Comments Posted By Hankmeister
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Wasn't the fragging incident committed by a Muslim fundamentalist jihadist in American uniform?
But I agree with you, those would be two indicators alright. It's a soldiers right to carp given that they're the ones being put in harm's way, so one has to expect complaints about equipment, the tempo, the food/supplies, how difficult war is, etc. But I've never been impressed when the lamestream media or liberal blooger can find that one out of twenty soldiers/Marines who is willing to go public with how everything is screwed up, nobody knows what they're doing, the Commander in Chief is Hitler, everybody is sick and tired of being cannon fodder in a losing war, the mission is immoral and illegal, etc. For every soldier that thinks they are in a losing cause and its all irredeemably fouled up, there are twenty who take great pride in the difference they believe they are making on foreign battlefields despite the difficulties and confusion that are a very real part of any shooting war. And to have to deal with very complicated Rules of Engagement in an urban environment where the enemy uses human shields and anonymous IEDs also has to be very frustrating. But this may be the face of war to come over the next generation so Americans on both sides of the aisle had better starting dealing with that reality.
Comment Posted By Hankmeister On 4.05.2007 @ 20:55
From the Wall Street Journal:
Military Is Stretched But Not Broken
Given that there isn't an "army" of liberals lining up to volunteer to be human shields in the near future, there should always be long-term concern about the relative health and resiliency of the U.S. military. Interesting debate, I come down on the side that our military is not broken but does need to be moderately expanded to meet what other contingencies which might arise in another theater of operations. Not much is being said about several hundred thousand other American troops still stationed in England, Germany, Japan and South Korea. I think it time those nations stand on their own two feet, assume the full cost of their defense and American troops and equipment redeploy back to America to be put to better use. Why should we essentially subsidize their national defense? It's already been sixty years!
Comment Posted By Hankmeister On 4.05.2007 @ 15:22
As an independent conservative/libertarian voter I could find myself voting for Thompson (who wasn't there), Romney and Guiliani. The only way I'd vote for McCain is if he actually got the nominations since I can't see Edwards/Osama Obama/Hillary as Commander in Chief during perilous times like this.
Guiliani's "pro-choice" stand doesn't bother me so much since realistically he can't affect the abortion debate toward the "pro-choice" side anyway as President. He and other Republican candidates, however, are on record as saying they would nominate originalists/strict constructionists/conservatives to the SCOTUS, and that's good enough for me. And appointing judges is something that swing voters and conservatives have better make good note of, the next President will be appointing one if not two jurists to SCOTUS. This is almost as important as the GWOT itself.
Comment Posted By Hankmeister On 4.05.2007 @ 15:03
FYI. From the New York Times Op-Ed section: Why Congress Must Support the "Surge"
The author said it better than I could though there are a few points I would tweak.
Comment Posted By Hankmeister On 4.05.2007 @ 09:13
DEMS TO VOTERS: "WE WERE ONLY KIDDING."
The military is in shambles
Another media myth. Even "in shambles" our military is still orders of magnitude more conventionally potent than any of the next top three militaries in the world. There is absolutely no evidence this is true with regard to America's ability to protect itself from conventional attacks other than the sour grapes of retired generals who were passed over for promotion might spew to get some face time or what the Pentagon might say in order to pad its budget for a larger military than necessary.
And when did liberals really care about the military anyway? With each passing day their "I Support the Troops" CYA mantra wears ever thinner. How do you "support the troops" when you voted for liberals who cut and slash the military budget every chance they get, like they did seven of eight years under Bill Clinton? Where's the "support" in that?
The capabilities of the military was severely degraded under the Clinton Administration with a string of defense budget cuts, shortages of spare parts were commonplace, military hardware upgrades were either cancelled or delayed, the uptempo deployment under Clinton was way out of proportion to the threats posed to American interests from abroad, military pay was stagnant with many soldiers' families on food stamps, and the military was cut by 500,000 soldiers to reflect the fiscal realities the Clinton Administration imposed upon the U.S. Armed Forces.
Yes, America military assets have been strained in fighting a multi-front global war on terror. Fortunately, though leaner, the U.S. military is meaner and has the advantage of force multipliers by way of better C3 and weapons systems. I wish it wasn't the case that some soldiers are on their second or third deployments, but clearly this is both a political and systemic problem which began in the 1990s and no amount of spin will whitewash liberals own complicity in underfunding and undersupporting the American military establishment those eight years under Bill Clinton. One can only imagine the utter outrage from liberals if the military budget was greatly increased and another 500,000 soldiers were added to the payroll: "Why are we spending all this money on warmongering when it could be spent on saving the minnow, creating another entitlement for illegal aliens or keeping polar bears from drowning!"
Comment Posted By Hankmeister On 3.05.2007 @ 22:15
Sunny, your 20/20 utopianism is counter-productive. To say, "If Bush was smart, he would have listened to his generals before getting us into this mess" is disengenuous at best. This war as it is presently constituted is still winnable ... at least you better hope its winnable for the sake of your children and their children's children.
What you ignore is the original mission of Operation Iraqi Freedom to depose Saddam's regime was a stunning success, unless you want to argue that elements of Saddam's old regime is still fighting the war like the eighty year old Japanese warrior still "fighting American dogs" on some backwater Pacific island. In fact the left was utterly stunned (admit it), when Saddam and what was left of his regime skeddadled out of Baghdad and went into hiding.
What hasn't been done well is transitioning into a counter-insurgency with an eye to Iraq and Afghanistan being not only fronts on the general war on Islamic terror but also bridgeheads into both Iraq and Syria. In fact, the wrong generals President Bush has been listening to the last three years, e.g. Abizaid and Casey, are the ones who were the least pro-active by adopting a "small footprint" strategy which has proven inadequate in dealing with foreign and indigenous jihadists (i.e. "insurgents"). I can only construe your apparent glee in earlier reverses in Iraq as an indication that you don't appreciate the seriousness of abandoning Iraq to militant Islamic fundamentalists who are actively pursuing the resubjugation of the Iraqi people. Clearly you've become yet another victim of the left-wing media narrative since you apparently don't appreciate the historic gravity of what the Democratic Party is doing in undermining the war effort in Iraq with its political agenda.
Comment Posted By Hankmeister On 3.05.2007 @ 16:05
For you history buffs out there: What war has America lost when it remained steadfast and didn't quit/cut-and-run/redeploy? Why would Iraq be the exception?
The only thing the "insurgency" (i.e. the Viet Cong) in South Vietnam had going for it was the support of the regular North Vietnamese army. Other than a few thousand (ten thousand, whatever) al Qaeda terrorist, whose presence in Iraq is seriously being degraded as we write, what regular army is working in support of the "insurgency" in Iraq? Little question the Iraqi Shias were receiving technical support from Iran and the Sunnis were getting the same from Syria, but there is no Iranian or Syrian army fighting in country.
Donald Stoker makes some very valid points in his Insurgencies Rarely Win. Apparently far too many people have drawn too many wrong lessons from Vietnam, and in my view Iraq has never been a Vietnam despite the rather simplistic temptation to claim such was the case.
The closest Iraq will come to Vietnam is if America simply quits, then the Vietnam metaphor will most certainly play out. And given the 7th Century sectarian tensions in Iraq and the reputation America has garnered for being a paper tiger that betrays fledgling governments it initially supports, it would be surprising if torrents of blood aren't spilled if we "redeploy" out of the region without American troops losing one battle in Iraq!
Hopefully systematically quelling sectarian violence both militarily and politically hasn't come too late. In the final analysis, give America's might and industrial bias, like any previous war we've fought its a question of whether the American people have the will and resolve to see its way through to the light at the end of the tunnel. But given the political divisiveness of the radical left in this country and the political cowardice of fair-weather Republicans and some conservatives, America may no longer have the corporate will to continue this battle on the frontiers of freedom in Iraq. And when the history books are written our posterity has every right to curse the cowardice of the Baby Boomer generation particularly if jihadist violence erupts on our streets and in our schools and malls because we've emboldened what appears to be a very ruthless and motivated enemy that has publicly expressed its clear hatred for America the last two decades.
Comment Posted By Hankmeister On 3.05.2007 @ 15:45
Is the liberal media becoming more reich-wing or is it starting to deal with the real world? CNN reports the mayhem that would ensue if America unilaterally withdraws American troops from Iraq. It would destablize the region, war analysts claim.
Just FYI for the cut-and-run crowd.
Comment Posted By Hankmeister On 3.05.2007 @ 11:59
I don't think its a stretch to conclude if there are any honest historians left in the declining western world, they will note the craveness of the Democrats and the cowardice of the Republicans in how they worked together to try and snatch sure defeat from the jaws of promising victory. And President Bush's minimalist "light footprint" approach will not escape scrutiny either given how much of the reins he gave to Abizaid, Casey and Bremer for the three years.
The War on Terror is very real, America troops are fighting one front of the war in Iraq, and this is a nobel and necessary cause in the fight against jihadism. It's the prosecution of this war which sucks and the constant contrarian divisiveness of the Donks which continue to embolden America's enemies at every turn. I have to admit to one mistake on my part post-9/11, I underestimated how many latent dhimmies there were in America who see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil unless its equating Bush with Hitler and America with Nazi Germany.
Comment Posted By Hankmeister On 3.05.2007 @ 09:02
BUSH VETOES CONGRESSIONAL INVITATION TO AL QAEDA TO SLAUGHTER IRAQIS
If anyone is interested, there is a new site up called 429Truth.com. It attempts to explain how the 4/29/07 fuel tanker accident was no accident but a Bu$Hitler/Cheney/CIA/Halliburton attempt to discredit the 9/11 Truthers. As any open-minded anti-war progressive will tell you in all sincerity, 9/11 was an inside job because the Twin Towers were wired for demolition. And we also know, because the expert metallurgist Rosie O'Donnell has told us, an open "fire can't melt steel." It's a hoot! The comment threads are priceless. Figure it out yourselves.
Comment Posted By Hankmeister On 2.05.2007 @ 19:35
