"Nickie, what the hellza matta witch you? Youse a walkin aroun like a stump!"What he meant was I had been displaying all the signs of childhood depression. My mother called them the "gloomies". Folks, I've got the gloomies. I have great difficulty sleeping.
I fear that Barack Hussein Obama intends to lose the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
By leaving our forces in Iraq with less than a full complement of troops, and by almost encouraging sectarian infighting within the Iraqi government, he gets to shrug his shoulders when it all crumbles, and declare "It was a fool's errand to begin with. The previous administration was wrong to ever have put us into this situation."Image the wasted American and British and Iraqi lives. Imagine the wasted resources. Imagine the crushed spirits of Iraqis hoping for some relief from endless religious and political turmoil.
No problem. The Left will have won their ideological battle with the Bush administration and proudly declared defeat.
But what of Afghanistan? How could a defeat in Afghanistan benefit the Obama mob? Do you recall Rahm Emanual's statement following the election?
"You never want a serious crisis to go to waste. And what I mean by that is an opportunity to do things you think you could not do before.”A failure in Afghanistan would allow the Democrats to totally change the USA's military presence worldwide including dramatic nuclear disarmament. Their reasoning would be that to lead the world in peaceful rebirth and alternative energy, we must stop being the policeman/bully of the planet.
Who in God's name thinks we have a gnat's ass chance of winning in Afghanistan? That's why we went to Iraq. What military force wants their success to hinge on a clear and decisive victory in Afghanistan? Who in their right mind would prefer to stage conventional military operations and engage the quicksilver-like enemy in and around the Shok valley?
The Soviets learned their lesson, and their humiliating defeat did much to hasten the collapse of the Kremlin.
This war in Afghanistan will be slow and painful, with American and British body bags returning to home soil at a heartbreakingly steady pace. The Democrats know this. The MSM will report our atrocities and failures while romanticizing the enemy. American morale in battle and at home will plummet. Middle America will turn away from the painful images from the Network news desks. The typical cast of bleeding hearts (students, artists, Marxists, gays, lesbians, downtrodden minorities, and wimmin) will march through American cities and demand the return of their beloved boys and girls in uniform.You don't think this could ever happen? Drag out some old YouTube videos of CBS TV Vietnam coverage.
The nightmare that keeps me awake nights is that Obama may be deliberately sacrificing American lives in a cynical Chicago-style political power grab.
And nobody will stand in his way.
39 comments:
I am pinning my hopes on 2010. We can certainly change the balance in one or both legislatures. That has got to slow Obama down.
But you are right, even in the best case, Obama can mess up a LOT in the next 18 months. And all we can do is sit by and cry on the internet, hold tea parties, and lose sleep. Doesn't feel like a representative government to me.
As for "doing something", I don't predict civil unrest until 2012. If there are election shenanigans, there may be trouble.
Of course there will be election shenanigans. There will also be a press corps to ignore them. We may be in bigger trouble than folks have even imagined.
Now, go to bed.
These Democrats will do and say anything to get permanent power. Communism is here and America voted it in.
Obama is a piece of work if thats his intention.
Masher,
I don't know if it's his personal intention, but absolutely nothing he has done or said has reassured me.
Thanks for visiting!
An interesting article from the UK
Damn now I have The Gloomies
Hoggie,
Thank you so much. I hope others will visit that link.
Everyone knows a victory there is impossible. That's why, I suspect, the "progressive" mantra has been "We shouldn't have gone into Iraq. We shoulda gone to Afghanistan."
Well, we're there.
Dad... I suggest massive quantities of fermented grain.
It reminds me of a line from Vacation, with each new day brings new hope. Those are my sentiments!
No matter how depressed I am about the future you have a way of making me feel worse.
This people of this nation wanted something and they are going to get it good and hard. I hope they like it.
You are saying the exact thing I have been thinking for weeks. At least I'm not the only one.
Diane, people like you are vital to our collective sanity. Thanks.
Bits, that's been a knack I've mastered throughout my many marriages.
Beefy, you're not the only one. There is an army of Americans and Brits waking up to reality. Welcome to the corps.
Bush and Halliberton started the war in Iraq to cover up the election he stole in Florida. Don't blame Obama. The more dead soldiers the braver Bush looked.
I don't blame Bush. The oil companies wanted to steal the oil in Iraq and Iran. The so-called war was the only way to get it. Bush was just a dupe.
The greatest goal of the Iraqi mission was to introduce an actual democratic government smack-dab in the middle of a nest of heavy-handed royal dynasties and Islamic thugocracies. Damned good plan if you ask me.
Do you think those Iranian protesters were dissatisfied and emboldened by Obama's mullah-smooching speech in Egypt?
Here's the thoughts of an old soldier:
Going into AF was the correct thing to do after 9-11. That was where the "Base" of the terrorist who attacked the USofA came from. They needed to have their Butts kicked. It was good, it was legal and history will show this 100 years from now.
However, Going into IZ for "weapons of mass destruction?" was a scam. There were none. (I know first hand that there were none.)
Bush Jr and his knuckelheaded buddies just wanted Sadam out of power...and they got bad advice--thinking the Iraqis would welcome us as the great liberators.
There was no "Just" reason to invade Iraq...History will show this 100 years from now.
The Iraqis are lazy and can't do 50% of what they "try" to do. it's not in their nature. They are more like "what is in this for me" types.
Now, that we are finally focusing on AF...and fighting the Talibanassholes...even if it's not the best way to do it.
We should have spent all our time and effort on AF and never gone to IZ.
Dood, I respect your opinion but disagree heartily. When nations go to war they are forced to do two strategic tasks.
1. Attack the enemy's country.
2. Defend your own country from attack.
After 9-11, we were forced to play pure defense. There was no state in which we could engage "terrorism".
It's like the 4 or 5 bullies in the playground who grab your hat and then joyfully take turns denying the theft...
"I didn't take your hat, he took it."
"No way, man. I didn't take it."
"Not me!"
"What hat?"
Did one of them take it? Probably? Will you get your hat back? Probably not. But there's only one way to to prevent another theft.
Don't threaten all of them. Don't run around like an idiot trying to discover which one is holding your hat behind his back. Pick one kid and beat the snot out of him.
Saddam is the unlucky kid who got chosen. It didn't help his case that he had been bragging to the world that he had nuclear and biological weapons. It didn't help his case that he had actually used biological weapons in the past. And it didn't help his case that he had tried to kill Bush the Elder.
The move into Iraq was brilliant. Rumsfeld's handling of the operation was a tragedy.
And the move into Iraq allowed us to engage the enemies as they poured into Iraq. It was preferable to battling radical Islam at 57th Street & 7th Avenue.
Another very old soldier. I spent '66 and '67 in and around the Iron Triangle fighting another war that was widely believed to have been unnecessary.
It was bloodily mismanaged, but context is everything - the context was a proxy war in a developing client state of the USSR and China. We had to go toe to toe whatever the outcome; conventional reverse narratives of the wisdom of doing it are useless. It had to happen, and the rolling logic that military success is measured by a friendly state is ridiculous. Sometimes you fight simply because you must, and it's an end in itself.
Within the past few years I had one son in Afghanistan and two in Iraq, all at the same time and all combat soldiers. Afghanistan, according to my witness is "unwinable" in any meaningful way but a demonstration of will to resist and punish Islamic fanaticism is essential.
Iraq is another matter. It's impossible, I think, to determine whether it was "necessary" (the No Fly Zones and the associated military protocols were unsustainable), nor can we predict what Iraq would be today without the war. Like Vietnam, it's so complicated that anything you say about it is true.
The world is a dyna mic place. Most opinions are equal, and confirmed or rejected by time.
And Lilith is a plant or a sloppy caricature of a leftard. No one could possibly be that stupid, derivative and serious all at the same time.
You are probably correct, Rhod. There is certainly justification for strategic unwinable conflict.
I still taste the defeat of Vietnam and I find it difficult to remember it as a strategic withdrawal from a necessary battle. Decades of resentment and political point scoring by both sides have reduced my memories to harsh monochrome.
Thanks for reminding me of the greys.
Thanks, Nickie. No need to respond to this:
The New Left of the early '60's (Carl Oglesby's version, before the moral imbecile Ayers and his putrid hag took over) was arguably correct about a lot of things.
They saw bloody foreign military involvements like Vietnam as self-defeating, and this idea was consistent with their small government, local control kind of individualistic communitarianism. Today they would almost be conservatives.
What followed Oglesby with the Maoist degenerates who became The New Left and The Weathermen, was an anti-war doctrine that was anti-American because it was pro-Communist. It was only anti-American military, not generally isolationist.
The same kind of orthodoxy propels the far and moderate left today on our two current wars, while the Buchanan conservatives promote the old Oglesby kind of "anti-imperialism" pacifism.
One or both of them will influence what happens in AF and Iraq. Both wars will be "lost" in the Vietnam sense because Bush's Idealist approach to foreign policy is dead, and Obama's stability-fetish Realism will remain in place until the world catches fire again. And it will.
Well jeez I hope you don't cringe at my stupidity, but I suppose I wouldn't be surprised. Your nightmare sounds a bit like a conspiracy theory. The only problem I have with that is, I have the same nightmare. If you stand back and look at things with a little common sense (which ain't all that common)the puzzle pieces start to fit. When the other half of the U.S. wakes up from it's kool-aid induced stupor maybe we can fix the mess B.O.'s making.
Great comments as always.
Nickie, was that *you* ordering me to bed last night???
LOL.
I like the imagery of fighting the enemies that poured into Iraq, instead of here. After 911, we needed to kick some @ss, and did.
Rhod, I love your perspective on things. I guess being a war veteran and father of 3 veterans will give you a good grasp on reality.
I am going to start calling Lilith Acorn Lil. Acorn needs to spend all of that stimulus money somewhere, and they probably send folks out here to the internet to do some sparring. Maybe if they gave her a raise, she'd put her heart in her work. As it is, her comments are only half-baked.
Ahhh...another mis-informed good citizen. Before we went into Iraq, there was a "slight chance" that there "might have been some terrorist there,,,,but the only threat Iraq was about was a threat to Iran. I think we should have given Saddam more weapons to ATTACK Iran!
After Abue Grabe, terrorist came out of the woodwork from every other country in the area of Iraq to join the Jihad! What we did is breed more terrorist - because of Abue Grabe! I know, every single foreign fighter I "talked" to said they came because of it.
NO, there was no ligit reason to invade Iraq.... Afgan was where we should have focused our effort...but we got off track and now we have to catch up...at great cost of US troops.
There is absoulty no evidence that Iraq or Saddam had anything to do with any terrorist ever attacking the US.
Rincess Prism, I do not laugh at you but, rather, bask in your beauty. You are wise beyond your tender years.
Opie, that was me! Do as I say, not as I do.
Britain fought 3 colonial wars in Afghanistan during the 19th century and did not win any of them ( despite usually doing so eleswhere and having a solid supply base in what was then India ). The best Britain managed was to install a puppet regime in the area around Kabul which did not last very long ( sound familiar ?).
Banned, it sounds too damned familiar. Thanks.
Roller Dude, I take umbrage at being called a "mis-informed good citizen". I am altogether TOO informed of the opinion you spout. It has been heaped at me by the MSM these past 6 years. It is the liberal mantra.
Muslims liked us until we RUINED things with ABU GRAIB. They hate us because we DESERVE IT. If only we were nicer, they would love us again. Let's send a nice emissary over to kiss their BUNS and make them love us. Maybe a little bowing and scraping....{puke}
One of the more ridiculous anti-Iraq war formulas is that we "created" terrorists by invading the country (there might be good reasons to NOT have invaded, but this isn't one of them).
When you go to war, the opposition organizes and fights back; they're simply more visible. There's no way to prove that any of your enemies were either friendly or indifferent before the war started. You also do not go to war worrying about who you're going to piss off. Walking on egg shells is not foreign policy.
The grievance of Jihadists is the grievance of modernity, not Abu Ghraib.
If Roller's formula were proveable it would be possible to find the opposite effect; you can't. Again, there might be good reasons not to have invaded, but timidity about potentials isn't one of them.
PS: We had half a million soldiers committed to containing Saddam Hussein after Gulf War I, and a vast range of air power enforcing the No Fly Zone restrictions. Very costly, and unsustainable.
Those who argue that the invasion wasn't necessary need to explain why we even HAD the No Fly Zones and what would have happened without them. You can't ignore this problem.
There IS an explanation, but the other strategist needs to say it.
Another PS, Dude...
Why put "talked" in quotation marks? I've been to your blog. You apparently weren't Intel so why were you "talking" to detainees and captives, and in what language/dialect/patois? Why were you doing the discovery without an interpreter?
What did you do with the info you gained? And most of all..
If "every single foreign fighter" that you "talked" to said they came because of Abu Ghraib, that itself suggest predetermination and pre-briefing.
That is, these captives were dispensing the most powerful condemnation of the Bush administration's Iraq policy, the chaos and brutality of the Iraq invasion.
Any legit interrogator would have seen this repetition as an outlier rather than a proof.
Just askin'.
Nickie:
You know what, I think you might be right about this. What does O care about good American Hero's laying down their lives? Our soldiers are just pawns in his game of world domination. This is a bad bad time indeed, and I fear it will make vietnam look like a play date.
Nickie - I have the same nightmare, is there no stopping these miscreants?
Reb, elections have consequences. These consequence are unbelievable.
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