Quote:
Originally posted by Spanky
The point is that there are soldiers in the field trying to do their job and a statement like this from one of the leaders of the two main political parties does not help. What is really pathetic about this is that he can't possibly know this. No one could know this. If he said the odds don't look good and we should leave is one thing, but to say definitely that we can't win is utter B.S. and only serves to demoralize the troops and to embolden the enemy. It is completely irresponsible.
We are coming up to an election. Couldn't he keep his mouth shut until after the election? Can't these naysayers just shut up for a couple of weeks to see if we can pull of a good election and then start their belly aching? They can't wait until after the election because they want us to fail. They are more concerned about Bush looking bad than they are about the future of the United States or Iraq.
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He is entitled to his opinion. The "he is undermining soldiers in the field" argument you are making is one of the most unfortunate arguments I can imagine. It undermines the spirit of free discussion that is, after all, one of the most important hallmarks of our Democracy.
But, more importantly, taking this position avoids any real discussion of the war in depth and detail, and the repeated attempts by the administration to ridicule and slur their opponents into silence has had a very unfortunate effect on the quality of the debate, which is about as poor a debate as I can imagine for a serious issue.
From what I can see the only people who have truly sought to raise the level of debate on the national political stage have been Murtha and McCain.
Win and Lose are loaded words; we will not have either an outright and total win (that is, all the Iraqis will not be gathering together to sing "Kumbayah" and "America the Beautiful" anytime soon), and we will not have an outright and total loss. For me, a decade or so of peace and relatively stability in the Middle East would constitute a win - and that is what I would like to see the discussion focus on in Congress, rather than these cheap charges of disloyalty and bumper-sticker patriotism.
I do not think we will have a sensible discussion, in part because many of Bush's ardent supporters are Hawks eager to light a fuse in Iran or Syria, and he has played to this gallery, but if he were smart, he would be saying that stability is victory, and make the argument for the Middle East being less volatile today than it was four years ago. I will confess that I would give more credit to the Israelis and Palestinians for the increased stability, rather than to our invasion of Iraq, but I would like to at least hear a rational, dispasionate argument that Iraq has had this effect.
