Letters to the Editor
-
poor comparsion when you
look at the cost of illegals to u.s. taxpayers. And, if leftist Congress decides to make them legal, 453 Trillion
every year for taxpayers. At least, the War is winning in
Iraq.
-
Elephantman is an animal
Elephantman: "But does anybody seriously think that we're not doing the right thing and doing good there, with our forces in the region? Building and protecting oil revenues, power grids, communications, infrastructure, security forces, etc., etc."
You kind of skipped over the whole part where the U.S. screwed up immediately after the invasion by not maintaining security, not training soldiers to be respectful to the country's citizens, not finding WMD, not having a plan for employing the country's military, and essentially giving insurgencies every reason to recruit people to fight against us.
Is the U.S. doing good in Iraq? It remains to be seen. We're keeping the country on life support as its various organs continue their comatose decline, with others coming back here and there, only to decline again. The country has already lost millions and millions of its citizens who have left forever -- many of them among the most professional and educated classes. It has also lost what is estimated to be over a million citizens to war-related death.
Elephantman: "As for the "failure of diplomacy", I remember the voices on the far left who claimed that our blockade/embargo of Iraq was costing the lives of hundreds of thousands of children. I never believed it, but the "failure of diplomacy" argument is a joke."
Both the left and the right criticized the containment policy, because it resulted in a stalemate and Saddam manipulated the situation in a way that benefited his government but left many of his people ailing. The problem with the policy is that the U.S. kept it in place without updating it, without bringing other countries to the table in trying to solve it, and basically without taking a lead in finding a solution outside of war. But we damn well could have. We had all the time and money and dipolomatic muscle to do so. Saddam was not an imminent threat. We could have found a way to depose him. We could have put the CIA to work forming factions against him, just like they've spent the past 40+ years doing all over South America. We could have maintained containment for a measly $5-$10 billion a year and let the country continue to rot, which would have been terrible but not nearly as terrible as the current war. We could have found any of a dozen other ways to move past the situtation, using our American ingenuity and creativity, and actually imposing a plan that gave the Iraqi people and other Middle Eastern countries some say in the matter, rather than forcing our will on all of them.
Elephantman: "Before anybody else complains about "counterinsurgency" warfare, please point me to the place in Salon where I can find writing about the monstrous crimes committed by the terrorists, the suicide bombers and the IED makers of the middle east."
Please point me to a place in Salon that discusses those matters as if they are anything short of horrible. But then again, most of those insurgents wouldn't exist without the U.S. giving them a motive for existing.
-
@migtex1234
migtex1234: "look at the cost of illegals to u.s. taxpayers. And, if leftist Congress decides to make them legal, 453 Trillion every year for taxpayers."
Huh? I am pretty sure $453 trillion is more money than exists on the entire planet.
-
Are we doing the right thing?
Yeah, but only because leaving after destroying anything resembling a stable government would be the wrong thing.
Gonna put this out there again, Elephantman, because I am truly interested in hearing how this can possibly be defended - Rumsfeld caused every problem we have faced in Iraq since after we defeated their military by cutting the troop deployment from 300,000 to 100,000. I remember like it was yesterday, sitting in my office and hearing old Donald bragging about how we were going to be able to do this on the cheap and thinking to myself "We're going to lose this war because of this idiot." And I was right. We're still there, Americans and Iraqis are still dying, and there is no end in sight, at least none that doesn't involve leaving these people with no government at all and making the situation exponentially worse.
We went in there and removed the only person capable of leading that country, due to his own policy of killing anyone who could possibly oppose him to be sure but we knew that going in, with not enough men to keep the peace and a plan that was blown to smithereens by a SecDef who wanted to kick things off with a nice press release. And we did know what would happen going in, because that's why we let Hussein live the first time we went there.
Don't talk about heroes on the ground and then defend the asshole who cost all those lives and limbs in the same paragraph.
Point being that anyone who thought we were going to be able to get out of there in less than 10 years after the initial screw ups had to be mildly retarded at the very least. And anyone who can't see how badly we have screwed this up is just fucking stupid.
-
It ain't just money, blood, and world opinion
The Iraq war, for all it's human and economic and prestige cost, may yet exact another bad decision and costly major policy blunder.
The moment the trade center was hit, all those people who secretly want a WWII army and compulsory military service woke up, "Here's our chance to get the draft back!" they said, and I guess John McCain was among them. The collectivists like Bayhr, Froggy Mikulski, Rangel, Hagel and a host of other compulsory national service types have seen the opportunity, too.
Fortunately, Donald Rumsfeld, who abolished the draft in the 1970s, said flat out there would be no revival of the draft while he was at Defense, and he stuck to that position. Nor, so far, have the american people been foolish enough to want to revive compulsory service for anybody.
But now we have the marxist Mr. Obama and his children's crusade. Is he leading them to a system of compulsory service? He sure hasn't said "there will be no draft, no compulsory national service", has he? And there is talk Obama will have pro--draft Hagel as his Defense Secretary. Chairman Mao, the cult Hero, had a slogan "Serve the People!" It really meant, "Serve the Government." How about it, cult hero and movement leader Obama?