It's bad enough that we Georgians have to suffer the idiocy of Jimmy Carter, who never met a dictator he couldn't appease, but now Max Cleland, our whining ex-senator has to check in with an inane op-ed comparing Iraq to Viet nam.
The president of the United States decides to go to war against a nation led by a brutal dictator supported by one-party rule. That dictator has made war on his neighbors. The president decides this is a threat to the United States.In his campaign for president he gives no indication of wanting to go to war. In fact, he decries the overextension of American military might and says other nations must do more. However, unbeknownst to the American public, the president's own Pentagon advisers have already cooked up a plan to go to war. All they are looking for is an excuse.
As he will write later in the op-ed, he is talking about Johnson and Viet Nam, but he wants you to think that he's talking about Bush. Unfortunately, he doesn't have a leg to stand on (Sorry. couldn't resist), since Bush had no intention of going to war with anyone when he was elected. That didn't happen until after 9/11.
Based on faulty intelligence, cherry-picked information is fed to Congress and the American people. The president goes on national television to make the case for war, using as part of the rationale an incident that never happened. Congress buys the bait -- hook, line and sinker -- and passes a resolution giving the president the authority to use "all necessary means" to prosecute the war.
Once again, he is talking about Viet Nam, trying to make us think he's talking about what's going on now. But golly, even the hero of the Dimocrat Party, Bill Clinton, said in 1998 that Irag had WMD's.
The war is started with an air and ground attack. Initially there is optimism. The president says we are winning. The cocky, self-assured secretary of defense says we are winning. As a matter of fact, the secretary of defense promises the troops will be home soon.
Viet Nam again. Dimocrat president. Max, you're badmouthing your own party here. Now let's see what words of wisdom Max has to impart.
Unfortunately, the people who drove the engine to get into the war in Iraq never served in Vietnam. Not the president. Not the vice president. Not the secretary of defense. Not the deputy secretary of defense. Too bad. They could have learned some lessons:
Neither did the draft dodger who inhabited the White House for eight years.
Don't underestimate the enemy. The enemy always has one option you cannot control. He always has the option to die. This is especially true if you are dealing with true believers and guerillas fighting for their version of reality, whether political or religious. They are what Tom Friedman of The New York Times calls the "non-deterrables." If those non-deterrables are already in their country, they will be able to wait you out until you go home.
There is a big difference between the jungles of Viet Nam and Iraq. And most of the guerilla fighting is going on in the Sunni triangle. Max is supposedly a "war hero", but he wants us to lose in Iraq. Disgusting.
If the enemy adopts a "hit-and-run" strategy designed to inflict maximum casualties on you, you may win every battle, but (as Walter Lippman once said about Vietnam) you can't win the war.
When we start having hundreds of Americans shipped home in body bags maybe this argument will make sense. We are taking nowhere near the amount of caualties as we did in Viet Nam.
If you adopt a strategy of not just pre-emptive strike but also pre-emptive war, you own the aftermath. You better plan for it. You better have an exit strategy because you cannot stay there indefinitely unless you make it the 51st state.
I guess Max missed the part where we were planning to install a democratic gummint in Iraq. That must of been when he was wallowing in self pity over his election loss.
If you do stay an extended period of time, you then become an occupier, not a liberator. That feeds the enemy against you.
I guess Max also missed reading about the aftermath of World War II when we occupied Germany and Japan for "an extended period of time" while rebuilding those countries (which is the plan in Iraq) and eventually instituting self rule (which is also the plan in Iraq). But then, Max is a Dimocrat and has to speak of doom and gloom. The Dimocrat Party is totally bankrupt of ideas and can only run on their hatred of Bush.
If you want to know what is really going on in the war, ask the troops on the ground, not the policy-makers in Washington.
All the troops on the ground that are writing to us bloggers say what's going on in Iraq is nowhere near as bad as what the lamestream media says.
In a democracy,
We live in a republic Max.
instead of truth being the first casualty in war, it should be the first cause of war.
Dontcha just love to hear Dimocrats talk about truth when they had to defend the biggest liar who ever inhabited the Oval Office? Geez Bill, and Hillary, lie about the stupidest things.
Bill: If Iraq attacks Israel I would grab a gun and fight and die defending Israel. Yeah. Right. He wouldn't even fight for his own country the cowardly bastard.
Hillary: I was named after Sir Edmund Hillary. (She was born in 1947 before Sir Edmund Hilary had climbed Mount Everest.)
Hillary: I actually talked to a Marine recruiter about joining but my vision was too bad. BWAHAHAHAHAHAHA!
It is the only way the Congress and the American people can cope with getting through it. As credibility is strained, support for the war and support for the troops go downhill. Continued loss of credibility drains troop morale, the media become more suspicious, the public becomes more incredulous and Congress is reduced to hearings and investigations.
And the Dimocrat Party does everything in their power to undermine the war effort.
Instead of learning the lessons of Vietnam, where all of the above happened, the president, the vice president, the secretary of defense and the deputy secretary of defense have gotten this country into a disaster in the desert.
To paraphrase your hero, it all depends on your definition of disaster.
They attacked a country that had not attacked us. They did so on intelligence that was faulty, misrepresented and highly questionable.
We attacked a country that was a sponsor of terrorism. We attacked a country that Bill Clinton, in 1998, stated had weapons of mass destruction. All the leading Dimocrats at that time agreed with Bill. What changed in five years? We had a Republican in the White House. So did Saddam eat the weapons between 1998 and now? Did he destroy them? If he did, why didn't he produce proof? Then he would still be in power. So Max, should we just pack up and leave? Ooops, we goofed! Here Saddam, here's your country back. The Dimocrats said it was an unjust war. You can go back to killing people.
A key piece of that intelligence was an outright lie that the White House put into the president's State of the Union speech.
A piece of intelligence that the Brits stand by. How can that be a lie?
These officials have overextended the American military, including the National Guard and the Reserve, and have expanded the U.S. Army to the breaking point.
Then maybe if your hero, Bill Clinton, hadn't cut the military by half, it wouldn't be "overextended". And Rumsfeld says it isn't.
A quarter of a million troops are committed to the Iraq war theater, most of them bogged down in Baghdad. Morale is declining and casualties continue to increase.
And don't you Dimocrats hope that is what is happening. Once again, the mail that we bloggers are receiving from the soldiers paints a different picture. Maybe if you assholes would get on board and support the War on Terrorism. But, that's right, you're Dimocrats. You didn't want to fight communism. That's why the Cold War lasted for 40 years. You wimpy ass anti-American assholes are gonna make the War on Terrorism last for 40 years.
In addition to the human cost, the war in dollars costs $1 billion a week, adding to the additional burden of an already depressed economy.
The recession ended two years ago. I guess you missed it. And how much are you willing to pay to prevent another 9/11. Max, war was declared on us. We have to take it to the enemy. We have to clean up the mess in ther Middle East. Iraq was the first step. I just hope we don't get a Dimocrat elected in 2004 who would fuck up what we have begun. This is gonna take a while. Troops are gonna die. That happens in war.
The president has declared "major combat over" and sent a message to every terrorist, "Bring them on." As a result, he has lost more people in his war than his father did in his and there is no end in sight.
Kiss my ass! We want them to come to us. Our soldiers are trained to kill. Better to kill 'em in Iraq than in the United States, you defeatest asshole!
Military commanders are left with extended tours of duty for servicemen and women who were told long ago they were going home.
I remember Clinton saying we were only gonna be in the Balkans for a year. Guess what? We're still there. I didn't hear you bitch about that Max. In WWII my father was overseas for three years. A tour of duty in Viet Nam was one year (unless you were Algore and then it was three months and you had a bodyguard)
We are keeping American forces on the ground, where they have become sitting ducks in a shooting gallery for every terrorist in the Middle East.
Yep! Our troops are dropping like flies.
Welcome to Vietnam, Mr. President. Sorry you didn't go when you had the chance.
Sorry Max. This is nowhere close to Viet Nam, and how come I never heard you bitch about Bill Clinton not going to Viet Nam when he was blowing up goats in Afghanistan, bombing an aspirin factory in the Sudan, and committing troops to the Balkans?
You are a hypocritical anti-American asshole!