is Bush really gonna "surge" troop levels in Iraq?
Fatback
6,746 Posts
I mean come on? No way. This is ridiculous. And why the fuck does McCain think this is going to help him become president? Sure...Bush is not a competent executive. That's for sure. But I honestly didn't think he was retarded.
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Beaten by the queen of hearts every time
Have you heard about the lonesome loser
He's a loser, but he still keeps on tryin'
Oohoohooh .... oooh ....
Sit down, take a look at yourself
Don't you want to be somebody
Someday somebody's gonna see inside
You have to face up, you can't run and hide
From my armchair, it's a win-win for Bush at this point given the reality of divided government: Bush asks for money, Pelosi & the Dems say hell no...Bush can then claim that the administration was hamstrung by the Dems and the reason the war is going so poorly is due to a lack of resource allocation.
If, however, Bush does get his troops & money, things would (hopefully) change (SHOCK AND AWE!!!!), enough to show demonstrable improvement in Iraq so that he can say "see?!? my plan is working!!!"
Anyway, yeah. not a good situation at all.
Are you serious? That's ridiculous. After three years of failure in Iraq, Bush is gonna say Nancy won't give him the money to "win" and now it's all because the faggits in SF are taking over. OK, the last part is hyperbole on my part, but come on...Americans are not that stupid.
20,000 more troops or even, 40,000? No shock or awe there.
Man, you don't even need to be an armchair general to know that shit ain't gonna do nothing but get more of our people killed and seriously injured.
Still, couldn't agree more with you on the bullshit factor.
Not so sure about this.
McCain will probably lose standing in the race over this. It's very unpopular right now, Americans want to forget about Iraq right now (sorry, can't do that, should have thought twice before electing these bastards). He himself said recently that this move may completely torpedo his run. He really does believe this is the answer, for what it's worth... and most people I have heard in support of a troop surge think it should be closer to 50,000... but Bush being a yellow richboy poseur unwilling to risk his own legacy he will most likely go smaller and lose bigger.
This war was started on politics, was executed for political (as opposed to military) gain and will be lost for the same reasons.. These people should be fucking put on trial for the 3000+ servicemen and women lost (not to mention countless scores of Iraqis), hundreds of billions of American dollars, and lost standing in the world that will take decades to earn back.
With that said, if a Democrat takes the executive branch in '08, all they have to do is start every speech or statement reminding people who got us into this mess. Also, Democrats have two years to subpoena the fuck out of the architects of this disaster and get some serious tangible facts related to this failure on the record. Watch Waxman. Of course, the media will have to give this the necessary attention and that's the rub.
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If you took a job and then fucked it up really bad, you need to leave and then your replacement should talk about fixing the mess you made--without your input.
you're actually funny now. what gives? maybe it's me? i've changed.
absence makes the heart grow fonder.
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but Iran is already pretty wobbly. Its more likely they will welcome us as liberators with flowers and those pastries made from filoh dough and nuts and honey and stuff.
yeah and Persian chicks are way more hotter. WAY MORE. I love those little raincoat things.
WAIT! fuck you this is ridiculous.
Anyways, how are Bill Kristol's nuts tasting these days? Speaking of nuts.
Hey, this is only ludicrous if you believed(as I briefly did) that the American people would NEVER stand for invading Iraq for no discernable purpose. So why not completely paint ourselves into a corner in the Middle East for the rest of the forseeable future? At this point what the fuck is the difference? More American lives lost? Who really cares, right? It's the politics that matter.
In my opinion, we do no worse to the situation by just pulling out everything now and act like we never even heard of Iraq. Won't happen, but it's no worse a solution than anything anyone else is proposing. Nothing we are currently doing there is giving us a hospitable foothold in the region, nor is it winning us any allies there. It is an absolute wreck.
No one ever lost an election by overestimating the stupidity of the American people.
No one ever lost an election by overestimating the stupidity of the American people.
Did someone just call me?
Of course that is the question, what are these troops going to do? Are there going to be 20,000 more troops training the Iraqi police? Is there going to be more security patrols in Bagdad? Are we going to try to reclaim Faluja after failing to hold it last time?
I said this the other day, but I will say it again. There is no victory without surrender. There is no surrender without devestation. If Bush (or McCain or Hillary) want to see victory in Iraq American troops should first be drawn down. Then a serious air war should ensue. I'm not talking about 2 days of shock and awe(shucks). I'm talking about weeks or months of carpet bombing every non-American supporting municiapality until they surrender. Then town by town a large number of US troops would move in and establish a local Iraqi government. Think Shermans march, think of the fire bombing of Dresden the destruction of Berlin and the millions of allied troops in Germany, think Hiroshima and Nagasaki. That is what victory looks like.
A troop surge is what Johnson did in VietNam.
Well, now, that kind of historical comparison is just downright irresponsible.
Hm. This is interesting, but politically impossible. As "liberators" we can't start bombing the shit (again) out of the people we are "liberating". We just have to show them how awesome a democracy is and then the rest of the middle east will follow. and then everybody will be happy.
You can't ever call a "tie" in a civil war though. somebody has to win, or the shit will go on forever, like Korea. So let the Sunnis and Shias fight it out, and then work with whoever won. Or help who we want to win. Crush the enemy, but thats political suicide, so we just have to say we aren't helping, but help anyways, and deny it the whole time, because who cares.
Or send mormons in. mormons are so goddam annoying (no offense) that the shias and sunnis will unite together with the cause of getting ride of the mormons. thats probably the best solution. send more troops in, yes, but only mormon ones. with bicycles. lots of them.
True also politically impossible because of the negative reaction it would have in the States and internationally.
if you haven't checked them:
http://www.soulstrut.com/ubbthreads/show...part=5&vc=1
The time for a surge was during the invasion or immediately afterwards. Waiting until 2007 is too late.
The current plans being bandied about are to send most of the troops to Baghdad and a few to Anbar province and keep some in reserve in Kuwait.
What a surge WILL do is decrease the violence in the immediate areas that the U.S. troops are in Baghdad.
That's a good thing, but only a temporary solution. Think of a band aid when surgery is required.
Sending more troops, and the amounts being mentioned won't work in Anbar province because it's simply too large an area and not enough troops. Not only that, but there are many reports that the U.S. has basically lost control of most of the area.
There are many reasons why the surge won't work in Baghdad in the long run.
1st the Iraqi security forces are completely unlreliable, so as soon as the U.S. forces move chaos returns with the police mostly complicit in sectarian violence. It will take years to try to fix the security forces and some U.S. soldiers aren't even sure whether they can be.
2nd the people who are pushing this policy are basically saying that the U.S. should go after the Sunni insurgency and leave the Shiite death squads and militias to the Iraqi government. This will only make the Sunnis believe that the U.S. is helping the Shiites (many Sunnis believe that the Shiites are out to destroy them) and increase the sectarian distrust and march towards civil war than end it.
3rd the surge is suppose to provide security in Baghdad so that Prime Minister Maliki's national reconciliation program can really start and Sunnis, Shiites and Kurds can start making concessions to stop the violence. None of these groups are committed to peace however, and it's becoming increasingly clear that Maliki doesn't have the power or will to bring about reconciliation, and might in fact, be committed to the Shiites cause of fighting the Sunnis. There are many examples of this. He recently told the BBC that he didn't want to finish his term as Prime Minister. He hasn't carried out many of the most important steps in his reconciliation policy that he announced when he first came into office. He hasn't cracked down on any Shiite militias, recently Iranian intelligence agents were arrested by U.S. forces in Iraq and Maliki made the U.S release them, he hasn't made a serious effort to reform any of the Iraqi security forces or fix the Interior and Defense Ministers that are implicated in sectarian violence, etc. etc.
So to wrap it all up. We can provide brief security in Baghdad, but not long term because the surge is temporary and the Iraqi security forces are not trustworthy to maintain the peace after U.S. forces leave. Anbar province is a loss and sending more troops won't fix that. The Iraqi government is part of the problem, not the solution for what is happening right now.
SO you believe that the surge could work out politically for GWB? He could provide security in Bagdad. This would boast Maliki and stabalize the government. Then he turns the keys over to someone else in 2 years. Whatever happens next is the new guys (gals) fault.
No, Bush's political standing is pretty much shot, mostly because of the war, and this surge is not going to save it.
And the security in Baghdad will only be temporary and only in specific areas where U.S. troops are stationed, that's not the entire capital. During the Spring and Summer of 06 the U.S. had two operations in Baghdad - Operation Together Forward I & II. The violence went down a bit in the 4 or 5 specific neighborhoods the U.S. was in, but the rest of the capital went to hell at the same time. That's most likely what will happen this time again.
As for leaving it to the next administration, Bush has been talking about that for years now everytime he says he will not have a withdrawal under his watch.
And this will be a surge. The U.S. invaded Iraq with about 200,000 troops total. IT went down to about 105,000 right after the invasion as the military planned to go in and get out as quickly as possible. There was a surge for the 2 elections, then it went down again, then it went up to 150,000 during the summer and is now back down to about 135,000. This will be a surge of between 20-50,000 troops depending upon how many the military can deploy. They're going to have combat extensions for troops already there, keeping them past their return home dates, have involuntary call ups of reservers and national guardsmen, and put in troops already set to go into Iraq before their set date.
Hey John Kerry--why the long face?
Har! Nobody has ever made that joke before.
Make-out party.
August 26, 2002:
Reading the Scowcroft/New York Times "arguments" against war, one is struck by how laughably weak they are. European international-law wishfulness and full-blown Pat Buchanan isolationism are the two intellectually honest alternatives to the Bush Doctrine. Scowcroft and the Times wish to embrace neither, so they pretend instead to be terribly "concerned" with the administration's alleged failure to "make the case."
April 4, 2003:
"There's been a certain amount of pop sociology in America ... that the Shia can't get along with the Sunni and the Shia in Iraq just want to establish some kind of Islamic fundamentalist regime. There's almost no evidence of that at all. Iraq's always been very secular."
April 28, 2003:
The United States committed itself to defeating terror around the world. We committed ourselves to reshaping the Middle East, so the region would no longer be a hotbed of terrorism, extremism, anti-Americanism, and weapons of mass destruction. The first two battles of this new era are now over. The battles of Afghanistan and Iraq have been won decisively and honorably. But these are only two battles. We are only at the end of the beginning in the war on terror and terrorist states.
March 22, 2004:
[T]here are hopeful signs that Iraqis of differing religious, ethnic, and political persuasions can work together. This is a far cry from the predictions made before the war by many, both here and in Europe, that a liberated Iraq would fracture into feuding clans and unleash a bloodbath. The perpetually sour American media focus on the tensions between Shiites and Kurds that delayed the signing by three whole days. But the difficult negotiations leading up to the signing, and the continuing debates over the terms of a final constitution, have in fact demonstrated something remarkable in Iraq: a willingness on the part of the diverse ethnic and religious groups to disagree--peacefully--and then to compromise. This willingness is the product of what appears to be a broad Iraqi consensus favoring the idea of pluralism.
July 26, 2004:
What the Bush administration did say--and what so many reporters seem to have trouble understanding--is that Iraq and al Qaeda had a relationship that, by its very existence, posed a potential threat to the United States.
October 29, 2004 (column titled "Politicizing the bin Laden Tape"):
Is there any development in the war on terror, however grave, that the Kerry campaign won't try to exploit for partisan advantage?
November 1, 2004: (column titled "Bin Laden v. Bush")
Osama bin Laden's videotape is an attempt to intimidate Americans into voting against President Bush.
March 7, 2005:
Just four weeks after the Iraqi election of January 30, 2005, it seems increasingly likely that that date will turn out to have been a genuine turning point. The fall of the Berlin Wall on November 9, 1989, ended an era. September 11, 2001, ended an interregnum. In the new era in which we now live, 1/30/05 could be a key moment--perhaps the key moment so far--in vindicating the Bush Doctrine as the right response to 9/11. And now there is the prospect of further and accelerating progress.
November 7, 2005:
Last week the Bush Administration's second-term bear market bottomed out.
November 30, 2005 (column titled "Pelosi's Disastrous Miscalculation"):
All this made me think the 2006 elections could result in a Speaker Pelosi. I now think that unlikely. Pelosi's endorsement today of the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq makes the House Democrats the party of defeat, the party of surrender. Bush's strong speech today means the GOP is likely to be--if Republican Congressmen just keep their nerve--the party of victory. Now it is possible that the situation in Iraq will worsen over the next year. If that happens, Bush and the GOP are in deep trouble. They would have been if Pelosi had said nothing. But it is much more likely that the situation in Iraq will stay more or less the same, or improve. In either case, Republicans will benefit from being the party of victory.
December 26, 2005 (column titled "Happy Days!"):
If American and Iraqi troops continue to provide basic security, and if Iraq's different sects and political groups now begin to engage in serious, peaceful bargaining, then we may just have witnessed the beginning of Iraq's future.
April 4, 2006:
What was striking, following the mosque bombing, was the evidence of Iraq's underlying stability in the face of attempts to undermine it. The country's vital institutions seem to have grown strong enough to withstand even the provocation of the bombing of the golden mosque.
Having grown up in a farm town in Utah I must say this is a really good idea.