Bush sticks to his guns in Iraq

December 04, 2006
Bush Sticks to His Guns
By Michael Barone

"While George W. Bush's many critics and detractors portray him as
facing the same dilemma as Lyndon Johnson in Vietnam, Bush himself
seems determined to proceed the way Harry Truman did in Korea -- or, as
some might put it, as Winston Churchill did after Dunkirk.

Leading Democrats like Sen. Carl Levin of Michigan have been calling
for troop pullouts from Iraq starting in four to six months. The Iraq
Study Group co-chaired by James Baker and Lee Hamilton, The New York
Times tells us, will recommend a "gradual pullback" of troops, direct
negotiations with Iran and Syria and pressure on Israel to make
concessions to the Palestinians.

But Bush seems unpersuaded. "There's one thing I'm not going to do," he
said at last week's NATO summit in Riga, Latvia. "I'm not going to pull
our troops off the battlefield before the mission is complete."

In this, Bush has the support of others. Defense Secretary-designate
Robert Gates opposes a quick pullout. So does the Joint Chiefs of Staff
and the Central Command's Gen. John Abizaid.

Retired generals who have criticized Bush testified that we should send
more troops into Iraq. Democrats seem disinclined to use their
congressional majorities to cut short our mission in Iraq lest they be
blamed for the unpleasant consequences many predict.

So maybe the Vietnam analogy will not apply. And it shouldn't, because
it's misleading. The communists' Tet offensive was a smashing defeat
for them, not us, as outlined in Peter Braestrup's 1977 book "Big
Story." Military historian Lewis Sorley has shown how after Tet, Gen.
Creighton Abrams produced a strategy that was proving successful --
until Congress prevented the United States from fulfilling its promises
of aid against the North Vietnamese offensive in 1975.

In Iraq, our enemies may not be making all the progress they seek, and
changes in our military tactics are likely. Many argue for embedding
more U.S. troops in Iraqi Army units. Other recommendations may come
from the review commissioned -- evidently out of dissatisfaction with
current operations -- by Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Peter Pace.

Bush, like Truman and Churchill, seems determined not to concede
defeat. And remember that for Truman on Korea and for Churchill after
Dunkirk, no promising military courses were immediately apparent.
Truman, after firing Gen. Douglas MacArthur, had forsaken the threat --
a nuclear attack -- that his successor Dwight Eisenhower deployed to
get the communists to agree to a truce.

But Truman's perseverance despite his 22 percent job approval -- much
lower than Bush's -- was essential in preserving the independence of
South Korea, which now has the world's 14th-largest economy. Churchill,
facing Hitler alone, could promise only "blood, toil, tears and sweat"
until his enemies' mistakes -- Hitler's attack on the Soviet Union, the
Japanese strike on Pearl Harbor -- gave him the allies that made
victory possible.

Churchill's stubbornness prevented a Nazi victory in midsummer 1940.

We should keep in mind, as well, Bush's repeated vow not to allow Iran
to get nuclear weapons. That's in tension with the Iraq Study Group's
expected recommendation of direct negotiations with Iran: The obvious
quid pro quo for Iranian help in stabilizing Iraq would be dropping our
opposition to Iran's nuclear program. In fact, the opposite approach
may be what's needed.

Historian Arthur Herman in this month's Commentary calls for airstrikes
not only on Iran's nuclear facilities but also on its ports and
refineries; Iran depends on imports for its gasoline, and without ports
and refineries, its economy and military would grind to a halt.

That's a move that might be condemned by the "international community,"
and it risks antagonizing the people of Iran, many of whom tend to hate
the mullahs and admire America. But it also might destabilize the
regime and dislodge a president who has threatened the destruction of
Israel and America. Who today regrets Israel's strike against Iraq's
nuclear reactor in 1981?

NBC News has declared that Iraq is in the midst of a "civil war," just
as CBS's Walter Cronkite declared Vietnam was lost after Tet. Many in
the mainstream media today, as in 1968, see nothing but the prospect of
American defeat. George W. Bush seems to have other ideas.",

"PJ O'Donovan" wrote:

Bush Sticks to His Guns

And they say that Americans don't understand irony.

--
PB
The return address has been MUNGED
My travel writing: http://www.iol.ie/~draoi/

On 2006-12-04, Padraig Breathnach wrote ...
"PJ O'Donovan" wrote:

Bush Sticks to His Guns

And they say that Americans don't understand irony.

*chuckle*

Wait and meet James 'Nazi *******' Noles. He 'understands' irony
so 'well', that he thinks that he has to tell the rest of us when
he's using it, by inserting 'sarcasm' and '/sarcasm' in his
posts.

Y.

--
Yitzhak Isaac Goldstein
AADP's 'left-wing Jewish intellectual'
* http://jewish-and-proud-of-it.blogspot.com/
* See Jim Noles get comprehensively hammered over his idiotic
belief that 'kippa' is not a Hebrew word, and 'yarmulke' is not
a Yiddish word: http://minilien.fr/a0juqb
* See Nazi James Noles trip himself up by giving _two_ different
answers concerning his lies in the space of 12 seconds ...
http://minilien.fr/a0jtex
* One of the funniest ****-ups yet ...Nazi Noles says that 'English
is written in the English language' .. http://minilien.fr/a0jtjh...
fx: *roars* with ****ing laughter!!!
* Better and better... Nazi Noles shows that he can't use that expensive
copy of _The OED_ that he has, and that because the word 'clause' appears
in the entry for 'if', he thinks that that means that 'if' is a clause ...
go on, guys 'n' gals..ask him how a single word can be a clause ... better
yet...ask him to post the definition of 'clause' from his _OED_. He'll
rant and rave.. but he won't post it. Here is my _apocalyptic_ destruction
of him ... http://minilien.fr/a0ju6s
* The Official AADP FAQ: http://www.chez.com/desmondcoughlan/dp/faq/
* The AADP Spectrum: http://www.chez.com/desmondcoughlan/...p_spectrum.gif

i am a radical muslim please read my blog.

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On 4 Dec 2006 03:52:38 -0800 'PJ O'Donovan'
posted this onto uk.politics.misc:

December 04, 2006
Bush Sticks to His Guns
By Michael Barone

"While George W. Bush's many critics and detractors portray him as
facing the same dilemma as Lyndon Johnson in Vietnam, Bush himself
seems determined to proceed

It's not a matter of Bush sticking to his guns.....

Whatever Bush does will not bring peace to Iraq nor end the civil war.
That will continue until the warring factions wear themselves out and
some sort of settlement is agreed. Nobody knows how it will eventually
result - perhaps partition.
It took ~15 years in Lebanon and looks like it might re-start.

Bush is in the unfortunate position of having created a quagmire
in Iraq which he cannot resolve whatever action he takes.
Even the Democrats and Baker's ISG take this view broadly which
explains why they're all treading carefully and making compromise
proposals.

Thus, the US position has quietly shifted from bringing liberty and
democracy to Iraq with a western-friendly govt, to one of finding
ways of reducing US human/equipment losses and ongoing huge costs.
I've lost count of how many hundreds of $billions it's cost so far.

"Reset expectations" is the new phrase.

That Bush continues to be in public denial about the magnitude of
his self-made quagmire, is worrying for the American people and its
democracy because it's very clear that the mid-terms were the people
demanding a solution. He hasn't got one.

Bush is becoming more and more isolated - all his past neo-con gang
members are running for the trees, Rumsfeld has gone and today we
hear that the nutjob John Bolton is leaving the UN job. Yet Bush
continues to say he will not leave Iraq until the job is complete.

My own preference is for Bush to be removed from office on medical
grounds and I don't discount this happening. His current state of mind
represents a threat to world peace.

--
Global surveillance league tables x country:
Image: http://www.toucano.plus.com/WorldSurveillanceLeague.jpg
PDF detail: http://www.toucano.plus.com/WorldSurveillanceLeague.pdf

NB: Britain scores the worst along with Russia and China.
(data courtesy of Daily Telegraph and Privacy International)

On 2006-12-04, hummingbird wrote ...

Bush is in the unfortunate position of having created a quagmire

Nothing 'unfortunate' about it. He was warned. The whole world was
protesting about this illegal invasion. What thanks did they get?
Insults from idiots the likes of whom we have on this group. Nazi
Noles. ****-For-Brains ). PJ.

****-For-Brains still hasn't forgiven the French for being right.

My own preference is for Bush to be removed from office on medical
grounds and I don't discount this happening. His current state of mind
represents a threat to world peace.

That would be acceptable, even if real justice demands that he be
impeached and transported to The Hague in handcuffs and ankle
chains.

Y.

--
Yitzhak Isaac Goldstein
AADP's 'left-wing Jewish intellectual'
* http://jewish-and-proud-of-it.blogspot.com/
* See Jim Noles get comprehensively hammered over his idiotic
belief that 'kippa' is not a Hebrew word, and 'yarmulke' is not
a Yiddish word: http://minilien.fr/a0juqb
* See Nazi James Noles trip himself up by giving _two_ different
answers concerning his lies in the space of 12 seconds ...
http://minilien.fr/a0jtex
* One of the funniest ****-ups yet ...Nazi Noles says that 'English
is written in the English language' .. http://minilien.fr/a0jtjh...
fx: *roars* with ****ing laughter!!!
* Better and better... Nazi Noles shows that he can't use that expensive
copy of _The OED_ that he has, and that because the word 'clause' appears
in the entry for 'if', he thinks that that means that 'if' is a clause ...
go on, guys 'n' gals..ask him how a single word can be a clause ... better
yet...ask him to post the definition of 'clause' from his _OED_. He'll
rant and rave.. but he won't post it. Here is my _apocalyptic_ destruction
of him ... http://minilien.fr/a0ju6s
* The Official AADP FAQ: http://www.chez.com/desmondcoughlan/dp/faq/
* The AADP Spectrum: http://www.chez.com/desmondcoughlan/...p_spectrum.gif

On Mon, 04 Dec 2006 15:19:19 -0000 'Yitzhak Isaac Goldstein'
posted this onto uk.politics.misc:

On 2006-12-04, hummingbird wrote ...

Bush is in the unfortunate position of having created a quagmire

Nothing 'unfortunate' about it. He was warned. The whole world was
protesting about this illegal invasion. What thanks did they get?
Insults from idiots the likes of whom we have on this group. Nazi
Noles. ****-For-Brains ). PJ.

"unfortunate" for Bush. As you say he ignored saner minds.


****-For-Brains still hasn't forgiven the French for being right.

My own preference is for Bush to be removed from office on medical
grounds and I don't discount this happening. His current state of mind
represents a threat to world peace.

That would be acceptable, even if real justice demands that he be
impeached and transported to The Hague in handcuffs and ankle
chains.

Sure, I have no problem with that but I can't see it happening.

--
Global surveillance league tables x country:
Image: http://www.toucano.plus.com/WorldSurveillanceLeague.jpg
PDF detail: http://www.toucano.plus.com/WorldSurveillanceLeague.pdf

NB: Britain scores the worst along with Russia and China.
(data courtesy of Daily Telegraph and Privacy International)

"PJ O'Donovan" wrote:

"While George W. Bush's many critics and detractors portray him as
facing the same dilemma as Lyndon Johnson in Vietnam, Bush himself
seems determined to proceed the way Harry Truman did in Korea -- or, as
some might put it, as Winston Churchill did after Dunkirk.
And some might put it as Hitler did after the invasion of Germany or
Emperor Showa did after losing Okinawa.

hummingbird wrote:


That Bush continues to be in public denial about the magnitude of
his self-made quagmire, is worrying for the American people and its
democracy because it's very clear that the mid-terms were the people
demanding a solution. He hasn't got one.

Bush is becoming more and more isolated - all his past neo-con gang
members are running for the trees, Rumsfeld has gone and today we
hear that the nutjob John Bolton is leaving the UN job. Yet Bush
continues to say he will not leave Iraq until the job is complete.

My own preference is for Bush to be removed from office on medical
grounds and I don't discount this happening. His current state of mind
represents a threat to world peace.

I couldn't agree more! Any hope that the new Congress might
find the guts to impeach the *******?

Gordon Levi wrote:

"PJ O'Donovan" wrote:

"While George W. Bush's many critics and detractors portray him as
facing the same dilemma as Lyndon Johnson in Vietnam, Bush himself
seems determined to proceed the way Harry Truman did in Korea -- or, as
some might put it, as Winston Churchill did after Dunkirk.

And some might put it as Hitler did after the invasion of Germany or
Emperor Showa did after losing Okinawa.

Of course Hitler committed suicide, didn't he? I'm afraid
that's too much to hope for, in Bush's case.