Letters to the Editor
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On a related note....
If the "Times" is printing administration talking points about troop reductions, this article, just posted (about 12:15 pm Saturday, PDT) warns us about the dire dangers posed by ending our occupation:
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/27/world/middleeast/27withdraw.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin
I am a subscriber, not sure if that link will work. One guess who is the principal reporter on this story.
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@rollotomasi
What is going to be any different for the Democrats about September after Petraeus paints the same picture we have been seeing for the last four-plus years?
Well, the NY Times piece says this:
…White House officials concede that they have bought a few months, at best. By the fall, they say, they are likely to lose several Republican senators and many members of the House who voted with Mr. Bush in recent weeks.
A NY Times poll on Friday reported
More Americans — 72 percent — now say that “generally things in the country are seriously off on the wrong track” than at any other time since the Times/CBS News poll began asking the question in 1983.
So, the Republicans—especially those in swing states—are in a perilous position. It is not unreasonable to think that Democrats will have their veto-proof majority in September.
We'll have to see how it all plays out, of course.
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@paul dirks...things are different now.
Paul wrote:
Yeah, that worked like a champ in Viet Nam.
For the record, over 1/3'rd the number of Americans were killed as are currently deployed in Iraq and it still took 12 years for sanity to prevail. Sharing the burden sounds great in theory but if you actually think it would immediately bring an end to the war then your living in an even more lucid fantasy than I am.
&&&&&&&&&&
You make a valid point, although I'd argue that that's one lesson everyone learned from Vietnam: that middle-class parents would not tolerate their kid dying in a war they didn't believe in.
I should not have said the war would be over immediately. But, in your heart-of-hearts, do you really think that if we'd had a draft all this time, with no loopholes (or very few), that this war would still be going on? I don't think so.
The middle-class in this country is much bigger than it was in 1970s, and in some ways it's more powerful, if that power can be harnessed.
You'd have thousands of kids refusing to go into the military, and their parents would be helping them.
call it a fantasy, but if we had a draft, I say this war would never have been fought. Or it would have been over years ago.
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brilliant tactics, really
So the White House has finally won its grand struggle to resist any issuing of 'timelines' or 'benchmarks' (at least the kind that have any kind of enforceable language behind them).
Here is a grand opportunity for them to show that they don't need no stinkin' benchmarks. The Daddy Party of the GOP knows that it needs to end the war! They're just not going to do it until we achieve Victory. Unlike the weak-kneed Democrats, who so clearly want to abandon the troops on the battlefield and let the Middle East descend into an endless cycle of violence obviously far more terrible than what we're currently witnessing.
So right, the Bush Administration can go to their mouthpieces in the press and tell them "We're thinking about cutting back troops, when the time is right, of course." Seems like smart politics to me, especially after the Democrats come across looking like the party of capitulation by signing off on the supplemental.
For all the talk from Democratic congressfolk about how the supplemental marks a change in the tone of dialogue on Iraq, the fact is, the executive branch still controls 100% of what is happening there. And simple 'policy leaks' like this one let them show the American people who's in charge. The war runs on their time, and will only end on their time.
I wonder though: what would it mean for the Democratic party if Bush *actually did* start withdrawing troops before the '08 elections?
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@jhillr64
Maybe instead of the draft, only those who vote in a national referendum supporting the war should have to pay for it out of their pockets, and/or go fight or send their sons/daughters to fight?
I like this idea. Since we all know a draft isn't coming, why not push legislation tying war funding to voluntary war bond sales?
I mean, it obviously won't happen. But asking the American population to support this war with their pocketbooks might hurt almost as much as asking them to support it with their children.
How bad would things have to get in order for our government to actually ask us to sacrifice ANYTHING?
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Here's another one...
..just in case no one has mentioned it.
In October, 2004, just a few weeks before the election, Donald Rumsfeld said
the United States may be able to reduce its troop levels in Iraq after the January elections if security improves and Iraqi government forces continue to expand and improve,
according to CNN.
I don't have the exact date and the link seems to be outdated, but my post on it was October 11, 2004 so it should have been a day or two before that.
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@tastycakes
But asking the American population to support this war with their pocketbooks might hurt almost as much as asking them to support it with their children.
I have searched quite a bit and can't find it on the intertubes but I recall once reading a quote that said "a full wallet often complains more loudly than an empty belly".
Personally, I think that Americans in general care *more* about their pocketbooks than their children.
The current administration know this full well, hence the funding of the occupation almost entirely with borrowed money.
If Americans truly cared about their children they wouldn't be passing on the costs of this occupation to their children and their children's children.
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Right Wing Actors Who Run for Public Office. WTF?
All these reasonable actors on the left and it seems the only ones that ever run are the few from the right. Why is this?