I can't argue with much of what you say here except to take some exeption to your faith in the Democratic Party. Barring another 'Clinton' leader, the Dems have fallen back into their old foriegn policy of "neo-isolationism," that they developed during the last decades of the Cold War, because of another American defeat.
It's not a question of faith in the Democrats. It's a question of complete and utter lack of faith in the current leadership, who have shown themselves to be incompetent, arrogant and vindictive. We've seen what happens when they're in a position to dismiss the opposition, and it's time to reel them in.
How many remember Mr. Kerry's, Kennedy and other's calls for 'nuclear freeze' and endless appeasment of Soviet Aggression during the 80's?
How many remember the fact that al-Qaeda was born in the 80s under Reagan's watch? After decades of dominance by Democrats, the CIA had come to be dominated by conservative Republicans by the 80s, and they were the ones who unwisely allowed Pakistan's ISI to decide how to spend our money to fight the Soviets in Afghanistan. The ISI was no friend to America and they used our money to fund radical Islamic groups that served not our long term interests, but theirs, which lay in building a fundamentalist Islamic society in Afghanistan to help secure Pakistan's western border. The radicalized strain of Islamic fundamentalism that we find ourselves faced with now is in no small part the product of our proxy war that drew disaffected young Muslim men from all over the Arab world into Afghanistan, trained them, armed them, radicalized them, and taught them that a ragtag bunch of jihadists armed with makeshift weapons and fired up by religious zeal could challenge a superpower and win. And it didn't have to be that way. Then, as now, there were voices of opposition. There were people in the Agency who warned against allowing the ISI to dole out American largesse to radical anti-American Muslim Brotherhood groups. There were people who recommended funneling more of it to pro-American royalists instead. (Like, ironically, Hamid Karzai, who we chose to lead Afghanistan, twenty years too late.) And then, as now, they were ridiculed, ignored and sidelined, because the hotheaded amateurs calling the shots thought they knew better, just like the hotheaded amateurs calling the shots today think they know better in Iraq and in the fight against terrorism in general.
Parties are a reflexion of their activist, not the mainstream. The Dems have really good foreign policy people. Sen. Biden, Gov. Richardson, former Rep. Hamilton, former Sen. Nunn, but they are driven as a Party more by the likes of Moveon.org, Michael Moore, Cindy Sheehan. One unescapable difference between the Dems and Repub's is the presence of groups within the Ameircan Democratic Party that view AMERICA as the greatest threat to world peace. That view western market economies as evil. That view George Bush as the real war criminal. That despise the very culture of the West, they seek leadership influence of.
Oh, come on. This is a nation of 300 million people with only two major parties. Each is bound to have its extremists, and I'd wager the far left has less influence within the Democratic party than the far right does within the GOP. The Democrats are less organized and the party is less disciplined, with the result that the fringier elements are often allowed to set themselves up as the voices of the party and give the impression that they have greater sway when it comes to policy than they in fact really do.
I have no doubt your views are in the majority in America. I have no doubt how 'cracked' and missguided you must think mine are. I have no doubt at how dangerously wrong yours are. The Nazis were a conventional army we defeated in a conventional way. The Soviets collapsed of their own accord, (with much help from us.), after realizing the futility of waiting for us to 'surrender'. Both ideologies, not even believed in by their own henchman.
I think you're making too many assumptions about what my views really are. I'm not a cultural relativist. You don't have to convince me that our way of life is something worth defending vigorously, or that there are people who want to destroy it and us along with it. But waging this battle ineptly is as bad as not waging it at all, and inept is exactly what the current leadership is. Oh, they're good at blustery rhetoric - but what's the good of talking the talk if you trip over your own feet and break everything in sight when you try to walk the walk?
The new rise of Islam is a whole different matter. One BILLION Muslims are here to stay. They deeply, deeply, deeply believe in their cause. They think they have our number, and they may be right. They firmly believe the West is so immoral, coorrupt, and lazy, that she has no will to defend itself. They firmly believe the West has so destroyed it's own christian roots, it's Greco-Roman heritage, that she no longer has anything she thinks is worth defending, just selfish, material, "me-ism" of every kind. They firmly believe the West MUST be destroyed if she does not commit suicide first. They are betting like crazy, that we just don't have the stomach for the fight. Our allies, British excepted for the time being, have shown them exactly that. Our withdrawl from Iraq will do the same for us.
This is the most important conflict of this century. It may last longer than that, as it is but a continuation of the origional, from Islam's first contact with the West and conquering of Christian lands in the 8th century. I have no doubt that eventually we will witness a nuclear attack against the West, undoubtedbly, the target will be America. It is not if, but when. We have to be lucky EVERY time. They have to be lucky but ONCE.
That day will spell the end of the Democrats deciding whether the State should pay for the ACLU lawyers who defend the murderers of HUNDREDS of THOUSANDS. Our whether pudding every day at club GITMO is "cruel and unusual". That day will put your views firmly into the minority column.
It's a virulent strain of Islamist extremism that's the enemy here, not the whole of Islam. It's not often that I get to say anything good about George Bush, but it's to his credit that he's always been careful in his rhetoric to emphasize that. But this kind of black or white thinking where the mentality, actions and goals of a smallish number of terrorists is projected onto a billion people is typical of his leadership, and it will cause us self-inflicted wounds that will do more harm to our republic in the long run than terrorism itself will. The de-Baathification order in Iraq is a perfect example. If you're approaching the problem from a point of view where everything is black or white, it makes perfect sense to completely dismantle the Baath party and exclude its members from the new Iraq. The Baath party was the enemy, after all, and it symbolized everything that was wrong with the country. But the fact of the matter is, most Baathists weren't Baathists because they were Saddam loyalists or had any deep ideological stake in the party. They were Baathists because it was a simple fact of life that a person's best bet for better prospects for themselves and their kids was membership in the party. Outside the senior party structure, these were by and large people we could easily have won over to our side and had working with us to build a new Iraq. Instead, we issued an edict that ousted them from their jobs and told them in no uncertain terms that they had no future. Now they're fighting us.
Your right here. I can't dissagree. I would only dissagree with the "disbanding the Iraqi Army." That one is a myth. The Iraqi Army took their uniforms off and went home. We had no power to keep them under arms if we had wanted to. I can't argue much with the rest of what you have to say here.
We were negotiating, successfully, to bring them back. Our commanders in the field were expecting it and counting on it until CPA Order Number 2 was issued, much to their surprise, officially disbanding the Iraqi army.
I don't disagree with the massive FUBAR Iraq has become. I don't disagree with your assesment of blame. It's the Republican's baby. Your question begs an answer. I guess if I were a Dem. I would be asking how the other side could so 'screw the pooch' and yet, people still don't necessarily get the warm fuzzy about supporting us. Maybe some of that critisism I posted in my first paragraph here has some of the answer.
I think the answers are pretty obvious - the Democrats are handicapped by being the minority party, which effectively reduces them to sniping from the sidelines, and they've been too fragmented, undisciplined and unfocused to present a credible alternative. If we win big next week, it'll have less to do with our skill and more to do with the GOP's hubris and incompetence.
I suspect had we been more succesful in Iraq your candidate of choice would be hogging the camera with all those neo-con bible thumpers...
If you'd been more successful in Iraq, I might not have held it against her. But you know what they say - if my grandmother had wheels...
