Everything is becoming clear :)

It’s all part of the plan…

I have cast my line…

…and the fishing is well.

I agree entirely, much better to rebuild bridges in Minnesota than spend a damn dime in Iraq…! Or anywhere else for that matter!

Too much face-arrogance
The appropriate face-balance
Too little face- loss of all respect

Three thirds of a shell game… where’s the peanut? Under number 1, 2 or 3…?

Actually; it’s even much, more complicated than that…as you well understand.

The ethnic, tribal mores, political divisions and religious zealots must all be given most careful and serious consideration.

This concept of “indigenous understanding” is an element the cowboys that initiated our original blitzkrieg of “shock and awe” into Iraq, were totally, conceptually and ethnically ignorant…!

That sorry damn bunch of over paid, pompous civilian and military dumbe’s that put us in…didn’t have a clue then and till this day remain in total darkness…!

Time for a massive changing of the guard…!

I’m all for finding a better way. I’m all for talking before fighting. But who do you propose we talk to concerning terrorism attacks against the United States and the terroirst insurgents in Iraq who are trying to undermine that elected government?

I heartily accept the motto, – “That government is best which governs least;” and I should like to see it acted up to more rapidly and systematically. Carried out, it finally amounts to this, which I also believe, – “That government is best which governs not at all;” and when men are prepared for it, that will be the kind of government which they will have.
–Henry David Thoreau,
“On the Duty of Civil Disobedience”

Some writers have so confounded society with government, as to leave little or no distinction between them; whereas they are not only different, but have different origins … Society is in every state a blessing, but Government, even in its best state, is but a necessary evil; in its worst state, an intolerable one.
–Thomas Paine,
Common Sense

MB4 on March 16, 2008 at 1:28 AM

According to EtB, none of those military voices matters. Your preching to the choir with me and Hog

J_Gocht on March 16, 2008 at 9:37 AM

Your posts are always appreciated, a younge sailor sends :)

Mon apologies,
Jump right in! The water’s fine!

It would appear I missed most the fun here, after I retired…? It’s hell being a geezer.

Et tu Brute, I must agree … You sometimes come across as a bit harsh and more than a little bit annoying. Why is that? Were you indulging yourself?

Never mind, none of my business.

How do you feel this morning? Well I hope.

With respect to the so called “War on Drugs” it’s just a political gimmick used by airhead politicians to pontificate…and almost as despicable as the War in Iraq is and the War in Vietnam was.

EtB, You can bust me too, for the record… the permanent record!
Duly noted…? Huh?

EtB, you actually might have enjoyed duty in olde Saigon, now Ho Chi Minh City. You didn’t have to buy your own “Sweet Mary” there. All you had to do was go into almost any bar, buy yourself a bottle of Vietnamese beer, BA MOI BA [# 33] sit down, relax and inhale deeply of the second hand smoke for a couple hours. You got a double kick…Mannnn!

“…You can’t stand the truth!”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Few_Good_Men

Hog Wild, as a Marine I fine it hard to believe you weren’t aware of that movie?
SEMPER FIDELIS… from an olde soldier.

Best regards, to all!

If you are going to use that analogy, then isn’t physical therapy or rehab needed after surgery to finish the medical procedure?

OK then, I can go along with that. Withdraw the troops (surgery) and send in the State Department (therapy) and the Peace Corps (rehab).

Is there still not U.S. bases in Germany, Italy, Japan, and Korea still? Want to pull them out too?

The situation in Iraq is not rationally equatable to that in Germany, Italy, Japan or Korea. Not even close.

Jewish World Review Feb. 15, 2008
Stop treating Sharia-supreme Iraq like post-war Japan
By Diana West

http://www.JewishWorldReview.com
Writing in the winter 2007-08 issue of The Objective Standard, John David Lewis offers an illuminating analysis of another U.S. occupation, this one thoroughly successful, in Japan (1945-1952). President Bush, of course, frequently refers to the democratization of Japan as a model for the democratization of Iraq (and the wider Islamic Middle East). But, as Lewis’ must-read essay makes historically clear, the president has been comparing apples and oranges.

It isn’t just that the total defeat and utter devastation of Japan nullifies the comparison with Iraq (which it does). There is something else. There is the completely different U.S. approach to Japan’s animating, warlike state religion of Shintoism, which, not incidentally, bears striking similarities to the animating, warlike state religion of Islam.

In 1945, our government was of one mind regarding state Shintoism. Lewis quotes Secretary of State James F. Byrnes, who wrote: “Shintoism, insofar as it is a religion of individual Japanese, is not to be interfered with. Shintoism, however, insofar as it is directed by the Japanese government, and as a measure enforced from above by the government, is to be done away with. … There will be no place for Shintoism in the schools. Shintoism as a state religion — National Shinto, that is — will go. … Our policy on this goes beyond Shinto. … The dissemination of Japanese militaristic and ultra-nationalistic ideology in any form will be completely suppressed.”

And it was, with fabulous results.

Obviously, there have been no analogous U.S. efforts to “de-jihadize” Islamic public culture even as the United States has spent lives, limbs, money and years trying, essentially, to stop the jihad in the Islamic Middle East — not even, to take a manageable example, in the U.S.-funded Palestinian Authority, where state-run media continue to incite Islamically motivated violence against Jews and Americans. And then there are all those U.S.-fostered constitutions that enshrine Sharia law — just the sort of ideological concession our forebears would never have made.

Bottom line? History shows that the conditions that drove the model transformation of Japan do not exist today with regard to the Islamic Middle East. We’re going to need another strategy — for starters, an immigration policy and new laws to halt the creep of Sharia — to ward off the Islamization of the West.

Let’s give communism and terrorism a chance the new battle cry? Let’s pull our forces back, allow everyone else to fend for themselves and the world will love us for it?

That’s not only niave, it’s dangerous.

Hog Wild on March 15, 2008 at 11:57 PM

I am not the one being naive, but then maybe, for just an example, you didn’t see the recent poll of military officers.

From a survey of active duty officers:

Furthermore, it appears that many officers find that the efforts of US forces have sometimes been counterproductive. Asked what country had gained the “greatest strategic advantage” from the war in Iraq, 37% said Iran while 22% answered China. Just one in five of the officers answered that the US had gained the most.

I wonder how those percentages would change now.

BAGHDAD (AP) — Mahmoud Ahmadinejad arrived Sunday in Baghdad for the first-ever visit by an Iranian president to Iraq, walking a red carpet past Iraqi troops to meet the president of a once-bitter enemy nation that’s now under growing Iranian influence.
Iraqi President Jalal Talabani greeted Ahmadinejad at his car and the two kissed four times on the cheeks in the traditional fashion. A military honor guard saluted the two and a band played the two countries’ national anthems as they walked slowly down the red carpet at Talabani’s headquarters.
The visit gives Ahmadinejad a chance to highlight the relationship his nation has with post-Saddam Hussein Iraq while also serving as an act of defiance toward the U.S., which accuses Iran of training and giving weapons to Shiite extremists in Iraq.
Ahmadinejad is scheduled to meet not only with Talabani but also Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, both of whom have made official visits to Iran since taking office.

Et tu Brute on March 16, 2008 at 12:42 AM

That’s from a movie is it not? Fantasy land? Hollywood’s portrayal of “how it is”?

Some truth for you, a Marine Colonel is college educated and world wise. I’ve met plenty, and none of them are stupid enough to convict themselves of murder a witness stand.

Fun to watch, but it ain’t real. Kind of like Ron Paul. Running fo President as a Republican. Fun to watch, but it ain’t real. Did you watch the debates? They got to Paul about every 8th question. What screams “you are not wanted” more than that?

Every contest has a loser. And you backed one.

Movie quotes… give me a break. I’m not ill informed. Give me some meat.

OK ok, Im vanquished!

Gdnight

Have fun, devil dog.

Hog Wild on March 16, 2008 at 12:30 AM

And now you too, Hog Wild, have also fallen for the ruse.

This is too easy.

Hey man, it’s all about the rEVOLution!

“You want answers?”

“I believe I’m entitled.”

“You want answers?”

“I want the truth!”

“You can’t handle the truth!!”

Hog Wild on March 16, 2008 at 12:30 AM

Nice to have you back Hog.

I think he may just be a lonely person who likes tormenting people in the boards.

Or a 14 year old kid….

I am hitting the sack, wife is recovering from surgery and it is pill time at 0200 :)

Clearly then, Ron Paul should be leading this country.

Et tu Brute on March 15, 2008 at 8:17 PM

Now I finally understand. I was curious as to the condesending dressing down I took in another thread from you Et tu Brute, I let it slide since I was new at Hot Air, kind of take a step back see what develops, trying not to jump to conclusions.

You support Ron Paul. The same Republican that blames 9-11 on the United States. A wealth of information I wasn’t previously privy to. “Like a laser beam” I now know who I am dealing with.

You blame America for everything. Nice to finally meet you.

Psst… it’s time for Ron Paul to withdraw from the Republican primary, he can’t win, McCain already won enough delegates to make it impossible for anyone else to get the nomination. It’s time to make that Independent run, he should “WOW” them with his 3% gains in the Republican primaries.

I hope that was condesending, I was making an effort.

I have fun with people who actually debate.

Like a horsefly.

Have a good night et tu, it has been fun, as always.

Squid Shark on March 15, 2008 at 11:49 PM

That is what you’d like eyewitnesses to believe. However, the truth has a way of putting things into perspective.

In reality, for you and your wife, this has been far less than “fun”.

Now that you both have been noted for the record.

Sweet dreams…

Hog Wild on March 15, 2008 at 11:57 PM

Gotta love the Hog, what is up Devil Dog!

The Surge has worked
If so then the troops should be pretty much all coming home very soon now.

Just as if surgery works one would not be staying in the hospital having even more surgery with no end in sight.

Just as if the repair work on your car worked your car should not be in the repair shop having even more repair work with no end in sight.

However, maybe it depends on what the meaning of worked is and what the meaning of is, is. That must be it.

MB4 on March 15, 2008 at 3:55 PM

If you are going to use that analogy, then isn’t physical therapy or rehab needed after surgery to finish the medical procedure?

Harry Truman to Allied Forces: The A-bombing of Japan worked, but you will still have to pretty much all stay in the Pacific doing what you have been doing for the next fifty, make it a hundred, years.

MB4 on March 15, 2008 at 4:05 PM

Is there still not U.S. bases in Germany, Italy, Japan, and Korea still? Want to pull them out too?

Let’s give communism and terrorism a chance the new battle cry? Let’s pull our forces back, allow everyone else to fend for themselves and the world will love us for it?

That’s not only niave, it’s dangerous.

Et tu Brute on March 15, 2008 at 11:49 PM

Vanquished in the chesboard of your mind.

Also, if you consider saying my statement is “recorded” and “revealing” as a debate, I submit that you need to take a rhetoric class.

Have a good night et tu, it has been fun, as always.

Whatever

The argument of an empty, lost mind who knows he is vanquished.

You cannot debate me.

Again.