’)I’ve said before and I’ll say it again – Karl Rove is not that good. His candidate only obtained the Republican nomination by using racial demagoguery in the south that the Klan would be proud of. Then his candidate lost the popular vote and had to have the supreme court hand him the election. And then he engaged in yet another smear campaign against a war hero, winning by 2%, followed by a steady erosion of approval to the point where 42% is a reason to rejoice.
For all that, Rove is supposedly a genius. And Democrats buy this, and worry that Rove might say something mean about them. The reason why Rove’s tactics work is that they are predicated on Democrats responding stupidly. If they don’t wilt, Rove is cooked.
He ain’t that good.
Racial Demagoguery you say?
Two Words: James Byrd.
First of all, you’re a smart guy so please dispense with the bullshit that Bush only got the nomination because of racial demagoguery. He was the establishment candidate, and unless there’s a miracle, the establishment candidate is going to get that nomination in either party.
Secondly, Karl Rove is 2 for 2. You can come up with all the excuses you want (which is typical for Democrats. There’s always an excuse for why they don’t win. It’s never that their candidate just wasn’t good enough or that the public wasn’t buying what they were selling, it’s something else), but the wins are there. The same can’t be said for Bob Shrum. Karl Rove designed the the strategy that had the GOP gain seats in the 2002 mid-term elections with a GOP president in office, something that hadn’t happened in decades.
Rove is very good. And flippantly dismissing him by citing your littany of excuses is case of you whistling past the graveyard.
But of course, Ned Lamont, who dispensed with the Bob Shrum style campaigning, played by all the rules, and beat Lieberman by a larger percentage margin than that by which Bush defeated Kerry (which was a mighty mandate for the Decider), is illegitimate and won by only a hair thin margin powered by far left blogofascists!
Uhh Rheinhard,
You do understand that Lamont has not been elected yet, right? He merely beat another Democrat in the primary – in a generally liberal state. If that is your measure of progressive political genius, have at it.
I mean the ‘overrated’ Rove has only given us two presidencies (oh, those supreme court justices!)
Karl Rove wins precisely because of people like Bob Shrum. I’m not saying Rove isn’t good at what he does, he’s just not as good as the mythology. He’s been lucky to have his good skills put up against Democrats who make the Washington Generals look like a well-rounded team. Do you really think without the weak Democrat response in 2002 of being Bush-lite, that there would have been any congressional gains? Rove is smart for taking advantage of one of the worst oppositional situations in American history, but he’s certainly not Svengali (his candidate would not have had the lesser amount of votes were he so great).
Shorter Dugs/Jay: “Who cares if Bush is incompetent? We Won!”
Sigh. Since irony is obviously lost on Dugger, I’ll try again with smaller words:
1. When you say “merely…”, remember that just 2-3 months before the primary conservadroids everywhere were chortling that Lamont was even running, because polls showed him far far behind. He fought a primary against an incumbent with every conceivable advantage; the official support of the Democratic party apparatus, much more money, etc. He was attacked by the standard Rove news spin “elect this man and al Quaeda wins!” on all the political talking head shows. He was attacked for being associated with those evil, evil liberal bloggers. Despite all this Lamont surged ahead in the course of a few short months. Considering that the latest polls show him in a statistical dead head with Lieberman, despite the again widespread conventional wisdom of the chattering classes that Lieberman will win handily as an independent, and that he has done all this without the slimy Rovian campaign tactics, is an electoral feat worthy of note, and it will be more so when he wins in November. This is exemplary of the kind of hypocrisy that helps Rove at every turn: every outcome is always spun as being in favor of the GOP position. More attacks? Good for Bush because people will be scared and vote for the Daddy party. Less attacks? Good for Bush because it shows his WoT policies are working. Rove can only prosper in this kind of environment, where he is given the benefit of the doubt at every turn and what is going on behind the scenes is ignored.
That’s right. He went straight to blackface. Classy!
Of course farris realizes that Lamont himself didnt do the blackface thing, it was, I believe the guy at FireDogLake.com, who had within minutes of posting it there and at HuffPo removed it, and that Lamont actually denounced that kind of crap, but hey, he has to take any chance he can to baselessly mischaracterize democrats these days. Its kinda like how everyone at MoveOn went 24 hours a day for a year saying nothing but “Bush are Hitlar! Bush are Hitlar! Bush are Hitlar!” which he bases on the contest they held and like two people out of a thousand or something made entries along that line. Thumbs up, sir.
Men with character withdraw their claims when they’re shown to be baseless. What are you made of, Farris?
Also, two new polls. Momentum doesn’t look good for Joe.
ARG: 44% Lieberman, 42% Lamont, 3% Schlesinger, 11% undecided.
Rasmussen: 45% Lieberman, 43% Lamont, 6% Schlesinger.
How typical of life under Bush, where standards and expectations continue to sink, that people would refer to Rove as a “genius”.
Only in a world gone mad is that believable – in a world where changing your mind or admitting mistakes is seen as weakness.
Rove is a thug. He’s a political hit-man. I have no problem if you want to say that he’s very good at what he does. He may be the best political hit-man we know about. He may be the best partisan thug in the world. But like thugs on the street, he excels not by what he has, but by what he doesn’t have.
He doesn’t have the decency that stops others from stooping as low as he does. He doesn’t have the concern for country over party. He doesn’t have the slightest remorse for the people who are ruined by his actions. He is paid to “get it done”, and he does.
So spare me the “genius” tag. He’s one of the best at destroying people’s reputations and getting his employers elected at any cost. Is that something to be celebrated?
Shorter Dugs/Jay: “Who cares if Bush is incompetent? We Won!”
Huh? We’re talking political strategy stupid. Try and keep up.
Court Jester, you just described James Carville and Paul Begala. It worked did it not?
And those celebrating Ned Lamont’s ‘victory’ are partying too soon. The Kossacks were able to muster up enough support to people to the polls to vote in that primary, but until Lamont wins the general election, it won’t mean anything. Worse yet, if Lieberman wins, you’re down a seat in the Senate.
Small point, but Karl Rove is one for two, and by 1% at that.
By “the guy”, I assume you mean Jane Hamsher. You know, the unpaid staffer of Lamont’s campaign? Who travels with Lamont? Who directed Lamont in a commerical? The Swift Boat guys were less connected.
Actually, he said “I don’t know anything about blogs”, which qualifies for funniest line of the year. And they still can’t get their story straight. If Lamont asked that it be taken down, why does Arriana Huffington claim “No one asked for the photo to be removed”?
“We’re talking political strategy stupid.”
Yes, of course: How to Put a Dangerous Incompetent into the White House 101.
Jane Hamsher could be his wife, and it still wouldn’t mean that the blackface Lieberman picture was his idea. The Swift Boat Guys were much more connected, since they were paid by the Bush administration and everything.
Farris, you have failed to demonstrate, as you claimed, Lamont’s responsibility for the blackface photo. By not retracting your evidence-free claim, you risk demonstrating your lack of integrity. Is it so difficult to behave with honor, Farris?
Yes, by “that guy” I did refer to her, the, as you have put it, the unpaid volunteer staffer who, in such capacity, does not, of course, speak at all on behalf of the Lamont campaign in any official way. I dont see how being unpaid makes her more connected then the SwiftBoatmen, concidering they did recieve RNC money (as Nimrod has beaten me to pointing out) but thank you for backing up my point.
Who said that Lamont asked for the photo to be removed? He just distanced himself from this one time instance of photoshop gone slightly offensive by an unpaid volunteer staffer. Is it possible that, in fact, you dont have your own story straight here Farris?
Dude, W. Bush twice legitimately received more than 15% of the popular vote and currently sports approval ratings above 30%. Ergo, Rove is an undeniable genius. Case closed.
I may loathe Joe Leiberman but in the off chance he squeaks out a win (the current polls don’t seem to jibe with that, thankfully), he has already said he will caucus with Dems. So our side gets the same votes – hopefully in the majority.
Rheinhard,
A minor point. It arguable that “elect this man and Al Qaeda wins” is not spin at all. After all, Lamont is a ’strategic redeployment’ guy. He will withdraw our troops period. Thus the insurgents and terrorists fighting in Iraq need only to wait us out (ala Lamont) and they own the battlefield after the battle. Now in my military career, we would have called that a victory – when we were left with the battlefield after the enemy withdrew. Then it gets down to who is left on the battlefield. I terrorists are in the mix, they have won. If Al Qaeda is in the mix they have won. Do you doubt CNN will then be doing puff pieces on the ‘dissident’ heroes who beat the evil US (are you aware of how their coverage re HAMAS changed from terrorists to dissidents as Hamas claimed victory.)
Sorry if you don’t like that. But I would say that any candidate who pledges to leave via a hard timetable regardless of battlefield conditions offers the terrorists a clear shot at victory.
And if I were running, I would stick that tag on any candidate, any party who calls for unconditional withdrawal. I betcha Hillsy ain’t buying that BS.
“I would stick that tag on any candidate, any party who calls for unconditional withdrawal”
And yet, no Republicans are calling Bush an appeaser for caving to Osama’s demand by withdrawing from Saudi. Curious, that.
But I guess you win, Dugger. Better to stay in the meatgrinder with no hope of succes, since the consequences of a pullout are so politically scary.
Well then it would be nice if the Republicans would be honest for a change and run on a platform of making Iraq the 51st state, because that’s the full consequence of your assertion. Since absolutely NO ONE on your side, the supposedly “serious” foreign policy hawks, can cite ANY benchmark which will signal the end of the occupation (whether it be a deadline, number of Iraqi troops trained, minimum number of explosions per month, minimum number of barrels of oil pumped, etc.), then we have, as Bush pretty much petulantly asserted yesterday, committed to staying there forever.
And what side effects will that have for our ability to handle other regional conflicts, let alone our preparedness here at home, and our national economy? Do you really think this nation can sustain pouring however many billion dollars a month into this endless boondoggle for the next thirty years?
The thing about the insurgents “winning” Iraq though is that, frankly, it really is their country to win. Its degrading into civil war (or “instances of sectarian violence related program activities” per this administration) where the only outcome is that the country as a whole will lose, hopefully eventually with some group taking control. Its all going to hell there, man, and everyone sees it. But to say “if we quit now then they win by default, so we have to stay there and keep losing” is madness. If there is a way to win, a set of attainable criteria that will, in fact, quell the insurgency, then I would like very much to hear it, because no such plan has been forwarded to my knowledge. If there is no such plan, then the only logical conclusion is that the war is “unwinnable” by modern means, and that the only sensible recourse is to withdraw and “strategically redeploy” the troops where they can actually do some damn good.
Rove is good at what he does, but nothing a political strategist does I would ever say is genius. Make the right phone calls to the right people, either scare them or reinforce their views and you’ve got a vote. Play the right smear ad, and you’ll flip a few more votes.
Nothing Rove has done is any different or ingenius than any other campaign manager on either side of the aisle.
Something unpalatable we have to accept is the power of negative campaigning, and he is very effective at it. Doesn’t mean that whatever party is ravenous to get into office won’t employ the same tactics, its business as usual.
“It arguable that ‘elect this man and Al Qaeda wins’ is not spin at all.”
Fuck you, Dugger. I mean really. The vast majority of the terrorists in Iraq are native Iraqis with no allegiance to al-Qeada whatsoever. So to suggest that al-Qeada will “claim the field” after we withdraw from Iraq is utter rubbish. It’s pure spin.
Al Qaeda is already winning thanks to the continued success of the Republican party. No better friend have they ever found than Bush and company.
Dugger, you are exactly the reason that I left the Republican party. You simply can’t differentiate between spin and fact and don’t have the intellectual curiousity to delve deeper. Iraq has nothing to do with al-Qaeda. Even G.W., the man who holds your nuts in a vice, says so. If it was your private money paying for this little crusade, I would just call you a moron, but because it is U.S. treasury, or more precisely, that of our children and grandchildren, which is paying for it, I have to issue a hearty, “FUCK YOU.”
Oh, and Karl Rove is just a fat Lee Atwater.
Careful, Dugger doesn’t like swearing.
He has no problem with thousands of corpses in the Middle East, but he doesn’t like bad wrongwords.
I don’t know if I’d agree that Iraq has nothing to do with Al Qaeda. Yes, they didn’t have direct responsibility, funding or support for the attacks against American interests (that we know of), but there are loose connections all over that part of the world.
That is why it is such a complicated issue. Of the huge populations, there is a percentage that just don’t like Americans, but don’t actualize their dislike. Then there are hardcore recruits who are either radicalized or looking to manifest their anger. They are in Iraq, Iran, ‘Stans, Syria, Lebanon, Indonesia, America, France, England…pretty distributed crowd. What head do you cut off? I want to see Osama dead, but killing him won’t do a damn thing to stop Al Qaede. We’re all looking at him like he’s Sauron, and once we destroy the ring, Al Qaeda melts into the sea. I wish it were that easy.
Wish it weren’t true all you want, children, but if we leave the battlefield to the insurgents and terrorists, they will have won – in their eyes, in the world’s eyes and in the military eyes. And there ain’t a way on Gods green earth you can spin away from that fact. Serious adults, even Democrats, have thought about the consequences of surrender and won’t buy it. Mark my words, your nominee will not run on a ‘cut and run’ platform. You better prepare to go ape-sh*t bonkers like the radicals of the 60’s did against LBJ – cause you are in for one hell of a let down.
Hey hey Hillary. How many Iraqis you killed today!
And the most mentioned criteria for leaving Iraq remains the readiness of Iraqi forces to maintain security – per the judgement of our military leaders on site.
“but if we leave the battlefield to the insurgents and terrorists, they will have won – in their eyes, in the world’s eyes and in the military eyes.”
What Dugger is describing is Afghanistan in 2003, when we abandoned the fight so that our troops could redeploy to Iraqnam.
“What head do you cut off? I want to see Osama dead, but killing him won’t do a damn thing to stop Al Qaede. We’re all looking at him like he’s Sauron, and once we destroy the ring, Al Qaeda melts into the sea. I wish it were that easy.”
Nice strawman Steve. Who says that OBL’s death will destroy al Queda? I want OBL dead because he is responsible for the deaths of 3000 Americans. Any impact on al Queda is a nice bonus. Apparently you don’t really want him dead either.
Actually, in the world’s eyes, we’ve already lost. We have no more pride to lose by pulling out. And it’s certainly not a surrender, it’s just an admission of our enormous goddamned horrible mistake.
Hey hey Hillary. How many Iraqis you killed today!
That doesn’t even make any sense.
And the most mentioned criteria for leaving Iraq remains the readiness of Iraqi forces to maintain security
And what incentive do they have to do that, exactly, when US forces are there to do it for them and therefore, not get shot at?
Oh, BTW, the number of US forces killed in Iraq now equals the number killed on 9/11.
Way to go. I’m with frame and zadura on this one; f*ck you.
Dugger’s plan: die forever, troops, cause I hate Democrats!
“Serious adults, even Democrats, have thought about the consequences of surrender and won’t buy it.”
Are these the same “serious adults” who have absolutely no plan to achieve any kind of stability in Iraq except more of the same?
In case you hadn’t noticed Dugs, “just staying” isn’t exactly doing the trick either.
Dugger, we’ve already lost. We’ve lost our credibility, our friends, our integrity, our image, our moral leadership, our souls….basically everything we used to stand for politically. Bush is 100% to blame. So is Rove for slinging as much slime as possible to get this madman into the White House.
But I believe people like yourself have not learned a single lesson from this fiasco of “leadership” and would do it all over again if given the chance.
And the rest of are subjected to your utter ignorace being flaunted in our faces continually.
Now I know why many in your party don’t believe in evolution. Taking us backwards is your idea of human enlightenment.
Keep in mind that whenever cons like Dugger say someone’s “serious,” it’s code for “someone who’s gotten everything wrong so far.”
Dugger is serious about national security, as is his pResident.
Fuck you, Dugger. I mean really. The vast majority of the terrorists in Iraq are native Iraqis with no allegiance to al-Qeada whatsoever. So to suggest that al-Qeada will “claim the field” after we withdraw from Iraq is utter rubbish. It’s pure spin.
Didn’t you get the memo? All Muslims are members of Al Qeada, apparantly.
Also, a glimpse of serious vs. not serious.
Of course I want Osama dead, frameone, but my point was it won’t cripple Al Qaeda.
Rounds77,
I don’t think we’ve lost anything. It’s hard to see the clarity of a war when you’re in the middle of it. Many times what the think are our most dire moments turn out to be roadbumps when viewed though the prism of history.
We’re looking bad, that’s for sure. We’ve lost a lot of internal and external support. We’ve lost troops in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Now, you can say Bush pulled a Scotty, like when Scotty told Kirk he always pads his estimates by 3 times, so when he does it in a third of the time he looks like a hero. He may have been lying when he told us it would be a long and tedious war, but I didn’t need that nimrod to tell me that. I believe the statement, even if I think the messenger is a dolt. On September 12, it was clear to most people this would be a tricky, nebulous conflict.
We’ve had missteps that will be real interesting to see how we dig ourselves out, but I don’t think we’ve lost anything in terms of an overall strategy. If anything, we’re stalemated, which is still unacceptable. I hope whomever inherits this war will do it with more competency than our current government.
“Of course I want Osama dead, frameone …”
Uh, what?
“We’ve had missteps that will be real interesting to see how we dig ourselves out, but I don’t think we’ve lost anything in terms of an overall strategy.”
First of all, did you really mean “interesting”? Nice to know that you think of massive foreign policies blunders with an escalating death toll as some kind of soap opera.
Second, what exactly is your definition of strategy? Not that it made much sense in the first place, but our overall strategy of attacking nation states to combat terrorism has pretty much been shot all to shit by our failure in Iraq.
This whole idea that we have to reserve our criticisms until History passes Judgement is a crock. It doesn’t take the “fullness of time” to recognize that Iraq is a disaster RIGHT NOW and no one in the White House has any plan whatsoever for rectifying that fact.
Could anyone of you right wing morons tell me what the plan is, now?
Sorry. I meant factcheck.
First of all, I don’t represent the right, nor do I consider myself a moron. Secondly, I’m not a military strategist, so I couldn’t begin to tell you how we can effectively deploy our troops to combat terrorism. Sitting on our hands won’t work, so something has to be done. The wrong thing was done.
If you’re appointing me Field Marshall or National Security Advisor, first of all, thank you.
My first action would be to exert diplomatic pressure to get harboring states to give up their terrorists. I would then have tried to squeeze the Pakistani border, knowing that it is almost impossible to invade due to the terrain, and the people’s familiarity with it. They would have a decisive advantage.
I would simultaneously apply economic screws to Iran and Syria, since we know a lot of state-sponsored funding originates there.
At the same time, I would have kicked the Monarchy of Saud out of Bush’s bed and engaged them to help us hunt these guys down, since considerable amount of funding and support come from Saudi Arabia.
At the same time, I would try to interdict the teachings of the madras schools who are indoctrinating the next generation of jihadists from growing up to be terrorists.
Next, i’d go after splinter groups like Hamas, Hezbollah, Al Axa Martyr Brigade, Mujahadin and the PLO, while at the same time stepping up a public relations campaign the likes of which this planet has never seen.
Finally, I would try to understand the root causes of why the Muslim world hates us, fly backwards around the Earth at the speed of light, and reverse whatever it was we did to piss them off in the first place.
I would do all that, provided Oliver could give me Superman’s phone number so I could get his assistance for a few days watching my miniature schnauzers and feeding my kid.
My point is, this is a shrewd and nebulous enemy. It will require a comprehensive strategy, and I think quibbling the fine points of overall military strategy is a waste of time because we don’t know what’s being done in the background.
You’re free to interpret the word ‘interesting’ any way you want.
What would your strategy have been?
Vote for the Democrats.
All the children screeched but none denied that leaving the battlefield to the enemy is surrender. Which is- I repeat – a platform upon which no national Democrat will run. Get used to it. You are to be marginalized. The war goes on under Hillary or whoever.
“Hey hey Hillary. How many Iraqis you killed today!”
History, duros. Get acquainted with it, sometimes.
And what am I, chopped liver?
Congratulations on coming back, and even greater congratulations on apparently not noticing how hard you got owned.
Why would no democrat run on that platform Dugger? A majority of americans support a pullout at this point, in two years they’ll be demanding it. Hell the republican candidate would be an idiot Not to include troop withdrawl in their campaign.
And as far as surrendering the battlefield to the enemy, even though the insurgency is the enemy of the US, are they the enemy of the Iraqi people? And if they are, do you really think they’ll be able to stay that way if they do gain some major sway over the general whole of the country? Hell I’ll be the idiot to say it, if they actually can take control of a country as internally destructive as Iraq and keep it from imploding or exploding, then they should be our fucking allies, cause nothing weve done or plan to do seems to be able to accomplish even that much. If our goal is to bring peace prosperity and order to Iraq, I got news for you dug, We’re the fucking enemy at that point.
Oh, and I meant to ask, given your support of the Iraq war and keeping our soldiers in the middle of an unwinnable quagmire:
“Hey Hey Dugger, how many Iraqis you killed today?!”
Note that Duge never denied that staying the course means feeding more soldiers into the meat grinder.
Dugger, you’re not arguing with us; you’re arguing with a majority of the American people. Face it, Bush lost his war. Surrender is the least of our worries.
Rex
No national-office Democrat. In certain area a surrender platform would carry the day (Cynthia McKinney has been elected multiple times, after all).
And I support a pullout – when conditions permit – per the assessmnt of our in-theater military. Its the pullout per a set timetable – a specific date or number of days-that constitutes surrender.
And I’m not sure I support the Iraq war – as a concept since inception. We are there now – we have to see it through. Republicans and Democrats should not have voted for war if they were going to pull out early and leave the field to the insurgents and terorists.
And I still contend no national office Democrat will run on the surrender/cut and run/stratgic redeployment platform.
It will be LBJ and the radical left all over again.
…waitaminute, you think they wouldnt set a timetable to accurately reflect those “permitting conditions?” That they wouldnt say “it’ll take us this long to set up their army, this long for the govt, this long for the infrastructure, etc., so were gonna aim for this date?” That you support, but building an arbitrary timetable apropos of nothing that just says “12 months” or something you dont.
Well alright then. One question though, since conditions seem by every objective measure to be worsening over there (cant find link that said it but July was bloodiest month yet) and it seems ever more impossible to achieve any objective whatsoever aside from arbitrary elections of public figures that cant even control their own people (not to say that even we can anynmore) What makes you think that this conditional pullout that you support will ever happen? You certainly cant think the insurgency will just stop one day, and its clearer every day that we cant really stop them, so honestly, do you see that as ever happening?
Or, as I, and evidently a growing magority of American citizens (who collectively would elect the hypothetical national democrat) are coming to think, is it the case that theres nothing left that we can accomplish over there, so instead of letting our servicemen and women be killed in the name of nothing, maybe get them out and strategically redeploy them to where they can do some good.
Dugger, have you been paying attention? Do you have any idea what’s happening in Iraq? Of course you don’t because you get all your information from Sean Hannity.
Over 3,000 Iraqis were killed in sectarian violence last month. We don’t control enough of Iraq to actually surrender it to anybody. We have been reduced to traffic cops caught in the middle of a bloody civil war. We are accomplishing nothing there.
Unless the argument for staying is matched with a call for a massive increase in US troops it is utterly meaningless. It is the same thing as surrender only with continuing US casualties for as long as we are there. I haven’t seen you or anyone on the right talking about escalation. Of course, you’re all big on “taking the PC gloves off” but that’s all mental masturbation from the keyboard kommando set who seem to get off on war porn.
When it comes to doing what needs to be done, if we are going to stay, which is doubling, at the least, the number of troops on the ground to control a growing insurgency, it’s nothing but crickets.
So you say we absolutely have to stay but don’t want to make any of the hard, difficult choices that need to be made in order to make staying work.
Between staying with no change in plan or resources and leaving according to a timetable coordinated with Iraqi forces, I’ll take the timetable, thank you very much.
Or do you want to step up and start demanding for escalation? Any republicans out there want to run on the draft? I didn’t think so.
The only way we’ve been able to reduce our casualties has been by staying on base. Naturally, this has meant we’ve conceded our mission of nation building to the unready Iraqi forces, who’ve been correspondingly decimated (and infilatrated by sectarian death squads).
If victory’s off the table, Dugger, then what do you imagine surrender would bring that we haven’t already witnessed?
“And I support a pullout – when conditions permit – per the assessmnt of our in-theater military.”
So you support surrender, too? Oh you hack. You gloriously moronic hack.
Dugger’s only brave enough to surrender when political conditions permit. Feeding the neighbor kids into the wood chipper for nothing is easy compared to that. That’s the limit of conservative courage these days.
“I still contend no national office Democrat will run on the surrender/cut and run/stratgic redeployment platform.”
Gosh, I wonder why not?
Could it have anything to do with a (swift)boatload of Republicans waiting to holler “Cut and run! Cut and run!” as soon as anybody asks whetehr we oughta start thinking about how to get ourselves free of Iraq?
Rex,
You can have all the internal goals (as timetables or whatever) you want. But you don’t specify to the world you are going to pull out by a specific date or per a specific time period – like within the next year. The lack of good alternatives does not mean you should be satisfied with a very bad alternative. Your party will not run on that alternative. If they do, they lose a winnable election IMO.
It isn’t clear to me that things are worse or that conditons are dramatically worsening. I expect ebb and flow and I expect the insurgents/terroists will kick it up a notch to try and influence the elections. I have no easy answers and suspect any who does of idiocy. We can’t pull out and encourage terrorism worldwide and indicate to the bad guys in the world that all you have to do is fight a low grade insurgency and the fat-rich Americans will wear out and turn tail. Likewise, I see no strong possibility of a quick victory over the insurgency. What I have not heard recently is the military’s assesment of how training of the Iraqis is really going. That is the best hope. And I would still not bet that, even if the Iraqis are ready at one point, they won’t revert at a later point.
You think the failure of our military to capture Osama when we basically knew where he was doesnt encourage the terrorists? You think the fact that it takes only one insurgent sniper to hold off a military division encourages the terrorists? You dont think every day we remain in Iraq, sacrificing soldiers in the name of accomplishing no attainable goals, you dont think that every day we spend losing this war before we just end up admitting it, you dont think that encourages the terrorists? Not even a little ittle witty bit?
Fascinating.
Oh, and as far as the training or the Iraqi military, that hasnt been looking too good. In 2004 there was precisely 1 division capable of autonomous operation, after a year it went down to 0. Also there was that footage of the first class to graduate from the new military academy over there, predominantly sunni, told they were going to defend the shiite teritory, and right there in the field they stripped off their uniform in protest, leaving. Maybe theres a good reason you havent heard any good news about that lately. Maybe its because theres no incentive for the iraqi citizens to inlest if we’re willing to get shot at for them.
“But you don’t specify to the world you are going to pull out by a specific date or per a specific time period – like within the next year.”
Yeah, that’s soooo much more embarrassing than announcing to the world that Iraq has WMD, or that we’ll be welcomed as liberators, or that freedom is on the march, or that the insurgency is in its last throes.
Having a plan for getting out would be waaay worse.
“It isn’t clear to me that things are worse or that conditons are dramatically worsening.”
I suspect people who says things like this of idiocy too, Dugs.
The funny things is Dugger, low-grade insugencies have a solid record of thwarting Western powers for nigh on a century now. That’s why Bush’s lack of post invasion planning is so astonishing. They should have known this would happen. To suddenly think we can turn things around now without a radical change of course is pure fantasy.
So tell us Dugs, do you support escalation of our presence in Iraq?
It’s not that we need to keep the troops in Iraq to save face. If we pull out without a solid changeover plan and troops to effect that (mutinational, Iraqi) then the Civil War we started will descimate that country.
We all may be against the war, I am, but we are there, and the damage is done. To further prevent Iraq from becoming an all out, hellfire mess -worse than what it already is- a sensible handover plan has to be in effect.
Nobody wants another Bay of Pigs or Kurdish uprising on our hands. We went in there and it was the wrong answer. As unpalatable as that reality is, there is no sense arguing alternate histories. We live in a world where Iraq is occupied by US troops, and we’re caught in the crossfire. So argue what we should have done, or how another party would have handled it better or what we could have done to avoid it is meaningless outside of learning from our mistakes.
Rex,
First. I seriously doubt we ‘knew’ where he was. I believe that is urban legend. We may have suspected he was within a certain region, but thats about it. You have to be a little wacko (and I don’t think you are) to think Bush was told by his military commanders that they could capture OBL and he said no.
Secondly, I think the terrorists hate us for what we are, they did before Iraq and do after Iraq. Who we are IS all the encouragement they need – not what we are doing in Iraq – or elsewhere.
(9/11, many incidents well before Iraq, Bush, etc). I believe the WOT is predicated on religion, ideology, culture and maybe race. Those things don’t go away with Iraq.
And I knew of the one division situation and the apparent retrogression – if it was/is that. And, yeah, that concerns the hell out of me. I wish I knew a better alternative. I don’t think quitting is the right thing to do.
Quaker,
“So tell us Dugs, do you support escalation of our presence in Iraq?”
Honest answer. No. And that doesn’t mean I have a better answer. I guess if I were Bush I would be telling my commanders (and I bet he has) that we must push the Iraqi training very hard – that the Iraqis must understand that we can’t stay forever. And if the Iraqis show no sign of progress and our military says its hopeless? Probably start a slow, unannounced, drawdown of US forces and then,declare victory, leaving a few well defended enclaves in more secure areas. In short, I would do everything possible to make it look to the Ts of the world that we are leaving per our own internal criteria.
If this were day one, I probably would not have gone in. Bu this ain’t day one. we have to deal with reality.
“In short, I would do everything possible to make it look to the Ts of the world that we are leaving per our own internal criteria.”
Dugger you’ve consumed so much Kool Aid you don’t know your head from your ass. We’re to exit on the QT with an “unannounced drawdown” and then, when we’re all gone and no one has noticed, we’re going to declare victory? Brilliant. Nothing says ‘We’ve accomplished all of our goals’ like slippping out the backdoor when no one is looking.
The fact of the matter is your “plan” is just more bullshit. How exactly does one manage a “slow, unannounced drawdown”? Are we going to start handing soldiers civilian clothes and dark sunglasses and send them to the aiport one at a time? Are the Iraqis going to wake up one morning and wonder where all the Americans went all of a sudden? The second we start pulling troops out at any rate the world is going to know what’s going on and we’re going to have to tell them why: ‘Hey, we’ve won on our own terms.’ But if that doesn’t include real security for the Iraqi people, you’re right back where you started.
And if we haven’t been able to accomplish that in three years how are we going to get to that point with the same number of increasingly weary troops?
And how exactly do we make it looke to the Ts of the world that we haven’t just chosen some arbitrary milestone on which to hang our vicotry hat? We have already missed opportunity after opportunity to declare victory and start leaving: The capture of Baghdad, the capture of Hussein, the handover to an Iraqi government, every one of the elections. At every point when people on the left said, ‘Hey, now’s our chance to declare victory and begin a draw down’ they were met with
the same bullshit from asshats like yourself: To leave now would be surrender.
So what’s the next obvious milestone on the calendar to democracy, bright boy? We’re pretty much stcuk with the training of Iraqi soldiers. Great. How’s that been going?
According to the military the effort to raise and train a 10 division Iraqi army is 85 percent complete. Fantastic. But last month was the deadliest month in Iraq since the beginning of the invasion. If we’ve got 85 percent of the Iraqi troops trained and the violence is still getting worse, tell me what good the remaing 20 percent are going to do, especially after we start “secretly” exiting stage left? Then again, if the Iraqi Army is 85 percent trained why haven’t we seen a comensurate drawdown of US troops? Why, indeed, are the Marines now calling up 2,500 troops from the Ready Reserve? Something doesn’t jibe. But then again nothing ever does with this administration.
If we want the Iraqis to take us seriously, we have to give them a timetable for getting their own asses in gear. Otherwise, what’s the rush? Although maybe we could just whisper to them that we’re really, really, really serious this time.
If we announce a timetable set to improvements in Iraqi troop training (John Kerry’s plan by the way) who cares what the insurgents think? When we reach the end of the timetable the Iraqi army will be able to take over so it won’t make any difference, right? The whole argument that the terrorists will just wait us out if we set a condition-based timetable is bullshit because it assumes that the Iraqi troops won’t be able to do the job. Well, if that’s the case WTF are training them for then?
The bottom line is that what you consider a “serious” plan is nothing more than smoke and mirrors to save face for the conservative idiots, such as yourself, who supported this war from the beginning and fucked up its planning at every stage. You’re right that this isn’t Day One, Dugs. But it doesn’t hurt to remember who was right and who was wrong on that day. We were right and you were wrong. You’re wrong now and the hollowness of your response only proves it.
“I would do everything possible to make it look to the Ts of the world that we are leaving per our own internal criteria”
No offense intended, but this is bullshit. The Ts are indifferent to how it appears. There’s no changing that our leaving will be spun by them as a victory. But the thing is, we’ve already lost, so it’s inevitable. We can still reduce the butcher’s bill now, though.
Again, whichever administration pulls out, it shouldn’t be to save face. It should be to prevent Iraq from falling further into chaos. That’s job #1 right now. Save our guys and save the rest of Iraq from crumbling (partition anyone?)
It isn’t a matter of ’saving face.’ Its a matter of combatting terrorism and extremism. A major terrorist victory,as in effect proposed by the Sheehan/Lamont wing of the party, would a huge morale lifter and a great recruiting tool for the Ts. Therefore I would and I would hope any President would seek to deny them this advantage. But I take it progressives would not? Perhaps, you would congratulate the Ts on their victory over G Bush?
And I will reiterate my reiteration. When the time comes, the loony anti-war left, the Sheenhan and Lamont supporters, will get screwed by adult Democrats, who will not hand the Ts a victory, and it will be 1968 and LBJ all over again. The Great Dugger is saying it first. It will happen!
I’ll reiterate my reiteration. Dugger you’re an idiot.
In your fevered brain leaving Iraq quietly in a “slow, unnanounced drawdown” is a victory for us but leaving according to an announced timetable is to “hand the Ts a victory.” WTF is the difference if Iraq is still a charnal house in both instances?
Following Bush administration rhetoric straight down the line you have set no other definition of victory other than staying long enough to declare victory. The American people are catching on to the hollowness of this “plan” which is why you’ll see considerable Democratic wins in November.
Bush and the conservatives have failed.
frame,
You always write the most words and you’re always wrong the most times.
I did not say that the assumed ’slow drawdown” theoretical scenario was a victory – I said, in that event, I would declare victory.
And my definiton of victory would be a cessation of hostilities by the Ts and insurgents and establishment of a modern democratic Mideastern state – other than Israel – in Iraq. Should that (IMO ) unlikely event happen, NEOCONS would be supreme.
Oh I see, so smoke and mirrors is all you’ve got. Typical, given that fantasy is all the neocons had going in.
If things continue apace, as they no doubt will, your response is nothing more substantial than “We’ll still pull out but make up a really good bullshit reason why.” And yet you insist that it’s liberals, who have a real plan for putting pressure on the Iraqi government to step up, who want to surrender. That’s why you’re an idiot hack, Dugs.
Under the hypothetical scenario which assumes the military has said (which they have not) the Iraqis will never come up to speed (kind of a second worst case scenario, the worst being “strategic redeployment” – your ‘real plan’ which realists know as ’surrender’), I would try as Pres to minimize the bad fallout and to demoralize the Ts/Is. Whereas you would hand them outright victory.
Dugger, even as a right leaning centrist I agree that Iraq was the wrong venue to combat terrorism. Don’t forget the mission drift that’s taken place. First it was yellowcake and WMDs,then it became about liberation. When administrations start selling me like that, I start seriously scrutinizing the cause for war.
The problem of ‘taking the war’ to the terrorists is the same as combating NVA. When they are scattered about the world and hidden amongst villages and municipalities, there’s no one venue to deploy your military.
The solution will come from small strike forces and good intelligence.
When Bush said ’smoke them out’ that’s exactly the tactic I thought he meant. But you don’t smoke out terrorists from caves and safe houses by rolling over an entire nation, because they’re not all there. You hit them strategically, where they hide, by surprise, then gather up all the body parts and computer parts and assemble the next phase of the attack.
Now that I just violated my main concept by arguing a hypothetical history, I’ll say this. Now that we are there, basic laws of Terrorism PR dictate that no matter how or when we pull out, terrorists will shuttle a Betamax over to Al Jazeera and claim victory. Those nuts will lose 10,000 people, but because we didn’t kill the 10,0001th they defeated the Western Imperialist Crusaders.
And to make sure I get pummelled from both sides, Frame, the Conservatives failed in the Iraq policy, but we have no way of knowing if the Democrats would have had any more success. I’m sure you take solice that the Dems would have crushed terrorism in a week, but I think this is a minefield for whomever had the unenviable task of responding to terrorism after 9/11. If we want to really make an argument, I understand ABC’s docudrama about 9/11 specifically puts blame on the Clinton administration and Sandy Berger for responding to the growing threat of terrorism ineffectively that led up to 9/11. Berger was specifically involved with letting Osama go in Sudan.
So, no, I think its way to simplistic to say the Democrats would have crushed terrorism when they were the ones who allowed conditions for escalation. My point this whole thread is that its almost unwinnable from a PR standpoint, no matter who is in power.
…and I cite an ABC show because they are left leaning, and the show is a fictionalized account based on the findings of the 9/11 Commission, not an arbitray fantasy written by Aaron Sorkin.
With all due respect, Steve, we don’t know yet whether Iraq is a failure. Time will tell, but now is too early. In a war,we can always look back see a turning point, but that point is hard to define when you are in the middle of things.
I agree. I think I said in another thread in the middle of the fog its hard to get perspective.
It’s a failure in terms of a PR campaign. I’m for properly applied military action, but we’ve definitely bungled the post war strategy by not planning for a strong insurgency. I think we felt we’d meet with resistence, but not on a large scale.
If you’re going to go in, good. Kick ass, topple the government and then impose martial law. Enforce it with an iron fist.
We don’t have the stomach anymore to do that, unfortunately. America has gotten soft because of the PCization of our society. People would just get sick and curl up in a ball if we actually did what is proper military theory.
Basically, when you conquer a nation, you have to break the will of the population. You are still an enemy until every last combatant is dead. You can’t go in as friends and liberators if you weren’t asked to, so it has to be maintained as a war until all the enemies are dead. Then you sort out who’s a friend and help rebuild the country. We did it in WWII, and the countries we conquered are now allies and trading partners.
And how exactly would you “demoralize the Ts”? Call them names from the deck as we leave? What’s your plan to pretend we scored a victory?
And guys, it isn’t a matter of “seeing what happens” in Iraq. It’s happening right now. It’s out of control and no one has a plan to bring it back under control. Period. All the right has is a political cudgel to weild on anyone who would suggest that they blew it, which, indeed, they have.
frame, For the umpteenth time. There is a plan – like it or not: Bring the Iraqis up to speed – make them self-sufficient.
And if I convince the Ts that the Great Satan believes it has successfully accomplished its mission in Iraq – that would be demoralizing for them. But even moreso, they would be highly encouraged if we quit and left them a victory on the battlefield. You may think we are creating tons of Ts in Iraq now (I don’t, but to each his own) but just wait till we hand them a huge victory in Iraq. Contributions and recruitment will pour in.
Dugger, “the plan” is not working. Your solution is to continue on with the failed plan unchange for a few more years as the violence continues apace, then leave unnannounced and declare victory no matter what the situation is on the ground. That’s sheer lunacy. Only a hardcore idealogue, such as yourself, would suggest otherwise.