A Forum for Grinches and Ho-Ho-Hoes

[bilmore]

Originally posted by Mmmm, Burger (C.J.)
Is that the only explanation as to why Rather's head isn't rolling as well?

More like "Homines quod volunt credunt."

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally posted by bilmore
More like "Homines quod volunt credunt."

Hows about, "owhay arescay, anywayway?"

[Mmmm, Burger (C.J.)]

Originally posted by Tyrone Slothrop
Hows about, "owhay arescay, anywayway?"

Are we putting statutes of limitation on discussion? Because then I propose we delete all of last year's discussion on "Iraq: should we invade?"

[Secret_Agent_Man]

Originally posted by Mmmm, Burger (C.J.)
Is that the only explanation as to why Rather's head isn't rolling as well?

(link)

Yes.

S_A_M

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally posted by Mmmm, Burger (C.J.)
Are we putting statutes of limitation on discussion? Because then I propose we delete all of last year's discussion on "Iraq: should we invade?"

I think I was pretty clear that I never cared about Rather.

[Bad_Rich_Chic]

Originally posted by Replaced_Texan
If I lived in Virginia, and this were to pass, I'd report every single time I bled vaginally, just in case it was a miscarriage and not just my period.

Fuckers.

If I lived in VA, I'd join you. I presume someone has suggested advertising such a reading of the proposed law to Planned Parenthood or some such?

[bilmore]

Originally posted by Tyrone Slothrop
I think I was pretty clear that I never cared about Rather.

And I never cared about WMD's.

Fat lotta good that did me.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

from Andrew Sullivan (who is more than a little excitable, so take this with a grain of salt):

STRATFOR ON THE WAR: Like many other smart analysts, the pro-war Stratfor military experts have concluded that the war to control the Iraq insurgency or to erect democratic institutions in Iraq has been lost (subscription required). I think it's time to start truly absorbing this possibility. Why lost? Because we blew the opportunity to control the terrain with insufficient troops and terrible intelligence; because all the institutions required to build democracy in Iraq have already been infiltrated by insurgents; because at key moments - they mention the fall of 2003 or spring of 2004 - we simply failed to crush the insurgency when we might have had a chance of success. Short version: we had a brief window of opportunity to turn our armed intervention into democratic liberation and we blew it. Money quote:

• The issue facing the Bush administration is simple. It can continue to fight the war as it has, hoping that a miracle will bring successes in 2005 that didn't happen in 2004. Alternatively, it can accept the reality that the guerrilla force is now self-sustaining and sufficiently large not to flicker out and face the fact that a U.S. conventional force of less than 150,000 is not likely to suppress the guerrillas. More to the point, it can recognize these facts: 1. The United States cannot re-engineer Iraq because the guerrillas will infiltrate every institution it creates. 2. That the United States by itself lacks the intelligence capabilities to fight an effective counterinsurgency. 3. That exposing U.S. forces to security responsibilities in this environment generates casualties without bringing the United States closer to the goal. 4. That the strain on the U.S. force is undermining its ability to react to opportunities and threats in the rest of the region. And that, therefore, this phase of the Iraq campaign must be halted as soon as possible.

They recommend withdrawing U.S. forces to the periphery of Iraq and letting the inevitable civil war take place in the center.

DARKNESS BEFORE DAWN? The war has not been a complete loss, Stratfor argues, because it has engineered a slight shift in the behavior of neighboring regimes, and has allowed us to have a new base in the Middle East. The conclusion:

• Certainly, it would have been nice for the United States if it had been able to dominate Iraq thoroughly. Somewhere between "the U.S. blew it" and "there was never a chance" that possibility is gone. It would have been nice if the United States had never tried to control the situation, because now the United States is going to have to accept a defeat, which will destabilize the region psychologically for a while. But what is is, and the facts speak for themselves. We are not Walter Cronkite, and we are not saying that the war is lost. The war is with the jihadists around the world; Iraq was just one campaign, and the occupation of the Sunnis was just one phase of that campaign. That phase has been lost. The administration has allowed that phase to become the war as a whole in the public mind. That was a very bad move, but the administration is just going to have to bite the bullet and do the hard, painful and embarrassing work of cutting losses and getting on with the war. If Bush has trouble doing this, he should conjure up Lyndon Johnson's ghost, wandering restlessly in the White House, and imagine how Johnson would have been remembered if he had told Robert McNamara to get lost in 1966.

I hope they're wrong but I fear they're right. For the immediate term, it makes no difference. We have to hope and pray that a democratic miracle really will emerge. There have been darknesses before dawn in history before. And then there have just been darknesses.

[bilmore]

Originally posted by Tyrone Slothrop
Andrew Sullivan[/url] (who is more than a little excitable, so take this with a grain of salt):

Listening to the experts, I'm now convinced that either the whole place is going to degenerate into a bloody civil war within weeks, or a new government and feelings of empowerment will guide the Iraqis into creating a new, stable society.

One or the other.

At this point, I don't know.

[Greedy,Greedy,Greedy]

Originally posted by bilmore
Listening to the experts, I'm now convinced that either the whole place is going to degenerate into a bloody civil war within weeks, or a new government and feelings of empowerment will guide the Iraqis into creating a new, stable society.

One or the other.

At this point, I don't know.

Well, we're here to help.

My thoughts: the contrast between relative success in Afghanistan and relative failure in Iraq is very revealing.

In Afghanistan, our troops have expended more "Civil Affairs" effort than combat effort. While there have been a couple of points in time when troops were pulled back into combat-only roles or where issues arose over how to execute CA missions (e.g., in uniform or out of uniform, with other aid groups or separately), the military, both ours and the allies, has spent a lot of time engineering new bridges, rebuilding the ring roads, repairing schools, and even helping plant crops.

In Iraq, it's too dangerous and we're unwilling to take the risks to engage in the same level of CA activity. And the aid groups are reluctant to wander too far from protection.

In Iraq, we did not have a solid national base leading the charge, outside of Kurdistan. In Afghanistan, we knew who the Northern Alliance was and had a good sense of how to work the local alliances.

In Iraq, there was a premium on rapid victory, and we let our tactics rule. In Afghanistan, the rapid victory almost took us by surprise - we had prepared for and were preparing the Nothern Alliance for a much more protracted battle, and had thought the battle through in a strategic rather than a tactical manner.

So, now that we've learned something, should we be trying to figure out how to do it in a way similar to Afghanistan? Unfortunately, the process of building a local base when signing up with us gets you a free ride to power doesn't necessarily encourage the idealists we need to come to the fore.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally posted by Greedy,Greedy,Greedy
My thoughts: the contrast between relative success in Afghanistan and relative failure in Iraq is very revealing.

The comparison between Afghanistan and Iraq is going to be misleading because the country's governments were so different previously. Notwithstanding the Taliban's success at imposing order on much of the country, Afghanistan has had very weak central governments in recent years. Kabul's writ has not had much force in the provinces, which are ruled by local strongmen. Until we prevented Hussein from exercising power in the north and south of his country, the opposite was true in Iraq. I would suggest that our nation-building in Afghanistan has appeared successful if you look at Kabul, but that it's not clear that Karzai presides over a government that can rule very much of the country. The men with guns in most of the country answer to other people.

[Greedy,Greedy,Greedy]

Originally posted by Tyrone Slothrop
The men with guns in most of the country answer to other people.

Agreed in the south and west, but not in the north, east and center (though very few live in the center anyways). But I think that with a continuing military presence from the US, Karzai has room over the coming years to work the folks in the west into his government. The South is going to be effectively occupied territory for a long time, but then, we should have kept our south under occupation much longer than we did.

[Gattigap]

Originally posted by Greedy,Greedy,Greedy
The South is going to be effectively occupied territory for a long time, but then, we should have kept our south under occupation much longer than we did.

Dissent.

[ltl/fb]

Originally posted by Gattigap
Dissent.

Fisting on the FB and The War of Northern Aggression on the PB. What a day!!

[Bad_Rich_Chic]

Originally posted by Tyrone Slothrop
from Andrew Sullivan (who is more than a little excitable, so take this with a grain of salt):

STRATFOR ON THE WAR: Like many other smart analysts, the pro-war Stratfor military experts have concluded that the war to control the Iraq insurgency or to erect democratic institutions in Iraq has been lost (subscription required).

Not only is Sullivan excitable, he (intentionally?) misstates the actual point of the article he quotes from. Its not that the US lost the opportunity to win the "war to control the insurgency or create democracy," it's that that wasn't the war we were actually there fighting (which has actually been rather successful), but the admin appears to have come to mistake its spin for a real goal, thus creating problems for itself (because the "spin" goal for the war was inherently contradictory and unachievable and, worse, irrelevant to US interests). A better "money" quote, IMHO:

"We did not and do not agree with the view that the invasion of Iraq was a mistake. It had a clear strategic purpose that it achieved: reshaping the behavior of surrounding regimes, particularly of the Saudis. This helped disrupt the al Qaeda network sufficiently that it has been unable to mount follow-on attacks in the United States and has shifted its attention to the Islamic world, primarily to the Saudis. None of this would have happened without the invasion of Iraq.

As frequently happens in warfare, the primary strategic purpose of the war has been forgotten by the Bush administration. Mission creep, the nightmare of all military planners, has taken place. The United States has shifted its focus from coercing neighboring countries into collaborating with the United States against al Qaeda, to building democracy in Iraq. As we put it in May: "The United States must recall its original mission, which was to occupy Iraq in order to prosecute the war against al Qaeda. If that mission is remembered, and the mission creep of reshaping Iraq forgotten, some obvious strategic solutions re-emerge. The first, and most important, is that the United States has no national interest in the nature of Iraqi government or society. Except for not supporting al Qaeda, Iraq's government does not matter.""

Or: the war actually went pretty well in achieving it's original strategic purposes, but this sideline bullshit at some point came to center stage and it's all just a big cockup in both conception and execution.

Not sure which version is more damning to the Bushies, but there you are.