IAP Political Forum

... Seriously.. this is what he said...


The war in Iraq "is lost" and a US troop surge is failing to bring peace to the country, the leader of the Democratic majority in the US Congress, Harry Reid, said Thursday.
"I believe ... that this war is lost, and this surge is not accomplishing anything, as is shown by the extreme violence in Iraq this week," Reid told journalists.

Reid said he had delivered the same message to US President George W. Bush on Wednesday, when the US president met with senior lawmakers to discuss how to end a standoff over an emergency war funding bill.

"I know I was the odd guy out at the White House, but I told him at least what he needed to hear ... I believe the war at this stage can only be won diplomatically, politically and economically."

Congress is seeking to tie funding for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan to a timetable to withdraw US troops from Iraq next year, but Bush has vowed to veto any such bill and no breakthrough was reported from the White House talks.

Bush on Thursday was addressing an Ohio town hall meeting and defending the war on terror launched in the wake of the September 11, 2001 attacks.


"It is the most solemn duty of our country, is to protect our country from harm," Bush told the invited audience in Tipp, Ohio.

"A lesson learned was that -- at least in my opinion -- that in order to protect us, we must aggressively pursue the enemy and defeat them elsewhere so that we do not have to face them here."

But Reid drew a parallel with former US president Lyndon Johnson who decided to deploy more troops in Vietnam some 40 years ago when 24,000 US troops had already been killed.

"Johnson did not want a war loss on his watch, so he surged in Vietnam. After the surge was over, we added 34,000 to the 24,000 who died in Vietnam," Reid said.

The comments came a day after bombers killed more than 200 people in a slew of car bombings in Baghdad, dealing a savage blow to the US security plan which aims to deploy an extra 30,000 troops in the country to quell sectarian unrest.

US Defense Secretary Robert Gates fly into Iraq Thursday on an unannounced visit for talks with top US military commanders there.

He met with General David Petraeus, chief of coalition forces in Iraq, his deputy Lieutenant Colonel Ray Odierno and Admiral William Fallon, chief of US forces in the Middle East.



www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=070419184534.ileoeb47&show_article=1

I disagree with him the war is won, it's been won for a long while now. It's now a civil war and a police job, nothing more. We are just there as sitting ducks now waiting around to be shot at, it's time to go home.

it depends on how you want to define the military's mission and the strategic objective as a whole doesn't?

I don't agree with Reid but I'd understand that view.
This was Iraq. The most watched nation on Earth in 1999. It's forces essentially decimated. Any patriotic American knows this should have been wrapped up, and militarily it was. For the most part the populace should've been receptive, and it was at first. They needed to bring Saddam in, and they did. I don't mean to make it sound like a cake-walk but it shouldn't have taken longer than WWII already. So what happened?

Well we know what happened. Everyone does. Right now the US is divided between those who admit it and those who don't yet. It was a long trail of bad White house decisions, ignoring the military expertise at their fingertips, contracting out to the under trained and unreliable, ignoring security and carrying on instead with Rumsfeld and Cheney's little day dreams of running this war without the generals and instead with a poli-corporate view of 'efficiency'. One could argue it was lost, at least in terms of the core admin group-think. It was a 'fail'. But that since this is a guerrilla/insurgent warfare there was no army to retreat from. An efficient and well armed/supplied force could always bunker down and hold it for a few years at least, so long as you're willing to take the constant drip of casualties. When all of Bush's 'Kings men' deserted him or we forced to leave or ran out of ideas themselves he finally dropped it all on a new General and the first one given the chance knew what they all did 5 months after the mission began. Petraeus appears to be pulling it out of the fire. Finally maybe Iraqis and Americans can stop dying soon.



If Reaganite waited for the stories to come along that actually have at least a little meat on the bone like this one his rep would be entirely different.
Ahk

I really don't understand people.

The surge began AFTER violence began dropping and was centered on Baghdad. Violence dropped sharply all over Iraq.

Because of the CLCs. Concerned Local Citizens groups. Add the Sadr militia basically being disbanded and you can discount the minor effect of a few thousand more troops in one small area.

For about $300 a month, we pay insurgents and even Al Qaeda members to police their own neighborhoods and that has made all the difference.

I don't understand why some people find that hard to comprehend.

We need to move troops out of the [for now] low-grade civil war in Iraq to free them up for duty in Afghanistan.

We do have other sections besides US politics.  And a discussion on Iraq should be in one of them.  Please attempt to follow the rules. 

Simply pathetic....

USA attack Iraq and says that they would stop the killing of Iraqis by saddam, but what is happening now? Now not even Iraqis is killed, but Americans. From the beginning maybe 100.000 people was killed, but know over a million. You read in the papers every day that a new suicidebomb exploded and killed several people, was it like that in the beginning? Maybe Iraq would be calmer if USA gets out of Iraq

First time I have heard a million dead in Iraq.
Bill Reilly says it is 65,000.
So I'm guessing the actual figure is somewhere between these two numbers.

OK, maybe not a million, but people is killed every day by suicide bombs and that isn't what USA wants. USA wants peace, but I think if USA stays in Iraq, it won't be peace.

I don't mean to sound judgmental, but you shouldn't just throw statistics out there and "hope they stick."

It can take away from any intelligent and accurate statements you may make.

I just thought approximately how many, but I was wrong then

http://www.iraqbodycount.org/ 90,000 says this report.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/7180055.stm 150,000 according to the BBC

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/11/world/middleeast/11casualties.html New York Times suggest 600,000

In your defense, Iraq death toll is so varied, just depends on who you source with.

You can type into google any number ranging from 30,000 to 1,000,000 followed by "Iraq death toll" and probably get some site claiming it.

The Iraq war was won militarily and politicaly (they caught Saddam). Economicaly, and diplomaticaly it was a defeat. In the context of the war on terror it was useless and possibly counter productive.

I would say this war was won, but it was useless for America.

Of course USA won, and I agree they lose economly. For example why can't the government use more of the money that they spend on the Iraqi-war to prevent a global financial crisis? It would spare some American lifes too

Antietam......23,000 casualties in one day

D-Day........~17,500 casualties in one day

Just sprinkling a little perspective into the thread.

Remember the shit-storm led by the Republicans when 23 U.S. soldiers were killed in Somalia (Blackhawk Down)? Perspective is not something people are all that good at.

The U.S. needs to get out of Iraq because

• The Iraqis are insisting that we leave
• We are like antibodies. Our very presence in the country sews unrest and resentment and creates terrorist.
• It's costing us a steady trickle of dead and wounded, and about $10 billion a month.
• It's wearing out our military which is needed elsewhere. Like Afghanistan.

UPDATE:
Barack Obama may have been elected only three days ago, but his victory is already beginning to shift the political ground in Iraq and the region.
Iraqi Shiite politicians are indicating that they will move faster toward a new security agreement about American troops, and a Bush administration official said he believed that Iraqis could ratify the agreement as early as the middle of this month.
"Before, the Iraqis were thinking that if they sign the pact, there will be no respect for the schedule of troop withdrawal by Dec. 31, 2011," said Hadi al-Ameri, a powerful member of the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq, a major Shiite party. "If Republicans were still there, there would be no respect for this timetable. This is a positive step to have the same theory about the timetable as Mr. Obama."  http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/07/world/middleeast/07iraq.html?ref=todayspaper

Get that? The Iraqis felt they couldn't trust the Bush Administration. The Iraqis believed that any agreement made with the Bush Administration wouldn't be worth the paper it was written on.

I wonder how many other diplomatic initiatives around the world have languished for this very reason?

Ah, the winds of change, like a fresh springtime breeze...

Depends on what the expenditure of life acheived.

Somalia acheived absolutely nothing other than demonstrating an Achilles Heel.

Iraq has already acheived the ouster of a dictator, an Iraqi parliament with minority representation and women with a seat at the table, and at present....an ally.

And an "antibody" is part the bodies immune system and is a defense against infection......is that what you meant by:

We are like antibodies. Our very presence in the country sews unrest and resentment and creates terrorist.?

I think you meant to compare us to a virus......or gonnorhea.

Comparing piles of dead bodies doesn't prove much of anything...



But as for the post, I'm with the general consensus. The victory in war was never at stake. We knew our technology and manpower could overcome ANY resistance Iraq could muster militarily.

However, where H. W. Bush stopped, G. W. Bush decided to to proceed.

The goal here is to inspire "Democracy" and allow neighboring nations to develop it by themselves. However, this seemed to forget the fact that Iran already IS a democracy and has so far not inspired anyone outside it's own borders to follow suit.

But actually, all that is a load of crap.

I resist the urge to say it was about oil because such an ad hoc statement has been made by both the intellectually challenged (who just say it cause other people say it) and the hard core left (who make an effort to villify the Bush administration at every oppurtunity). So I don't say it's about oil. I say it's about the U.S.'s energy future, securing a source of fossil fuels and at the same time expanding American influence against the expansion of our future enemies (Russia, China, etc.).

There's more going on here then just "oil"... but I'm going off-topic.


So I completely agree that the massive military arm of the US had no problem squishing Iraq's attempt at a defense, but their resistence to a constant U.S. presence is palpable. Meanwhile, the Shia government that has taken control essentially seeks to establish a great friendship with Iran, another U.S. enemy.

In effect, on the political front, we've increased the influence of our enemies by putting a friendly, developing country right on their border. Iran will not miss the oppurtunity here.

Of course, the more nebulous problem we've created is a new generation of Arab youthes who don't like the US, ensuring tension between us and the region in the future. This problem can't really be quantified (which is more scary then it is reassuring) and it's effects can't be percieved... so we wait.

Just like the domino theory was used to publicly excuse conflict in Vietnam, the idea that if we leave Iraq, terrorism will consume it's government and will seek to strike the US in revenge ignores the fact that after the US withdrew from Vietnam, communism or the Vietnamese went no further then their own borders. Essentially, the whole "reason" we went into Iraq and the one reason keeping us there was nothing but contrived nonsense.

To believe Iraq is somehow different neglects the history we've already experienced.

Our future problems from the Middle East will not come from Iraq or even Iran. They will come from where they always come from - Saudi Arabia and Pakistan... ironically enough, the U.S.'s secondray and tirtiary ally in our war against terror (Israel obviously being the primary).

::)

So while Reaganite may post an article, assuming explanation is unneccessary, he fails to grasp the true complexity of the problem we face, which comes down to one choice. Either leave now to mitigate blowback or stay indeffinately.

Option 2 isn't really an option at all considering the cost this war has incurred and the economic issues we find ourselves in today (though a flood of troops may result in the same issues Vietnam vets face today - homelessness and joblessness).

Either way, on the surface it may be easy to view Reid as an idiot (I personally think he is, but that's neither here nor there), but his opinions on this issue, while partly driven by partisan politics, is accurate.

Knocking Humpty-Dumpty off the wall was simple. Putting him back together again is not.

Abraxas, The problem is/was (because it's about to end) not the mere presence of the american "antibody" but a few important factors which turned a liberation from a dictator into a messy occupation:

1/ Total lack of preparation for a civilian administration of Iraq after the invasion. For example when the us troops had taken over Baghdad, the us general comanding the place had no idea to whom to contact with to ensure a functioning of the local administration and basic services. They were there, they didn't even have a name or an address where to go.

2/ The Bush administration ignored warning that Iraqis will start almost immediately to kill each others in the most atrocious manners (on top of resisting american presence).