Patterico's Pontifications

6/16/2005

Dafydd: Invadis Interruptus

Filed under: Current Events,Morons,Politics,Terrorism,War — Dafydd @ 3:19 pm



Is Congress even capable of governing anymore? Were they ever?

Lawmakers Push Resolution on Iraq Pullout
By Liz Sidoti, Associated Press Writer
16 June, 2005

WASHINGTON – President Bush would have to start bringing home U.S. troops from Iraq by Oct. 1, 2006, under a measure a small bipartisan group of House lawmakers — including a Republican who voted for war — proposed Thursday.

Two Republicans and two Democrats introduced a resolution that would require the president to announce by the end of this year a plan for withdrawing troops and steps for following through on that plan.

The Four Congressmen of the Ridiculous were Dennis Kucinich (D-OH), Neil Abercrombie (D-HI), Ron Paul (R-TX) — two lefties and a libertarian, all of whom voted against the war in the first place — and the only surprise, Walter Jones (R-NC), who voted for the war in 2002.

This suggestion is — how can I put this tactfully? — about as asinine and feebleminded as inviting Osama bin Laden to the White House for a fundraising coffee. (Uh oh; I reckon my full measure of tact was insufficient.)

Let us count the ways that this idea is flamboyant nitwittery. If you declare “we’re going to pull out of Iraq on this date,” how do you suppose the terrorists will respond? Discovering that they have won, would they calm down and stop killing people? Or would they take heart, press their advantage, launch a wave of slaughter and butchery that dwarfs what they have done so far, and try to force us to withdraw even earlier?

And once we did withdraw — probably months earlier that we meant to do — how would our enemies behave? Perhaps with the triumphalist rhetoric that Hezbollah used after Israel withdrew from Lebanon.

Ehud Barak yanked Israel out of Lebanon for purely internal reasons of politics; there was no military necessity; they were not losing the war, and Hezbollah was stymied. But the withdrawl, and particularly the way Barak ordered it, mimicking a rout, convinced the world that the terrorists had won a stunning military victory over the IDF. In fact, whenever the MSM refers to that withdrawl these days, they inevitably say that Hezbollah drove Israel out, clearly implying by force of arms.

You think that might, possibly, be how the MSM would portray a similar withdrawl from Iraq by America that occurred on any terms other than our own stated victory conditions?

How would our Iraqi allies react, looking back on our history and seeing how often we have simply lost interest in the fight and abandoned our allies to their deaths? Bay of Pigs, Vietnam, Beirut, the abandonment of the Iraqi Shi’a, the abandonment of the Iraqi Kurds, the abandonment of the Iraqi Shi’a again — say, do we detect a pattern here? — Somalia… oh yes, those worked out so well for us. And for the rest of the world.

This is hardly a unique observation, though it seems to have escaped the gimlet eye of the Fab Four:

Lt. Gen. James Conway, director of operations for the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said, “If you look at it from the insurgents’ perspective — they know our history, just like we study them — and they see where we have withdrawn previously, in Vietnam, in Beirut, in Somalia, and nothing would make them happier, I suppose, than to think that there is a deadline out there.”

The White House has already rejected this nutty idea, thank goodness. But the more interesting question is why it popped up in the first place… and why a normally sane person like Rep. Jones would embrace it. At this point, I must begin to speculate, based upon what the principles actually say.

Among the resolution’s sponsors are Rep. Walter Jones… [who] says the United States has done what it can in Iraq and the reason for going to war — Saddam Hussein’s alleged possession of weapons of mass destruction — has been proven false.

“After 1,700 deaths, over 12,000 wounded, and $200 billion spent, we believe it is time to have this debate and discussion on this resolution,” Jones said.

Earlier, the AP, in a typical attempt to advance the liberal argument, helpfully set the stage:

Car bombings and attacks by insurgents killed 80 U.S. troops and more than 700 Iraqis last month. Pentagon officials acknowledge the level of violence is about the same as a year ago.

This seems to be the crux not only of Jones’s dissatisfaction but also of the growing dislike of the war by the general public. It is clear to me (here is the speculation) that the MSM has so far succeeded at concealing our growing victory with the mask of defeat. They have a two-edged technique: first, they relentlessly report every American or allied death while deliberately failing to note the much higher level of terrorist deaths and captures; this by itself is probably not very effective, as news consumers already factor that bias into the equation. And besides, it’s easy to counter: you simply give the casualty (and capture) figures for other side.

Far more insidious is the other side of the sword, the superficiality of the reporting, which conflates all service deaths, no matter how inflicted, and makes it seem as if nothing has changed, everything is stagnant, and we aren’t getting anywhere. The idea is to make the war seem like — dare I say it? — a quagmire.

On The Belmont Club, Wretchard had a post, By Any Means, on this very point a few days ago. His thesis was that, while it’s true that about as many Americans are dying now as a year ago, they are dying for different reasons: last year, we were on the defensive, and the attacks against us arrived on the terrorists’ timetable.

But this year is different; the casualties we’re suffering now come from a massive and sustained offensive we have launched against the enemy, chasing him from Fallujah, Najaf, Ramadi, then along the two rivers with Operations Matador, New Market, Lightning, and Tal Afar, sweeping the terrorists towards Syria, where they are crushed against the anvil of the Marine regiments along the border.

In summary the situation can be described as follows. The Coalition is on the strategic offensive, probably inflicting a multiple kill-ratio on the enemy, capturing its leadership, improving its intelligence capacity and generating ever larger numbers of indigenous combat forces. It is basically ascendant in every measurable military category. On the other hand, the insurgents are counting on making America tire of of serial combat victories without apparent end in the belief that if they simply do not admit to loss they will eventually win — not on the battlefield as Fester and Kos would have us believe — but on the political front, as they always aimed to do. [Emphasis added]

Alas, the last sentence perfectly describes the true danger of microcephalic congressional resolutions like the present one, and of slope-browed, thuggish, knuckle-dragging, Neanderthal-jawed slanders like Dick Durbin’s latest rant, comparing American servicemen to Nazis, Stalinists, and the Khmer Rouge: the more disarray the terrorists see within the American elite, the more the Left (and the braindead Right) indicate they’re getting tired and bored and just want to go home, they more the enemy will be convinced that we’re going to do it again — abandon the field and snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.

And the harder he’ll fight. And the more grimly he’ll hang on, listening for that whistle, knowing that when we leave, Zarqawi (or his successor) will still be there. And another load of betrayal-bile will be swallowed by another set of American allies.

If Durbin and Leahy really want to know why America’s name no longer means “friend of freedom,” it’s not because we have been steadfast in the war on terrorism. It’s because of all those times before when we listened to people like them and went wobbly.

I asked at the top whether Congress was still capable of governing, if indeed it ever was. We will find out when this resolution comes up for a vote. I already have my doubts, seeing how quickly (and unnecessarily) the House caved to the appeasers in the vote on Socialist Bernie Sanders’s proposal to limit the Patriot Act (hat tip, Hindrocket at Power Line); but I haven’t yet crossed the Styx and abandoned all hope.

I am not an utter cynic… at least not yet.

9 Responses to “Dafydd: Invadis Interruptus”

  1. Sorry, Dafydd, I’m ahead of you in the “utter cynic” category. If we retreat now we deserve what we get.

    Even that aside, as a retired military officer who lived Viet Nam up close and personal this action is such a total disgrace and absolute insult to the men and women who have given their all in Iraq. It is a gigantic slap in the face and a direct statement that “your sacrifice didn’t matter – it was all in vain.” “We were just kidding when we sent you into harm’s way.”

    I’m sure the fifth columnists in the press and their lefty allies’ greatest dream is to create a second Viet Nam where we blatently snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. I’m disgusted by them all!

    SHAME! SHAME! SHAME! on America if we do to Iraq again what we did to the Shi’a and the Kurds at the end of the first Gulf war and if we do to them what we did to the Vietnamese in 1975. If our historical actions emboldened UBL to the point of accomplishing 9/11 because he viewed us as a paper tiger, what, exactly is this intended to accomplish other than more of the same? Every terrorist in the world will do what he can to bring this fight to our shores.

    Harry Arthur (40c0a6)

  2. Kucinich proposal + barrel = barrelfishing.

    This will go nowhere. God help us all if it does.

    John Cole (ffc0f8)

  3. Leaving iraq is quite a popular opinion. Even the freedom fries congressdude is pushing it. I take it more of a sign of frustration that people have with the admin for failing to plan for where we are now and level with us as to how we’re going to handle it. Well, besides “stay the course” BS.

    actus (3be069)

  4. Mr. Arthur,

    I wish you could grab some folks by the scruff of the neck, show them again the fall of Saigon and the Killing Fields of Cambodia, and ask them what part don’t they get?

    I can’t help but believe if we had the same media and some of the same politicians in WWII that we do now, Eisenhower would have been court-martialed and Roosevelt impeached after the evening news coverage of Normandy.

    Shortsightedness and lack of perspective. Every single soldier who doesn’t come back is a tragedy for someone, but I see that in 2002 their were 42,815 traffic crash fatalities, 13,068 related to alcohol. Should the press be spending 30 times more coverage on traffic safety than the war in Iraq??

    MD in Philly (b3202e)

  5. “I wish you could grab some folks by the scruff of the neck, show them again the fall of Saigon and the Killing Fields of Cambodia, and ask them what part don’t they get?”

    The killing fields stopped after the communists of vietnam moved into cambodia. If those are related,its in that direction.

    actus (3be069)

  6. The killing fields stopped after the communists of vietnam moved into cambodia. If those are related,its in that direction.

    Aha, Actus… so the lesson you draw from the history of the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia is: Cambodian Communists are bad guys, but Vietnamese Communists are good guys?

    Good grief!

    Dafydd

    (Where do Sri Lankan Communists fit into this schema?)

    Dafydd (df2f54)

  7. “Aha, Actus… so the lesson you draw from the history of the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia is: Cambodian Communists are bad guys, but Vietnamese Communists are good guys?”

    The lesson I draw is what happened: A Khmer movement that didn’t exist till the US bombed cambodia, and killing fields that stopped when the vietnamese invaded. None of this means that something better couldn’t have happened.

    I’m sure there are other lessons out there. But they may not be as related to what happened.

    actus (3be069)

  8. Ah yes, Actus, believe that leftwing propaganda. Keep drinking that Kool-Aid brother. You serve your master well. I don’t know if you have any military experience, Actus, but no plan holds up after contact with the enemy. The Administration has had several plans simply because you have to make adjustments in the face of reality. Some things are unknowable ahead of time. We all know how valuable 20/20 hindsight is when you have to make decisions in advance of such hindsight.

    Tell me, Actus, how many 400,000 sq. ft. bunkers are there in Iraq? How many of such have been found and searched?

    Charles D. Quarles (593219)

  9. “I don’t know if you have any military experience, Actus, but no plan holds up after contact with the enemy.”

    All the reason to have lots of plans, not just the one where we invade.

    actus (cd484e)


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