Dean: US Won’t Win in Iraq
LAST UPDATE: 12/5/2005 6:26:32 PM
Posted By: Jim Forsyth
This story is available on your cell phone at mobile.woai.com.
(SAN ANTONIO) — Saying the “idea that we’re going to win the war in Iraq is an idea which is just plain wrong,” Democratic National Chairman Howard Dean predicted today that the Democratic Party will come together on a proposal to withdraw National Guard and Reserve troops immediately, and all US forces within two years.
Dean made his comments in an interview on WOAI Radio in San Antonio.
“I’ve seen this before in my life. This is the same situation we had in Vietnam. Everybody then kept saying, ‘just another year, just stay the course, we’ll have a victory.’ Well, we didn’t have a victory, and this policy cost the lives of an additional 25,000 troops because we were too stubborn to recognize what was happening.”
Dean says the Democrat position on the war is ‘coalescing,’ and is likely to include several proposals.
“I think we need a strategic redeployment over a period of two years,” Dean said. “Bring the 80,000 National Guard and Reserve troops home immediately. They don’t belong in a conflict like this anyway. We ought to have a redeployment to Afghanistan of 20,000 troops, we don’t have enough troops to do the job there and its a place where we are welcome. And we need a force in the Middle East, not in Iraq but in a friendly neighboring country to fight (terrorist leader Musab) Zarqawi, who came to Iraq after this invasion. We’ve got to get the target off the backs of American troops.
Dean didn’t specify which country the US forces would deploy to, but he said he would like to see the entire process completed within two years. He said the Democrat proposal is not a ‘withdrawal,’ but rather a ’strategic redeployment’ of U.S. forces.
“The White House wants us to have a permanent commitment to Iraq. This is an Iraqi problem. President Bush got rid of Saddam Hussein and that was a great thing, but that could have been done in a very different way. But now that we’re there we need to figure out how to leave. 80% of Iraqis want us to leave, and it’s their country.”
Dean also compared the controversy over pre-war intelligence to the Watergate scandal which brought down Richard Nixon’s presidency in 1974.
“What we see today is very much like what was going in Watergate,” Dean said. “It turns out there is a lot of good evidence that President Bush did not tell the truth when he was asking Congress for the power to go to war. The President said last week that Congress saw the same intelligence that he did in making the decision to go to war, and that is flat out wrong. The President withheld some intelligence from the Senate Intelligence Committee. He withheld the report from the CIA that in fact there was no evidence of weapons of mass destruction (in Iraq), that they did not have a nuclear program. They (the White House) selectively gave intelligence to the United States Senate and the United States Congress and got them to give the go ahead to attack these people.”
- Entries
Enemies exist in Afghanistan just as they exist in Iraq. Friends exist in Afghanistan just as they exist in Iraq. Our enemies are GLOBAL in nature and until the Democrats recognize that, they will continue to make ridiculously stupid statements as this.
It appears that the liberals just can't figure out what a "friend" is, after all they keep thinking Saddam Hussein is our friend. 41% wish he was still in power according to a Fox News Poll as reported by newsmax.
Sorry about that.
One of the reasons were that American carriers right off Vietnam did nothing to help the ARVN at the end, as they were promised at the treaty of Paris. No bridges were hit, no tanks attacked, no NV fighters knocked down. The carriers however did save lives by rescuing people from boats and planes.
Today the Dems who want withdrawl in Iraq say the US should withdraw to Kuwait. There, should the need arise, they assure us that the forces could rapidly go back into Iraq to rescue those who have stood up to join us at the risk of their own necks and the necks of their families. I believe, I don't want to, but I believe that if the Democrats had their way and the US withdrew, they would leave our buds hanging again. They would keep our troops there to watch from across the border as it all came down - and if the Iraqis looked as if they themselves could stop the enemy, the Democrats would do all they could to undermine that as well, lest it succeed. They have done it before, I believe they would relish a chance to do it again.
Remember, the legacy of Nixon that is never mentioned is that he got the US out of Vietnam. It was the Democrats, however, who made it impossible for the US to honor the agreement to South Vietnam. I believe that the end of a democratic government in Iraq and the lives of people who trusted the US would be a very small price for them to go after Bush's legacy for all time. I believe they would put it first above the considerations for human rights that many great Democrats have stood up for. I hate the idea of thinking that, but they have showed me little indication that they would operate in any other way.
- - from Chain of Command by Seymour Hersch
"We thank God for appeasing us with the dilemma in Iraq after Afghanistan. The Americans are facing a delicate situation in both countries. If they withdraw they will lose everything and if they stay, they will continue to bleed to death"
- - Ayman al-Zawahiri
Now, what Dean is talking about is what is becoming common wisdom. There is no way that we will "win" like we won WWII. What Dean is stating is that from the short-tem US prospective, there is no way we will "win". We will have paid dearly to affect change, and what ultimately happens is up to the Iraqi and American people.
And collective effort triumphs over individual action once again! Proof positive that socialism is the only way!
1) Howard Dean is irrelevant to a hell of a lot of Democrats/liberals/progressives/what have you. He no more speaks for me, or anyone I know, really, than, say, Ohio's Jean Schmidt (sorry on the spelling) speaks for all Republicans. If you ignore him, he'll go away. When push came to shove (think 2004), even the Democratic part swung this.
2) In response to Jersey Dave's point, you're missing where a lot of the frustration on the Left comes from with regard to both Iraq and Vietnam. A lot of Democrats are still stuck on the idea that we should never have gone into either country - and there's a hell of a lot of merit to arguments for both. Time is short, so I can't dig into that now, but that's the underpinning for a lot of what you hear from the left.
Your concern is totally valid: if America gives its word about standing by an ally, it needs to stick to that word or see that word's value disintegrate. No quibble there. The problem comes with expanding the definition of our national interest so broadly that every fight becomes our fight. (I talk about this here - and, for what it's worth, I count this as a huge sub-text to the Iraq debate)
The great tragedy of the Iraq war is the extent to which the public was genuinely unprepared for what it would entail....same thing goes for Vietnam. You can pretend that it's the liberal media painting a horrible picture, or conniving Democrats like Dean sapping morale, but the disillusionment with the effort runs much, much deeper than that and goes back, really, to the mulitple screw-ups that even the National Review crowd accepts has happened. Can Bush & Co, regain that support? It depends on how well they manage to talk honestly not only about what's required, but where we are. No more cheerleading, no more attempts to conflate Iraq with Al Qaeda too directly. They should talk about Iraq as its own problem with its own stakes for failure. What Jersey Dave is talking about is a real part of that; this is what kept Colin Powell up at night.
There is nothing trickier than waging war in a democracy. I would only suggest that not all Democrats are Dean, or Move-On Democrats. A fair few of them could be mollified by Bush doing more to come clean and stopping with the cheap-shot conflations; he talks a lot about sacrifice but asks for none; if this genuinely is the war of our generation, why aren't we behaving as if it is? Virtually no one buys these pitches anymore and they generate contempt for the man and, by association, his policies.
yeah, among our enemies....
And that is a classic example of a conclusory statement. And the fact that you post it here belies that it is true with regard to the matter asserted. Time to start over, Zorro.
Copperhead.
"I don't think you can win it," Mr. Bush replied. "But I think you can create conditions so that those who use terror as a tool are less acceptable in parts of the world."
The Democrats have the opportunity to criticise how things are being managed, to reccomend better ideas, or even to push for tighter regulation of how terror suspects are handled. When they are percieved as dismissing the military wholesale or calling for immediate withdrawl, they create the conditions for their arguments to be questioned at home or evaluated abroad based on past events.
Kerry is mad that his remarks were quoted by some to criticise how he spoke of the military. Yet there is no apparent recognition of the Democrats (Outside of Lieberman) on how to deal with their perception by people on this, and it is a worry a lot of us have.
As for going into Iraq, well, a lot of the Democrat party endorsed that and voted to allow it. If they didn't know going in that there would be problems, that is one thing (They probably should have) if certain highly placed members of that party merely waited until the opportunity arose to use it politically, that sucks.
The thing in politics is that one politician saying something can reflect on the party. When you have many saying it with little done to change the perception, it will create even more of an image. If the Democrats are out there who realize that there is stuff at stake, and have better suggestions that they can give in light of what is now at stake, it is a prime time for them to appear and voice their opinions or options they feel could better increase success over there. But they fear being drowned out by the hard antiwar left if they do, and even Hillary Clinton is getting hit by them now. But until the Democrats can shake that, they will be percieved as following the lead of Dean, who is written up in papers here and abroad as leader of the party. That can be a disaster.
One must remember that the greatest fear in Iraq is probably that the US will do what was done in 1991 and pull back. A lot of Iraiqis died fighting Hussein then. The ones who remain remember. Talk like Dean's is not going to help them to be more active in their own defense, and it makes me wonder if there are people, politically, who would not mind seeing Iraq go back into disarray just so they could have the political trophy of such a failure to wave at their opponents.
Also, the rest of the world is watching, including potential allies and adversaries in other regions of the world.