If this is your first visit, be sure to check out the FAQ by clicking the link above. You may have to register before you can post: click the register link above to proceed. To start viewing messages, select the forum that you want to visit from the selection below. |
|
|
Thread Tools | Display Modes |
#1
|
|||
|
|||
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.", |
#2
|
|||
|
|||
Bush sticks to his guns in Iraq
"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/ |
#3
|
|||
|
|||
Bush sticks to his guns in Iraq
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 |
#4
|
|||
|
|||
Bush sticks to his guns in Iraq
|
#5
|
|||
|
|||
Bush sticks to his guns in Iraq
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) |
#6
|
|||
|
|||
Bush sticks to his guns in Iraq
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 |
#7
|
|||
|
|||
Bush sticks to his guns in Iraq
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) |
#8
|
|||
|
|||
Bush sticks to his guns in Iraq
"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. |
#9
|
|||
|
|||
Bush sticks to his guns in Iraq
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 *******? |
#10
|
|||
|
|||
Bush sticks to his guns in Iraq
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. |
Thread Tools | |
Display Modes | |
|
|
Similar Threads | ||||
Thread | Thread Starter | Forum | Replies | Last Post |
Bush Says Iraq War Key to Defeating Terrrorism | Rita | USA & Canada | 5 | August 23rd, 2006 10:08 PM |
Bush Compares Iraq War to Hungary's Uprising | Jacky Ickx | Europe | 27 | July 7th, 2006 09:25 PM |
Bush Scandal: Furor Over Secret Plans for Illegal Iraq War | flop | Europe | 7 | April 22nd, 2004 04:07 PM |
Complete 60 minutes interview (transcript): Bush Sought‘Way’ To Invade Iraq | Fly Guy | Air travel | 0 | January 12th, 2004 04:21 AM |
INVASION OF IRAQ PLANNED IN THE FIRST DAYS OF BUSH ADMINISTRATION | Fly Guy | Air travel | 2 | January 10th, 2004 09:54 PM |