Feb 16 2007
When The US Shows Up In Force, Our Enemies Leave
If there ever was a better indication that (a) the Bush plan to surge forces into Baghdad and Anbar Province was correct and (b) Murtha, Pelosi and the Dems plans to run away were abysmally wrong it is in today’s news:
U.S. and Iraqi forces are meeting little resistance as they sweep through Baghdad, a U.S. officer said on Friday, a day after Iraq’s president said a Shi’ite militia had ordered its leaders to leave the country.
The head of al Qaeda in Iraq, Abu Ayyub al-Masri, was wounded on Thursday when Iraqi forces intercepted a group of al Qaeda militants heading to a volatile town north of Baghdad, an Interior Ministry source said.
…
In Baghdad, Iraqi and U.S. troops were out in force on Friday, manning checkpoints and searching vehicles for weapons under a new crackdown that exhausted Iraqis hope will stabilize the city after four years of war and worsening sectarian chaos.
U.S. Major Steven Lamb, a spokesman for U.S. forces stationed in Baghdad, said the offensive was going well.
“I wouldn’t say there has been a high level of resistance. I mean if you take a look at the stuff that was going on yesterday, we had relatively few incidents, but that may change today,” Lamb said.
Granted, one day is not going to make a trend, but the fact we found, attacked, wounded and nearly captured al Qaeda’s leader in Iraq coming with the news the Mahdi army has decided to blow town and hide out of country is what we needed to change the dynamics in Iraq. And we are still weeks away from full strength.
Actually, I am not surprised and I doubt the military is either. As more and more of Iraq became stable (and something like 14 out of 16 Provinces are fairly peaceful) there would be a time when the US would try and move forces to focus on the remaining hotspots. Up until now they tried to do that with forces in country, which allowed the insurgents and terrorists to move to the peaceful areas. So we adjusted by holding what we had and applying a surge of external forces. Not all that complicated – if you are looking for ways to win.
But the media should (and it won’t) be asking Democrats how retreating to Okinawa would have created these results? It is a simple question and one the begs the issue – why run away when our enemies do all the running when we show up in Force? If the Dems had their way, we would have been out of Iraq last year, and al Qaeda in Iraq would be a strengthening danger. Now its leader is injured and on the run. We are making our enemies redeploy – and someone needs to point that at to that clown Mad Murtha. If the Shia Militia have left Iraq, why should we leave and let them back in?
This goes beyond surrender. These insane ideas from the left seem more about helping our enemies survive to fight us another day, if not just letting them win without a fight. The Dems need to be pressed: why leave Iraq when our enemies our now leaving?
Your comrade in arms, Lassoingtruth, said that al Zawahiri was only talking about the fate of “collaborators”. I would consider that a defense of al Zawahiri. I have no doubt al Zawahiri and Al Qaeda would kill anyone who stood in their way. Oh, they might label the victims “collaborators”, though.
Gotta love those that want to still fight the Viet Nam war, yet fail to see or acknowledge the parallels between then and now.
Then
Supporting an incompetent and corrupt regime.
Worried about “dominoes” ( which never fell)
Support Tricky Dickey (The President), he’s the President right or wrong, the CIC.
Now
Supporting an incompetent and corrupt regime.
Worried about keeping them “over there” instead of here on our shores. Whoops too late, “They’re here”
Supporting the Great Un-communicator, George W. Bush, because he’s the CIC…Never mind the old slogan that “Elections Count” and
Republicans and the President’s War in Iraq were overwhelmingly rejected by the voters this past November.
I guess that’s us, never learning from our past…NOTHING
Well, if we paid attention to what happened in Vietnam post-1973, we might have learned that the cant the anti-war protestors fed us was not borne out by the facts. That the Viet Cong weren’t nice, indigenous freedom fighters, but a branch of the North Vietnamese government. That the government in Hanoi wasn’t a bunch of nationalists, but a bunch of Marxists intent on creating in the South the same police state they had in the North. That a change in regimes doesn’t have nice consequences for everybody on the receiving end – “re-education” camps, refugees, etc. That leaving a power vacuum may mean that some dangerous people will seize power – as Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge did in Cambodia, resulting in the deaths of one million people. So it could be true that we don’t learn anything from history.
DennisA
I quoted the al Qaeda leader to show how you had MISQUOTED
him in your first attribution. He said collaborators and you claimed
he said people.
Your quote:
“Al Zawahiri has already said he expects the U.S. to abandon the people of Iraq and Afghanistan, just as we abandoned the people of Vietnam. â€
Which you conveniently adjusted in your second
post on the subject to the accurate,
“He also said US-allied governments in Iraq and Afghanistan should consider their future.
“These traitors in Iraq and Afghanistan must face their inevitable fate, and face up to the inescapable facts. America … is about to depart and abandon them, just as it abandoned their like in Vietnam.â€
There is no way a rational person could consider my correcting your initial misquote a “defense” of Zawahari. But they could easily
see your attempt to justify continued US occupation, which
was intitially launched to install an Israel-friendly puppet which would also benefit the US oil-i-garchs thru oil privatization
and puppet-engineered contracts.
In other words, as has been proven, a puppet which would be opposed
by 90% of the Iraqi citizenry the neocons pretend to defend from the al Qaeda straw man and hated by them as much as would be a hypothetical al Qaeda government, a pipedream hyped by the Bush regime.
Dennisa,
Well said.
And a favorite trick of the Left is to portray totalitarian leaders as “nationalists.” Ho Chi Minh was committed to international Marxism as his first priority and even served in the Chinese Communist Army in WWII. The true “nationalists” in Iraq are those defending its freely elected government, today.
Another trick of the Left is to portray totalitarian opposition leaders as corrupt.
Diem, though authoritarian, did much good as leader of emerging South Viet Nam. He was falsly smeared by American journalists, which led to his overthrow and assination, with American complicity.
Steve-LA,
The dominos didn’t fall because of our effort there.
We are trying to prevent the post war parallel to Viet Nam from occurring, ie. millions of deaths, re-education camps etc.
The “tricky Dick” thought- substitute would better be applied to the congress that welshed on the assurances Nixon made to get the SV government to sign the Paris agreements.
“a puppet which would be opposed by 90% of the Iraqi citizenry”
That’s a myth. The Iraqi people voted for this government.
And you seem to have less trouble with the designs of the Islamic terrorists for Iraq than you do with the designs of the Bush Administration.
Steve-LA
Clarification:
The reason the dominos didn’t fall is that our effort, there, made it too costly for them.
http://www.navytimes.com/news/2007/02/dnalqaida070215/
Strata supports al Qaeda by supporting the Iraq War and its continuation-logical conclusions from Navy Times article.
Macker -“international Marxism” means an international
working class devoid of national orientation. If Ho Chi Minh
“believed” in it, he got nowhere promoting it. And an
International Working Class is as unattainable as an
International Islamic Caliphate, and was at the height of
Soviet and Chinese power, as their feuding was only a
fraction of the whole proof.
DennisA-you make the foolish assumption the new
Iraqi government as currently composed is pro-American. Pro-Iranian, yes, pro-American, no.
Macker.
American intervention caused the Sino-Soviet split and their
respective alliances with Vietnam and Cambodia? American
intervention created nationaist forms of “communism” in
Asia which would have formed united monoliths without
our Vietnam War? You’re in la la land.
Soothsayer, I have been out and just read your post.
I will tell you this: this general was buried almost three years ago near Williamsburg with full honors, jets flying overhead. As an aside, Bob Hope stayed in his quarters when he visited Viet Nam. He was, in fact, the lead. He had many other titles over the course of his career which started with the Second World War. He flew F-4’s in Viet Nam…and I got news for you I KNOW exactly what I’m talking about and you don’t. Believe it or not.
Ah, the great media/dem myth: the ’06 election was about getting out of Iraq. Misreead this election at your own peril!
Steve, how do you explain Joe Lieberman’s HUGE victory in Ct?
The Iraqi govt is pro-American. Do they want us to leave? Of course, but not yet, not till the job’s done.
The Iraqi battle is long & hard, but we are winning and the long term outlook is promising if we don’t bail. With our nationwide ADD, we forget the govt has only been in place for a year. The biggest threat, of course, is here at home with the anti-Bush media and deranged dems more concerned with opposing Bush than fighting the GWOT. And soothy & lasso should quit the crap about Bush lies and the idiotic slander of Bush/Cheny as fascists. Macker pointed out their hypocricy … these same loons swoon to support lefty dictators like Castro & Chavez and criticize when we confront oppressive thugs like Saddam or the radicals in charge of the Palestinians or Syria, and of course Iran, etc. etc.
It’s not a coincidence or sheer luck that we haven’t been attacked since 9-11. Only an ignoramus thinks Iraq has made us more vulnerbale. Contrary to soothy’s ill-informed allegations, no one’s rights have been taken away by the measures used.
Hadit:
I never stated that an Air Force General was in charge of all of the troops in Viet Nam. If you took that from my post it was a mistake. He was in charge of all the *Air Wing*, as in Air Force, in Viet Nam. I would have thought this was implied. Were you born in the 70’s?
You are constantly playing gotcha games. Typical of one who is incapable of a good-faith relationship.
And the facts from the General still stand regardless of your weak post.
Hadit:
What you said was:
Is there some way to interpret that other than “the general who was in charge of Viet Nam?”
If that’s not what you meant – then learn to write. It’s not my fault you can’t make a simple accurate declarative statement.
Were you born in the ’70’s?
Those of us who weren’t knew and know what happened during the Viet Nam era…and we don’t need some “dude” (one of your favorite words) telling us what was what…
Your language gives your “age” away.
Soothie – How come the rest of us understand what HadIt posted, but you can’t figure it out? Or are you just trolling, as I suspect.
Do not worry. Soothie lost this argument a couple dozen posts ago when he dug down into the troll bucket and threw the “fascist” word on the table. References to Hitler, Nazis, Bushchimphitlerism, fascism, etc. should always be interpretted as a surrender flag.
Actually when the terms traitor and Commie are throw around by
Strata and/or other of his bent on this site, and by a slew of neocon
talk hosts across America to describe Iraq dissent, the fascists
would-be, in any case, have given Sooth his case. When one claims merely quoting an Al Qaeda leader is “defending” him, he has lost his case.
When un-Wiley says the new Iraq government,composed of Shia militias and Sunni militias is “pro-American,” and that Sooth and I support Castro and Chavez with no evidence to support it, he gives us the argument.
Debates can’t be won by those who are out of touch with reality.
Al Zawahiri was talking about the governments of Iraq and Afghanistan. If you believe the people in these governments are “collaborators”, then you and al Zawahiri are in agreement.