Where do you want to start, the suppression of free elections in 1956 meant to reunify the country? The military, political, and financial support of a corrupt puppet government? The Tonkin hoax? The My Lai massacre? Nixon’s failure to end the war in 1969? The decision to escalate (or “surge”, if you prefer) into Cambodia and Laos? The Cambodian bombing which elevated the Khmer Rouge from a radical fringe group to a powerful, murderous national force? Maybe you want to discuss disastrous domestic missteps like Kent State? What about Nixon’s own belief that the only way to win in Vietnam was with a massive strike destroying the irrigations systems and waterways in North Vietnam, causing enormous flooding and the deaths of hundreds of thousands (forgetting any long term consequences, such as disease), or to use nuclear weapons?

Shall I go on? There’s plenty more.

Just Google “Pentagon Papers” or any of the thousands of sites about the long and sordid history of the U.S., France, Japan, and many others in Vietnam. Not that any amount of reality will trump your “expertise”,” naturally.

From babble to incoherence to utter insanity. Seems to be the trajectory of most conservative thinking these days …

Translation from leftist speak to english:

“Its the joooosssss……the jooosssss….!”

It’s not like we’re trying to take their oil.

Afghanistan, anyone?

There’s always the sticky issue of continued U.S. support for that beacon of Democracy, Saudi Arabia. The home to one of the region’s most oppressive governments, not to mention Bin Laden and most of the 9/11 hijackers.

The U.S. practice of using military bases to spread military, economic and political control.

All this and I haven’t even touched on the disastrous influence of the U.S. and hard right Israelis on the region (blocked peace talks with Syria, Israel’s unofficial nuclear arsenal, the occupied territories, Lebanon, Sheba Farms, etc.).

Maybe next time I’ll eviscerate the Vietnam (another illegal invasion) and the “lefties” canard.

Fish.

Barrel.

Shoot.

Too easy.

1953 Iran

It’s not like we’re actively trying to undermine Iran, or ignoring their entreaties for peace.
I mean, Iran took British hostages, right? They clearly are the problem here, not U.S. policy.

We are Americans, sir, just like you. We want an end to hostilities. That’s where we seem to part ways.

Absolute bullshit.

I find it rather amusing that the right, from Bush right on down to Pedro, can know exactly what the insurgents are going to do. How the fuck do you know they are going to “wait us out”? I keep hearing the same thing from you guys, over and over. How do you know what our enemy is going to do next? All y’all have been so mind-numbingly wrong thus far, it kinda doesn’t instill confidence in your prognostication abilities.

The only person running out the clock is George W. Bush. If he can keep our troops in Iraq until Jan. 2008, then “MISSION ACCOMPLISHED!”

Remember, pedro, what matters most isn’t what we think we’re doing, it’s what they think we’re doing and how they choose to spin it. Perception is everything here and we’ve done a lousy job of managing that perception. Even if you want to believe that the US foreign policy has been an utterly benign and positive presence in the Middle East over the last 30 years, radical Islam is an atavistic response to larger forces of globalisation that are widely perceived in the rest of the wrold not as neutral cultural/economic/technological process but as Westernization. It’s perceived as a threat to traditional values — hmmmm, where have I heard that phrase used before — with a Western, particularly US face. We didn’t do ourselves any favors by invading Iraq and given the radicals the opportunity to spin it as actual concrete evidence of the vague cultural threats that they’ve been harranguing about for decades.

So aagin, you simply have no idea what you;re talking and would prefer to subsitute some bizarre version of history that suits your ideological bent for an actual awareness of how the US and its interests act and are perceived in the world.

To confuse an actual awareness of the historical forces shaping the world with the idea that “we made them do it” is the height of idiocy. To suggest that withdrawing from Iraq is “doing nothing” is equally inane. An announced withdrawal would create the conditions for the political settlement that is the only way to move forward in iraq. It is the first step to doing the only, real, concrete thing that has a hope of ending violence. Building walls around Sunni and Shiite neighborhoods then bombing the fuck out of them, is not a plan for bringing the country together.

Of course, now you want me to beleive that the insurgents haven’t begun to “wait us out” yet because we haven’t announced a withdrawal date. From this logic, I gather that as soon as we do they will lay down their arms and start the waiting. Well, pedro, if we announced that we were going to leave entirely at the end of 2008, and the insurgents acted as you susggest, that’s an entire year of radically reduced violence during which time we could continue to train Iraqi troops while working towards a permanent political solution, a political solution made all the more possible by our announced withdrawal. Wouldn’t that be a good fucking thing?

As it stands now the surge is a joke. By “pacifying many of the worst places in Iraq” do you mean Baghdad, which is the only place in Iraq where the surge is being carried out? Just semantic slight of hand is typical of the right wing and it obfuscates the facts which clearly show that Baghdad is not being pacified. The bombing continues, attacks on US soldiers are up and the Iraqi government is falling apart. The surge has done nothing to achieve any of the goals we’ve set for it.

Bush has been in charge of this war from the beginning and everything he has tried has failed. Everything. For crying out loud, all other reality-based reasons aside, isn’t fucking time we try something different?

Right. Kinda like that “smoking gun=mushroom cloud” and “Hussein and Bin Laden were BFFs before 9-11″ crap that we heard in 2002.

Am I getting this convoluted leftists logic right so far?

As far as the radicals not waiting us out yet, of course they aren’t you mental midget, we haven’t told them when we were leaving yet! Currently we are running up a surge of men, which is having its desired effect of pacifying many of the worst places in Iraq (I’ll let you google it yourself, I am tired of punching in random numbers when I link…)So maybe YOU should be reading the news

The lefties want to see another cambodian killing field that they can wash their hands of, the conservatives actually believe that people are valuable and don’t buy the leftists (and 4 year old children’s) argument that “we made the islamic fundamentalist do it!”

At the same time, you are totally ignorant of the historical context from which this entire conflict has emerged. Some right wing moron came up with a snappy slogan “We weren’t in Afghanistan when 9-11 happened” and it had its intended effect on you: You totally shut off your brain.

9-11 didn’t just happen in a vacuum you dolt. Radical Islam has had one propaganda claim to stir the hate and fear filled to their side: The West, lead by America, is trying to subjugate, occupy and destroy Islamic countries and peoples. They have been saying this since at least the 1970s. We have done little to dispel this interpretation of our actions in our dealings with the middle east and our invasion of Iraq is, for the radical Islamists, the ultimate confirmation of our intentions in the Middle East.
Tell the Iraqi people that we have no long term ambitions to remain in Iraq and then give them visible signs that we will be withdrawing and we have the chance to undermine and disprove decades of radical islamic propaganda: At the precise moment our plans for hegemony seemed most evident, we did the exact opposite of what radicals said we would do. I think that would go along way towards undermining the radicals ability to spin their bullshit. Everyday, week, month, year etc. that we stay in Iraq, for every permanent base we build, we will be reinforcing decades of suspicion and appear to be doing exactly what the radicals always said we were going to do.

As for the Iraqi people’s support of the US forces, a unch of feel good photos on some dudes website doesn’t a counterinsurgency make.

If you look at the current violence in Iraq and look at the
polls of the Iraqi people. They don’t want us there any longer. We are seen as occupiers, we are seen as part of the problem.

Moderates in Iraq can’t get any traction because their enemies can readily accuse of them of being puppets of the American occupiers and this resonates with Iraqis across sectarian lines
now:

What most Iraqis do seem to want, according to numerous polls, is for American forces to leave. Even within the current, skewed Iraqi political system, a majority of Iraq’s parliament supports a U.S. withdrawal. If we add to the mix the powerful Sunni-led resistance, including former Baathists, Sunni nationalists, and tribes, an overwhelming majority wants to end the occupation.

This shared desire could be another crucial force in helping maintain the integrity of Iraq. The catch-22 of Iraqi politics is that any Iraqi government created or supported by the United States is instantly suspect in Iraqi eyes. By the same token, a nationalist government that succeeds in ushering U.S. forces out of Iraq would have overwhelming support from most Iraqis on most sides of the conflict. With that support, such a government might be able to make the difficult compromises—like amending the constitution to give minority protections to Sunnis—that the Maliki government has been unable or unwilling to make but that most observers believe are crucial to any political settlement that might end the fighting.

I have no doubt that the violence in Iraq will probably get worse if we exit, but don’t sit there and tell me that anyone right now in Iraq is waiting to start killing until after we leave. Please. Do you even read the news anymore pedro?

The point is that in the time between when we announce our withdrawal and the time it actually takes place, it it’s a year, let’s say, would be enough time for some kind of political solution to be found, a solution that can’t be found now because no one, on any side, trusts US period.

The war is lost militarily pedro, it can only be won politically. Our setting a timeline for withdrawl is the onyl thing now that can create the conditions for that to happen.

I think you overstate things when you say no one wants to be associated with us…that is patently untrue. Check out Michael Yon’s website for some on the ground and outside the green zone reporting on how the iraqi people react to us….

The insurgents never needed a propaganda claim…remember 9/11? We weren’t in Afghanistan or Iraq then…its a canard

How so? What advantage are you talking about? The old canard of their “waiting us out”? You’ll have to be more specific if you want an answer.

At the same time, let me ask you, does it not also give our potential allies in Iraq an advantage? At present no one in Iraq wants to be associated with the Occupiers, even if they are on the side of creating a stable liberal democracy there. Being associated with the US can be a veritable death sentence for some, while others might simply refuse to help us out of a sense of nationalist pride. HUssein may have been a tryrant but at least he was our tyrant. (And i’m not saying such nationalism is rational, just that it’s a force we have to contend with).

Now if we announce a date of departure, these moderates and nationalists who might otherwise help us could point to the date and say, “See the Americans are leaving, they do not want to dominate us for decades to come. They are here to set up a government, restore peace and leave.” With the assurance of our departure, moderates can reach out to nationalists and others and begin to work toward building an Iraq that is not perceived as being under America’s thumb.

In other words, the sooner we set a guaranteed departure date, the sooner Iraqis will stop looing at us as a foreing occupier bent on subjugating Iraq for its oil. Now if you don’ think that’s a factor in the insurgency — be it an active or passive hostility — you’re fooling yourself.

Get rid of that hostility on the part of moderate iraqis and you have a chance of enlisting them in the fight against the insurgents and al-qeada. If we set a date to leave, the insurgents lose one of their biggest propaganda claims: The the US wants to dominate iraq forever and all good sons of iraq must resist them.

That’s a real advantage for us and for iraqis themselves.

You misspelled “twats”.

Advantage nuthin’. He’s a fucking enabler.