I wonder what have we won by stabilizing Japan, Germany, Korea at the collective cost of about 450,000 American lives? And for what? only Japan attacked us right? When can our military forces leave Europe and Japan? Wah Wah Wah! Its not fair!

What exactly have we won by providing a stabilizing security umbrella for Europe for 50 years? I mean who really cared if they allowed communist subversion to topple their governments.

What exactly have we “won” by maintaining such an expensive bluewater navy? I mean i don’t see why the sacrifice? who cares about maintaining the sea lanes open. when can we stop doing it? I mean when will it be safe enough to stop?

what he said.

Ed, Ed, Ed, the Left is not pacifist. They are on the other side. They are not pacifists who want the war to end, but enemy sympathizers who want America defeated. You can’t go to a big anti-war demonstration in DC, back when the anti-war movement was strong enough to mount them, without seeing loads of anti-American signs and calls for a socialist revolution. These demonstrations are organized by the Marxists of ANSWER and UFPJ, for Pete’s sake, not Quakers. They glory in images of dead US soldiers. They hurl abuse and spittle on our troops. Lefty Protesters Are Not Pacifists.

I’ve been to every big anti-war protest in DC and I have yet to see a sign even mentioning Saddam or demanding the jihadis stop beheading people or the Baathists stop their campaign of executions. That seems like something a pacifist might oppose. I have seen plenty of red banners carried by large groups of people advertising themselves as various Communist cells. Heck, I’ve been attacked twice at “peace” rallies, which is twice more than I’ve ever been attacked in the military, which the Left claims is full of baby-killer types. I’ve seen signs that say “America Must Be Destroyed.” What kind of pacifist carries that sentiment around in public?

It’s no accident that when a big anti-war demonstration is mounted in DC it is part of a larger campaign around the world, all organized by the Marxists of ANSWER and their comrades abroad, not pacifists. The Marxists and associated enemies of America are trying to repeat their success of Vietnam, opening up a home front to break the public will so as to outflank the military front where the enemies of America have no chance of winning.

And, this time, they’re losing.

I wonder what have we won by stabilizing Japan, Germany, Korea at the collective cost of about 450,000 American lives? And for what? only Japan attacked us right? When can our military forces leave Europe and Japan? Wah Wah Wah! Its not fair!

What exactly have we won by providing a stabilizing security umbrella for Europe for 50 years? I mean who really cared if they allowed communist subversion to topple their governments.

What exactly have we “won” by maintaining such an expensive bluewater navy? I mean i don’t see why the sacrifice? who cares about maintaining the sea lanes open. when can we stop doing it? I mean when will it be safe enough to stop?

Why should we maintain a hemispheric security umbrella over latin america? I mean why can’t Cost Rica just create its own army so they don’t have to rely on our security guarantees? When will we know we can stop providing those security guarantees?

If someone does not see the importance of stabilizing Iraq they just don’t get “it” nor ever will. I can’t educate you.

We’re winning in Iraq because we stabilizing Iraq by neutralizing the external and internal forces that would create an Iraqi nation inimical to US interests.

You are beginning to sound a lot like Pat Buchanon in his latest tome “Churchill, Hitler, and the Unnecessary War: How Britain Lost an Empire and the West Lost the World.”

You seem to think the war is just taking place in Iraq. You’re holding your binoculars the wrong way around. Almost every country in the world has an internal, growing Muslim population. Roll on WWIII.

aengus on June 27, 2008 at 9:12 AM

It is called The Church of the Iraqi Centric. Much like The Church of Global Warming it has become almost like some primitive religion.

Major tenants of The Church of the Iraqi Centric:

1) All roads start in Iraq.
2) All roads end in Iraq.
3) The Sun revolves around Iraq.
4) The moon revolves around Iraq.
5) The stars revolve around Iraq.
6) If the United States does not keep sufficient troop mass in Iraq, the orbital stability of the Earth will become unbalanced and all Muslim terrorists will slide into America.

On every front, we have prevailed far past the hopes we had after 9/11.

The Muslims are ahead far and away by a country mile. People are glum because the West is losing big time. Its very depressing.

You seem to think the war is just taking place in Iraq. You’re holding your binoculars the wrong way around. Almost every country in the world has an internal, growing Muslim population. Roll on WWIII.

aengus on June 27, 2008 at 9:12 AM

It feels like “déjà vu all over again.” As columnist Diana West puts it, “Nearly six years after September 11 — nearly six years after first visiting the Islamic Center and proclaiming ‘Islam is peace’ — Mr. Bush has learned nothing.” But we now harbor fewer hopes than in 2001 that he still can learn, absorb, and reflect an understanding of the enemy’s Islamist nature.
- Daniel Pipes

we’re winning

Winning what? What in the Hell do we win?

Over 4,000 lives, tens of thousand permanently wounded, burnt through equipment, Koran kissing and groveling, and a cost that will go over a trillion (that’s trillion with a T) Pesos dollarsand what do we get for that now? I forget.

This all reminds me of the “YOU WON” that I get in my email. I just mark them as spam and delete them. Have I messed up and missed out on a BIG PRIZE?

So there I was, listening to a few of the major “architects” of the war in Iraq — Paul Wolfowitz, Douglas J. Feith, Peter Rodman and Dan Senor. They had assembled at the Hudson Institute in Washington, D.C., for a discussion of Feith’s [This is the man about whom Tommy Franks said, 'He is getting a reputation around here as being the dumbest #ucking guy on the planet!"]new book, “War and Decision: Inside the Pentagon at the Dawn of the War on Terrorism,” but what they were drawn to discuss was what went wrong with the war in Iraq.

I got one of those answers myself, at least from Feith. I asked: What did these gentlemen think the United States would ultimately get out of Iraq in exchange for our massive investment of blood and treasure? And had they learned anything to make them doubt the president’s often-repeated promise that Iraq would become an “ally” in the “war on terror”? Shrug. Not interested in answering.
- Diana West

A short recon of what’s out there that might draw your attention, updated throughout the day…so check back often….

Or sued for hate speech if you said anything favorable about our country.

All of that is true, and you forgot to mention their insidious infiltration of academia.

Buy Danish on June 27, 2008 at 10:17 AM

There I was trying to be all smart and stuff and I neglected the mammoth in the living room. You are of course right and it is undoubtedly where they have made the biggest gains with their cause. I just applied for a job at MIT. I have little hope of getting it but my wife thought I was crazy because she thinks that I wouldn’t last a week surrounded by all the commie a-holes. She said I couldn’t possibly keep my pro American, pro military trap shut and would be fired if I were lucky but more then likely I would be thrown under a bus.

Keep in mind that 13th century Islam (i.e., Spain) was more advanced intellectually, socially, and culturally than many so-called modern urban centers.

Sounds like they need a visit from Ben Youssef

Don’t think of Islam as a static entity.

While there have been different cultural models and various deviations of Islamic societies like Muslim Spain or the non-practice of Islam in Soviet Central Asia, Muslims tend to return to the basic content of their religious doctrine i.e. kill the unbelievers wherever ye find them. (See the opening scene of the video above.)

In any case the modern Middle East is in a terrible state. I do not think it can be artificially repaired but even if it can I’m more interested in removing unassimilable Muslims from Western societies.

Like Catholicism, or Christian fundamentalism, there are a range of theological interpretations over core doctrine.

No, there are only five schools of Islamic jurisprudence and they do no differ largely from one another. Though there is Sufi Islam I suppose.

synopsis: you seem to worry that Muslim religion is incompatible with secular democratic government.

Keep in mind that 13th century Islam (i.e., Spain) was more advanced intellectually, socially, and culturally than many so-called modern urban centers. Don’t think of Islam as a static entity. Like Catholicism, or Christian fundamentalism, there are a range of theological interpretations over core doctrine.

Beto Ochoa on June 27, 2008 at 10:57 AM

Thank you. A documentary I watched suggested (but did not explicitly say) that Truman fired MacArthur because of the his zealotry for the nuclear bomb plan.

What does Hiroshima and Nagasaki have to do with it? Anyway its not my argument, it was General MacArthur’s. He wanted to drop 20 nuclear bombs on the border between Korea and China in order to render in permanently uninhabitable (for 100 years at least) so that Chinese troops would not be able to invade. Truman didn’t think much of his argument AND credibility! and consequently relieved him of his command.
aengus on June 27, 2008 at 10:29 AM

Actually….close but not true.
After Four infantry armies, three artillery divisions and an anti – aircraft regiment, 260,000 men, crossed the Yalu into North Korea the UN forces were forced into a long retreat. It was only after the invasion that the entire general staff considered nuclear scenearios with one plan of 30 and 50 atomic bombs strung across the neck of Manchuria to create a no-mans land belt of radioactive cobalt-for at least 60 years.
That was discussed with and considered by Truman as well.
What got MacArthur fired was, after we had stopped the Chinese/ Nork advance at the 38th parallel and were discussing a negotiated settelment, MacArthur sent a communiqué to the Chinese daring them to finish what they started. It was for this insubordination he was fired.
The only reason Truman didn’t use nukes was because the Russians got very pissy with the plan.

Some of us believed from the very beginning that we could do it, we MUST do it and that we’d be seen as liberators to those who lived under the taliban’s tyranny. We can do anything.

dominigan on June 27, 2008 at 10:39 AM

Oh fair enough. Even MacArthur didn’t think the damage would really be permanent, he just hoped it would outlast Communism.

aengus on June 27, 2008 at 10:29 AM

I probably overreacted.

I tend to hear a lot of the same type of rhetoric (“we’re destroying the earth!”, “oil companies just want to destroy the environment to get their money”, etc) from our teen youth groups at church.

I have to point out… we can’t literally destroy the earth (we don’t have that type of power), oil companies do care about the environment (look into design considerations for the Alaskan pipeline), etc.

a capella on June 27, 2008 at 10:27 AM

The reason I’m so wary of this strategy is that if we hang our fate on the good will of Muslims we are essentially making ourselves hostages to fortune, our future hinges not just on strange foreign people but ones whose religious doctrine demands they be against us! So there is a high risk of failure.

Almost every country in the world has an internal, growing Muslim population.

aengus on June 27, 2008 at 9:12 AM

That is because they breed like rabbits, while most of us can barely manage to spawn replacements. If you look at adult conversions, Christianity leaves Islam in the dust.

Women’s rights will bring their birth rates down and freedom will open up the opportunity for more conversions. Oil hell, this is a Crusade. :)

Technically, they are Fascists. Fascism is more then a word used as an epithet by Socialists. Fascism is a systematic approach to a philosophy of governing order. Fascism is a collectivist ideology built upon a central organizational myth. Socialism is nothing but a specific central organizing myth. Marx failed to come up with big picture because he spent his energies building the myth instead of studying general principles. Although socialism continues to have a wide following it is the least successful form of Fascism in practice.

There on the West Coast we were getting our two youngest boys ready for school, one starting junior high, one high school. The oldest had been off to college for two weeks.

Having bopped around the world hopping cargo ships as a youth, I fretted how the new hostilities so obviously on display would color their world, their opportunities to travel. Would they be made to suffer simply for being American? When the second plane slammed into the tower, it was clear it would be an extreme challenge to reclaim any sanity.

A large and festering boil needed lancing. I felt optimistic thinking we could succeed in Afghanistan and Iraq over long years at the cost of a division’s worth of casualties apiece. We had the additional challenge of showing respect for the majority populations, focusing only on eradicating the malign elements.

Thanks to the clarity and vision of George W. Bush, 40 million people in the Middle East are free of tyranny. There is a new admiration for America and the principles of freedom and mutual respect throughout the world. I no longer worry for my sons venturing out in the world. George W. Bush has my lasting respect and appreciation. Everyone is willing to say what a mess Iraq has been, but it has gone far, far better and accomplished more than I ever could have imagined.

At the same time, our mandarin class of academics, bureaucrats, artists, lawyers and lefty politicians has shown an inability to resist being the one hand perpetually tied behind our back when there’s work to be done. How can people who profess to be liberal so strongly oppose the liberation of their fellow man?

Riiiiiiight. You might want to alert Hiroshima and Nagasaki that they need to halt their tourism efforts. Dude, they’re undermining your argument AND credibility!

dominigan on June 27, 2008 at 10:21 AM

What does Hiroshima and Nagasaki have to do with it? Anyway its not my argument, it was General MacArthur’s. He wanted to drop 20 nuclear bombs on the border between Korea and China in order to render in permanently uninhabitable (for 100 years at least) so that Chinese troops would not be able to invade. Truman didn’t think much of his argument AND credibility! and consequently relieved him of his command.

The secularism of the Iraqi people is ironically due to years of Ba’athism and I think that Islam and extremism will grow in Iraq in the years to come. I don’t mean that the US has “created” more terrorists just that Islamic spiritual authorities have more breathing room due to their liberation and will manipulate the situation for their own ulterior purposes.

aengus on June 27, 2008 at 10:16 AM

Yes, that is the main concern and there is precedent. However, I am hoping that the brutality of el Qaeda, the Mehdi army and all the others may have influenced the man on the street. Arguing aginst myself, in the case of the Taliban, it seems to have not turned the population against them, so in any case, it is going to be a long, tough slog.

McCain, a highly decorated Vietnam veteran, edged out Obama on national security issues. When asked who “would best protect the U.S. against terrorism,” 53% of respondents chose McCain to just 33% for Obama.

The left has taken the position since at least the spring of 2002 that success in the War On Terror = Fewer top political offices for Democrats. To them, the battle against al Qaida and terrorism is simply another political issue, like Social Security reform or global warming, only in this case it’s not so much that they want an al Qaida victory — even the left has pretty much figured out that the terrorists are more likely to attack places in the United States where they live than where conservatives live, because liberals tend to gather in high-profile target areas on the coasts like New York and Washington. They just don’t want conservatives to get credit for the win.

Obama is already backing off the strident calls for immediate withdrawal of troops from Iraq and Afghanistan. If he wins in November and the West makes any future strikes against terrorist leaders, the stories will be back to being Page A-1 material and at the top of the nightly newscasts, not buried on Page B-14 or relegated to the news crawl at the bottom of the screen.

This statement ignores quite a bit of recent history. When the US is perceived as being angry and ready to use our strength as a result of that anger the fear becomes quite apparent.

I can only tell you what I perceive when I watch Muslims shouting their diatribes on MEMRI.

When I see a Palestinian Imam screaming that the Muslims will conquer Western Europe and from there go on to conquer Eastern Europe and the two Americas (paraphrased) then I figure that they see the inability of the West to deport dangerous Muslims as a serious lack of will and are thus emboldened, not scared in the least.

Even today Iran is only willing to defy us through proxies.

Yeah but they’ve always done that and mostly because they’re very smart. They’ve been waging indirect war against the US for 30 years and they’ve paid hardly any price. They almost always manage to be just discreet enough not to raise the hackles of the US. So yeah if the US is openly attacked by an enemy in an overt way Americans will get angry but if not a lot of people might not even hear about it.

And lets not forget Khadafi’s complete capitulation to Western inspections and disarmament after 9/11.

Yup I’d concede that. But what has happened in the years since? The British have sold him top of the range anti-aircraft defenses and hes gone back to kidnapping innocent people and extorting money for their release. He openly boasts that Islam will conquer the world. He was complaining last year that he didn’t get enough in return for giving up his weapons program. I think, now that his momentary fear has subsided, he feels a little cheated.

They have fears just like any other peoples of the world and they are there to see if one only looks.

Possibly but I don’t think their fears are sufficient to stop them from warring against us.