So, we should ignore the continuing ceaseless slaughter of the Iraqi civilian population?

To what end?

The USA has a great history of perseverance. That includes coming back from horrible defeats. We came back from all of these:

- Most of the War for Independence.

- War of 1812, the burning of Washington

- Civil War, Bull Run

- Spanish-American War: Horrible logistics problems.

- WWI: Same as above. No supply of planes or tanks.

- WWII: Bataan, Wake Island, Kasserine Pass

- Korea: Pretty much the entire shooting match until MacArthur showed up.

In every case America hung in there until we could defeat the enemy.

Harry Reid and co. introduces a dimension of defeatism to the equation. Given their way in the situations above we’d still be British, have slavery, or be facing a goose-stepping world.

It will be a sad day when the likes of Harry Reid take over the Presidency.

Just be thankful he is speaking so honestly this far in advance of the next US elections. He is helping to draw the battle lines far enough in advance of the national choice to make a difference.

In the cheap media politics of today, timing is everything.

That’s a good thing for Reid. When you align yourself with people and forces that aim to destroy human progress, what is good and what is bad, is not the same for someone who is resisting entropy and death.

So, we should ignore the continuing ceaseless slaughter of the Iraqi civilian population?

To what end?

You know Neo, sometimes people are just on auto cruise and depend upon their emotions for the puffy kittens to do the thinking for them. Absolutely atrocious.

Originally, Reid voiced his “failure” viewpoint to the President at a WhiteHouse meeting. …. But to make such a declaration publicly shows a narrow focus on politics as usual that is almost breathtaking in its self-absorption and its ignorance (or dismissal) of the consequences of his words.

I agree that Reid’s utterance that the war’s lost was a either a craven partisan political move a shows how breathtakingly out of touch he is.

But in this asymmetrical fight for possession of the dominant public narrative and perception of this war, I unfortunately am coming to the conclusion that Reid may be right. The democrats and the MSM have been relentless in their politicization of and attacks on this war and have allied themselves with the enemies of the west. All it seems, for short term political advantage. They are the definition of decadence and unfortunately have been successful in convincing more and more people that the cause is indeed lost.
So in that sense, he’s right and he and his cohorts in congress play no small part in it.

Just my personal take on this, but increasingly, I find myself more and more outnumbered in any discussion of this topic by those who are ready to throw in the towel or just quit in disgust. The democrat/MSM axis of negativity and defeat has contributed in no small part to the public demoralization. Those who have not been deceived have been worn down. I hope Mr. Reid and his friends are proud of this achievement. But they are not alone, the present administration’s inability to articulate and sell its view has also helped. While history will damn the democrats for their will to appeasement in the face of this most serious threat, it will also damn the republicans for their corruption and ineptitude.

Maybe the comic books are right to present evil in a simple form: it gets the reader used to the idea of a very large evil, and enlarges his field of vision.

I’m reasonably sure that most of our politicians secretly realize that such evil exists, even as they deny it to avoid spooking the sheep, who might run to someone else. But I’m not sure about either our Fourth Estate or the left wing of the new Fifth Estate.

The terrorists only hope and goal is to demoralize Americans, and in that, and that only, they are winning. Therefore, Harry Reid is making self-fulfilling prophesies.

If the Dems were as determined to beat the Iraqi insurgents as they are to defeat Bush, the war would probably be over by now. If the GOP were as determined to beat the Dems as they are the terrorists, it might be, too.

There is no military solution to this conflict.

Bush knows it too, I’m sure.

“Surrender monkies”? How cute - my four year old likes monkies. Silly monkies.

Neo - you are a seriously vile human being. Your quote about the Iraqi civilians is a new low for you.

Wasn’t this war all about the Iraqis?

Now it’s about ‘winning’ - as meaningless, and vague a term imaginable in the Iraq war context.

What a bunch of freakin’ idiots, to still support this war….

That should read ‘excuse for a human being’.

You’ve the emotional developement of a 4 year old, and the sensibilities of a sewer rat.

To “Tom”—
Always nice to see you, stevie my boy (neo here, of course).

Bush knows it too, I’m sure.

Are you seriously trying to claim that Reid is a loyal opposition party member, and is just trying to help out Bush and the US military by carrying their water and making their points for them?

If Reid isn’t, then obviously it doesn’t matter what Reid says, his intentions are diametrically opposite that of military leaders who say not to focus on a military solution. And in point of fact, there may not be any military solution because of the politicians themselves.

The notion that Reid is just aping Bush’s understanding of the war, seems a bit flawed.

Neo - you are a seriously vile human being. Your quote about the Iraqi civilians is a new low for you.

Don’t worry about it, Neo, Tom’s had his fixations on the path to entropy long before he met you. You can’t educate people who don’t want to understand, Neo. I think we’ve seen events akin to that many times over over the lifespan of your blogspot.

People who want to learn, gravitate towards you and are willing to try to exceed their limitations. But there are also people that gravitate towards you because you threaten their horizons, threatening to expand them that is. Some people don’t want their horizons of comprehension expanded, they want to continue living in their parochial world. I didn’t like that situation, which is why your obvious facility with studying Vietnam, was of such great import to someone like me.

In order to expand my limited understanding of what was going on now, I had to completely understand what had gone before. And what better way to do it, then to rely upon someone who participated and therefore had a very unique and erudite perspective? I wished to share in the wisdom you accrued Neo, because one cannot become wise just by relying upon one’s own misperceptions and biases. This is the true strength behind diversity, that is all too often fettered away for ideological purity.

It goes beyond what you said to Austin, Neo. It isn’t just about putting their political identities and psyches on the line, betting on disaster in Iraq in order to prove and justify their beliefs. This is more like Cho than anything else. Cho knew something was wrong, but instead of trying to improve things, he decided that it was time to destroy, time to accelerate entropy and let it takes his soul in sacrifice for “getting back” at people he hated. So he kills because he feels he is justified. That decision, the one that sacrifices other people’s lives in order to benefit yourself personally, is the very definition of Evil actions.

Is Evil about intent, about having good intentions? Not fully. Every murderer believes he is justified, all that don’t feel any guilt that is, which is most of them. So we cannot really depend upon any kind of “subjective criteria about good intentions”. That would be as bad as depending upon psychologists and their ability to tell who is violent or not.

Regardless of what evil is technically defined as, we do know that if a person falls prey to Evil’s lure, they are not going to be able to do anything good for human beings on this world and time. Resisting evil becomes a lot harder, Neo, once you start to work for evil. And it doesn’t matter whether you know it or not, whether you deny it or not, or whether you believe it or not. Those who serve the forces of darkness, inevitably further destruction of human values and all that humanity has built over the toils and suffering of billionbs and billions of lives.

The Left doesn’t have blood on their hands, Neo. Because they believe that so long as another person is the one that is using the axe, they the Left, are innocent. But are they innocent Neo, are good intentions enough to shield you from the depravity of evil and its temptations? I think not. It takes more than that to resist evil, it takes more than that to create something of lasting worth and of benefit to human civilization, Neo.

Here’s one thing of practical worth. To Backup what Siggy said, Evil people hate the Good and people who serve the cause of Goodness. Evil folks will see what you do as… evil. Few people knowingly pursue the path of evil simply for power and personal benefits. And even of those folks, like Hugo and whatever, they still believe in their own propaganda. It takes a lot of self-honesty to know that you are a monster and keep doing monstrous things. A lot of strength, but strength doesn’t come from evil folks like Hugo. Strength comes from doing Good things, and being good. As the United States is good, and strong because we are good, because we do raise women and children from the pits of darkness, poverty, and hopelessness.

Is the Left going to exert their power to lift the helpless and the deserving to a higher place, with less suffering, Neo? Are they?

I suspect when Reid refers to top military commanders asserting “we can’t win,” he’s taking their comments out of context. Most strategists would likely tell you that counter insurgency cannot be one through strictly kinetic or effects based operations but requires a damn complex framework of social, economic, political and combative efforts. I think Reid is conveniently leaving the meat and potatoes out of the stew when he makes these references.

I have my reservations regarding the ultimate success of the surge. Sadly it’s about three years too late and one of the major elements requisite to stabilize Iraq into a democracy have largely either fled to Jordan or Syria or come under command of the Shia Mahdi or Sunni tribes.

That said to completely reverse course before the entire operation is in place is ridiculous. This whole “I support the troops but not the war” bit works for citizens but when high level politicians denounce or announce failure there’s no way in hell they can also honestly claim to “support the troops.” Any who do so are completely unaware or ignorant of and indeed adding fuel to a most effective element of war: Propaganda.

The more the US stays, the more it convinces the rest of the world that it’s there only for the oil. Don’t you see how badly US credibility is being undermined by continuing this unfortunate situation? The prudent course for the US would be to withdraw and request the UN to step in.

No strategic objectives achieved?

Well - sniff, sniff, boo-hoo - at least the GWOT is in fact a success, including some of its strategic objectives - at least thus far, for those of you in Rio Linda.

No more 9/11-like attacks = primary goal.

Hence also, no economy crashing from attacks, and instead running to near perfection by all conventional standards.

Fighting “them there instead of here”, as AQ agrees is the case = primary goal.

Iran becoming more and more defined as the festering threat it is, isolated, and tactically surrounded.

Background of Dems with no plan except surrender/the self-fullfilling prophecy of ineluctable defeat = enslavement or death.

Even confining the debate [unrealistically] only to Iraq, we have not lost unless we leave soon in consonance with Democrat focused, self-fullfilling defeatism, which would, however, then make Reid’s statement “empirical”.

“What must be realized is that as long as the U.S. is strategically present, the enemy has no hope of achieving any of his objectives. This enemy knows this only too well; and his prime objective is to bring about this withdrawal and retreat by all means. He pins his hopes on the internal situation in the U.S., and this is his most potent weapon. Therefore most of his actions and attacks are basically publicity stunts aimed primarily at the MSM and American and western public opinion.”

At this point, only by following Harry Reid, enc., can we lose.

Please tell us how this would work. Otherwise, you are merely perseverating a very vague but dominating and controlling paranoid delusion. The delusion is controlling you, and by your own aquiesence to it.

If we went there to take over/steal Iraq’s oil, we certainly wouldn’t be messing around with the kind of war we are fighting now. And all Saddam Hussein had to do to prevent his own displacement and to keep his oil was to comply with inspections. Why didn’t he?

Don’t skirt the issue. Take the skirt off and answer the question.

http://pub35.bravenet.com/forum/2973085091/show/622636

Fighting “them there instead of here”, as AQ agrees is the case = primary goal.

In other words, you are arguing that Iraqi civilian lives can be sacrificed to save US civilian lives? That Iraqi civilians’ lives are expendable?

So where is your evidence of the non-global market diversion of Iraqi oil to BushCo., in contrast to your conspiracy theory? It is not up to me to explain or prove what you are claiming. Since it is your site you referred me to, and I can’t readily see any explanation, why don’t you just tell it to me in your own words?

As neo has also explained above, we aren’t killing very many of them. Do you think that massive Iraqi civilian murder wasn’t going on for a long time before we got there? Do you think it would lessen if we left?

Two points need to be made here:

(1) Some (not all) of the civilian blood shed by the US in World War II was, of course, gratuitous and unnecessary. The firebombing of Dresden and the atom-bombing of not one but TWO Japanese cities were, simply put, war crimes.

(2) The more important point here, however, is this: Holland, France, etc. were Nazi-occupied, and Britain under Nazi threat. Iraq, however, did not have any Al Qaeda BEFORE the US went in. By going into Iraq and messing it up, and bydisbanding the Iraqi army without providing security, the US created the conditions of narchy in which Al Queda was then able pour into Iraq. This was reckless endangerment of the life of Iraqi civilians on the part of the US.

Your question is a false dilemma. It was the Nazis who made them the human shields, in Iraq it is the terrorists who make human shields of the population.

But the point is that before the US went into Iraq, there were no terrorists there.

When the argument is made that it was necessary to go into Iraq so that “we can fight them (Al Queda) there instead of fighting them here”, it becomes clear that the US saw Iraqi civilians’ life as not worth very much. For it was entirely predictable that, if the US occupied Iraq and created conditions (through incompetence) that lead to a security vacuum and anarchy in that country, terrorists and would-be terrorists from nearby countries would pour in and that Iraq would become, in fact, a terrorist magnet. That of course provides the US the opportunity now of “fighting them over there” — but it shows, I think, the supreme callousness that US policy thinking has had all along towards the little matter of Iraqi civilians. For the whole strategy of “fighting them over there so that we don’t have to fight them over here” means inevitably that lots and lots of Iraqi civilians would get killed in crossfire and at the hands of terrorists (and, to a lesser extent, at the hands of (a small number of) US soldiers who go postal under stress like what happened in Haditha). Somehow, this seems to US policy to be an acceptable price to pay, i.e. Iraqi civilian life does not seem to matter, as long as US civilian lives are protected (i.e. as long as we keep fighting the terrorists THERE).

Also, once our marines leave Iraq, the terrorists will also leave Iraq. They are in Iraq because they want to fight Americans. If there are no Americans, they will have no reason to be in Iraq any more. The Iraqi civil war too would die down, because it is kept stoked by Sunni foreign terrorists fomenting atrocities against the Iraqi Shia, which in turn sets off cycles of revenge killings.

Lee, you say I am being humiliated, but really, it is you who come across as a wacko. Sorry, but that is an objective analysis.

You still haven’t told me why Laurence Lindsey (Bush aid) was talking about invading Iraq to lower pump prices when Rummy was saying oil had nothing to do with it, while the neocons were arguing that the oil companies should have outright ownership of the land and why Cheney was keeping his energy conference so secret.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_Task_Force

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oil_imperialism_theories

How can you win with no clear consensus about what you want to accomplish.

I don’t think anyone is still looking forward to a unified, democratic, autonomous state, do you?

If this war wasn’t actually happening it would be a good storyline for a satirical geo-political novel.

Under every plausible scenario, the negative effect will be quite small relative to the economic benefits that would come from a successful prosecution of the war.
The key issue is oil, and a regime change in Iraq would facilitate an increase in world oil.”

“Economic Effect of War Seen as Small: Lindsey Says
Benefits of Ousting Saddam Outweigh Costs”
Washington Times, 09/19/02

Sir, how are you. Please bear with me. I was born half Jewish, with a Jewish father. I was adopted at three months and raised a Gentile to agnostic parents. I have certain religious and political views, but my concern here is that Jewish neocons have turned the world upside down. Along with their Gentile neocon counterparts, these guys like Perle and Wolfowitz have put America on the imperialistic, unilateral, war crime tract of stealing oil with the blood of American soldiers.

This tract is disconcerting because the UN charter established Israel, and established the authority to prosecute the Nazi’s. Since Bush has taken office, Bush has used Fox News to trash the UN, to trash international law, all in an effort to undermine international law. The goal of all this was to attack Iraq to steal their oil.

This war crime is making many Americans hate neocons and everything they stand for. America stood for more than this unilateral greed! What happened, Bernard? Why are you supporting this miserable meltdown of American foreign policy? Was Eisenhower right and the Military/Industrial/Oil complex run amuck? IMO Israel, who I support, should distance herself from these totally unethical and lying necons, and the sooner the better. Israel’s very existence rests on a strong committment to the UN Charter and international law!

You could answer the thirty or so questions that I have presented here if you have the time. Thanks for reading.
_________________
Gary Anderson

No more wars for oil. No more Bush lies.
http://bushliar.newcovenanttheology.com

Apparently it is you who has not been listening. Ain’t nothing anybody says that’s going to cure that.

History will prove that this view is the correct one. Some have said that Wolfowitz stating that Iraq is swimming in oil was just an effort to state that North Korea was poor and we could control them, and that Iraq was rich and we could not control them, but when you link that statement with other neocon views, and the view of Bush aid Laurence Lindsey, you have the smoking gun over and over.

We invade Iraq because they were swimming in oil, bottom line.

Exactly right, Gary: that’s also why George Soros has recently bought 1.9 million shares of Halliburton. He’s in on it, too.

Therefore, I wouldn’t be surprised if Dodd was part of the conspiracy himself. What do you think?

http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn?pagename=article&contentId=A18841-2002Sep14

And a quote from the above link”‘It’s pretty straightforward,’ said former CIA director R.
James Woolsey, who has been one of the leading advocates of
forcing Hussein from power. ‘France and Russia have oil
companies and interests in Iraq. They should be told that if
they are of assistance in moving Iraq toward decent
government, we’ll do the best we can to ensure that the new
government and American companies
work closely with them.’”

Stevie, your name is not “neo”. You are projecting your own views upon neo, then fearing them in a paranoid fashion, instead of recognizing that what you are afraid of is yourself, or your own sense of personal helplessness.

No charge.

Officials of several major firms said they were taking care to avoiding playing any role in the debate in Washington over how to proceed on Iraq. “There’s no real upside for American oil companies to take a very aggressive stance at this stage. There’ll be plenty of time in the future,” said James Lucier, an oil analyst with Prudential Securities.

But with the end of sanctions that likely would come with Hussein’s ouster, companies such as ExxonMobil and ChevronTexaco would almost assuredly play a role, industry officials said. “There’s not an oil company out there that wouldn’t be interested in Iraq,” one analyst said.

(I almost read that name as James Lucifer. Not far off.)

http://article.wn.com/view/2007/04/07/India_to_get_oil_contracts_from_Iraq/

WASHINGTON: Despite whispers in some quarters that the Bush administration invaded Iraq to take control of its oil, the first contracts with major oil firms from Iraq’s new government are likely to go not to US companies, but rather to firms from China, India, Vietnam, and Indonesia. “While Iraqi lawmakers struggle to pass an agreement on exactly who will award the contracts and how the revenue will be shared, experts say a draft version that passed the cabinet earlier this year will likely uphold agreements previously signed by those countries under Saddam Hussein’s government,” CNNMoney.Com has said in a report citing energy experts.

If oil was not part of the equation, why do you think the US invaded Iraq to liberate it from a dictator rather than, say, try to liberate Tibet from China’s llegal occupation? (Hint: Tibet has no oil.)

OK, bet.

Lets say Bush announces tomorrow morning that he has launched a war with China over Tibet. Are you down for the cause brother?

I don’t own a car. I ride a bicycle to and from work, and use public transportation when I have to travel longer distances.

In respect of transportation, the USA has a lot to learn from Europeans.

I don’t have a cell phone either. I use Skype over my computer.

Finally getting out? You mean to say the everyone from Jimmy Carter to Dan Rather HASN’T been shrieking that the invasion of Iraq was all about the oil? That the “peace protesters” haven’t been shrieking “no blood for oil” as far back as the January before we actually invaded?

What a strange world you live in! Where people ignore your “truths,” not because these “truths” have nothing to do with reality, but simply because you haven’t found the right way to communicate them, or because the forces of evil keep emanating untruthy vibrations that make their innocent victims demand things like proof, or even logic, before they will consider your truths.

The real truth is, we’ve been drowning in your “truthiness” ever since the floodgates of the media opened the day after 9/11, with the first commandment they handed down: “We must ask ourselves why they hate us.” Now we are finally tiring of fighting the flood of “truth,” and starting to go under… cause for celebration, I suppose, for the individual raindrops that have formed the flood.