Shut up, Barbie...
I made the mistake of flipping by C-SPAN Senate coverage just now, and I heard Barbara Boxer howling for a timetable for withdrawal from Iraq. Dangit .... I need to get to work...
Hang on, Barbara - we'll get on the phone with the insurgents, and we'll ask them when they plan to stop acting up. Then we'll have a date for 'ya.
Idiot.
If we leave now - or if we tell our enemy when we plan to leave - we'll do the same thing we did to Afghanistan in the 80s - we'll abandon it to collapse from within, and it'll become the new terrorist breeding ground (which it's already becoming, even while we're there). For God's sake, can we please apply some of the lessons we should have learned from 9/11?!? We must finish the job, and it's not possible - and not smart - to tell our enemy when we plan to leave.
Dare I say, though, I have to agree with those who say the war is going badly. "Staying the course" is like continuing to drive off a cliff out of principle. I used to get a headache every time people would refer to Iraq as a "quagmire" or the "new Vietnam", but thanks to strategic inflexibility - or hard-headed stupidity - that's what it's turning into.
Look, Afghanistan makes Iraq look like a Californian kindergarten, but just a few hundred Special Forces operators managed to kick out the Taliban after 9/11 and now they have a functioning government. It's not perfect, but it's holding together. Don't poo-poo that - go Google "Kipling" and read some of his poetry on Afghanistan - that place has been an out-of-control, clan-war killing field for generations. We took what was effectively an American invasion after 9/11 and made it THEIR war. We propped them up, but they owned it, and now they see it as their country. Even warlords can cooperate - especially when they see what can happen when America sides with one particular warlord and brings Spec Ops, SEALs and laser-guided bombs to the party. It's ironic that the Soviets managed to kick us in the teeth in Vietnam by arming a Communist insurgency to defeat a conventional world power, but then they turn around and make the same mistake in Afghanistan and loose ... and we come in a few years later, having learned about insurgency .... and WE WON. At least in Afghanistan, we applied what we learned.
In Iraq, though, we're trying to re-fight Desert Storm - the last of the static, traditional battlefields. Now it's an insurgency, and we'd better start fighting it like one. Get the ground-pounders out, and put more Special Forces in. They'll make it the Iraqis' war, and it'll get done. But if we keep applying anti-Soviet conventional tactics to fight an unconventional war, we'll lose, and God forbid, Barbara Boxer will look like she's in her right mind, and we just can't have that, now, can we?
We MUST learn from our mistakes in Vietnam. We MUST learn from the Soviet failure in Afghanistan. We MUST learn from Clinton-era failures like Somalia. It's not a conventional war. Don't fight it like one. We know how to fight the new war ... we just did it in Afghanistan. Have we forgotten already?
You'll get no timetable, you crusty old hag, because we don't know how long it'll take to finish the job. Grow a spine. Now, not only do we need to finish the job, but we need to clean up the mess our unsound, inappropriate conventional tactics are making. Criticize stupid policies and tactics, but don't hand our enemy a victory by giving them a timetable. The job must get done, and it must get done right. No matter how long it takes.
Hang on, Barbara - we'll get on the phone with the insurgents, and we'll ask them when they plan to stop acting up. Then we'll have a date for 'ya.
Idiot.
If we leave now - or if we tell our enemy when we plan to leave - we'll do the same thing we did to Afghanistan in the 80s - we'll abandon it to collapse from within, and it'll become the new terrorist breeding ground (which it's already becoming, even while we're there). For God's sake, can we please apply some of the lessons we should have learned from 9/11?!? We must finish the job, and it's not possible - and not smart - to tell our enemy when we plan to leave.
Dare I say, though, I have to agree with those who say the war is going badly. "Staying the course" is like continuing to drive off a cliff out of principle. I used to get a headache every time people would refer to Iraq as a "quagmire" or the "new Vietnam", but thanks to strategic inflexibility - or hard-headed stupidity - that's what it's turning into.
Look, Afghanistan makes Iraq look like a Californian kindergarten, but just a few hundred Special Forces operators managed to kick out the Taliban after 9/11 and now they have a functioning government. It's not perfect, but it's holding together. Don't poo-poo that - go Google "Kipling" and read some of his poetry on Afghanistan - that place has been an out-of-control, clan-war killing field for generations. We took what was effectively an American invasion after 9/11 and made it THEIR war. We propped them up, but they owned it, and now they see it as their country. Even warlords can cooperate - especially when they see what can happen when America sides with one particular warlord and brings Spec Ops, SEALs and laser-guided bombs to the party. It's ironic that the Soviets managed to kick us in the teeth in Vietnam by arming a Communist insurgency to defeat a conventional world power, but then they turn around and make the same mistake in Afghanistan and loose ... and we come in a few years later, having learned about insurgency .... and WE WON. At least in Afghanistan, we applied what we learned.
In Iraq, though, we're trying to re-fight Desert Storm - the last of the static, traditional battlefields. Now it's an insurgency, and we'd better start fighting it like one. Get the ground-pounders out, and put more Special Forces in. They'll make it the Iraqis' war, and it'll get done. But if we keep applying anti-Soviet conventional tactics to fight an unconventional war, we'll lose, and God forbid, Barbara Boxer will look like she's in her right mind, and we just can't have that, now, can we?
We MUST learn from our mistakes in Vietnam. We MUST learn from the Soviet failure in Afghanistan. We MUST learn from Clinton-era failures like Somalia. It's not a conventional war. Don't fight it like one. We know how to fight the new war ... we just did it in Afghanistan. Have we forgotten already?
You'll get no timetable, you crusty old hag, because we don't know how long it'll take to finish the job. Grow a spine. Now, not only do we need to finish the job, but we need to clean up the mess our unsound, inappropriate conventional tactics are making. Criticize stupid policies and tactics, but don't hand our enemy a victory by giving them a timetable. The job must get done, and it must get done right. No matter how long it takes.
posted by Alpineman, RN at 10:48 AM
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