Feh. Talk about narcissism.

If you want to send a message, use Western Union.

Feh…You knew Sam Goldwyn?

He’s dead too.

The conclusion: stay in Iraq forever, so our enemies won’t think we are weak.

I’m considerably less fearful of whether our enemies think we’re weak, and considerably more fearful of whether we actually are weak. No one could possibly argue in good faith that the war in Iraq has made us stronger, and many, many arguments can be made that were we to leave, it would not make us weaker. Perhaps our enemies would gloat, but perhaps that’s something we should have thought about before invading a country on a shoe-string. We might have learned something from Vietnam were it not for the likes of Steyn running around “revising” history.

Is Damascus an enemy? Or a friend?

and soon enough arriving at:

Is the U.S. about freedom? Or collectivism?

How can Americans look at the same fact set and see opposite facts - then swear their interpretation represents indisputable reality? How have we reached a point where we fail to agree upon what is? I’m beginning to think I know:

We disagree about what America is supposed to be. And underneath that, we disagree about what life is about.

America’s founders designed a nation according to their understanding of what life is about. Today, many Americans disagree with the American founders understanding of what life is about. These Americans consequently disagree with principles the founders designed into the nations foundational documents.

If two cannot agree on what life is about, nor what America is about, they can then look at one thing and see two different, diametrically opposite things. They can each swear their interpretation represents absolute reality.

This is what I’ve been thinking about for a while.

“Why Was Petraeus Able To Shift The Debate On Iraq? The Media Enabled It
September 2, 2007 — 9:12 AM EST”

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/horsesmouth/2007/09/media_helped_pe.php

Reagan led in this most important area. He said:

America is a beautiful girl. She is not an old hag.

And we said:
He’s right! America IS a beautiful girl!

This was Reagan’s genius. He was a leader on the very most important and critical questions:

What is life about?
What is America about?

He rallied Americans to agree as to what life and America are about. This surely helped various Americans look at one thing and agree it was one thing - as opposed to arguing about what the one thing actually was. Under Reagan, our shared sense of purpose, and of reality, surely contributed to our comeback as a nation.

People are only afraid of looking weak when they suspect that they actually are.

This is what I’ve been thinking about for a while.

Different philosophical premises. Some people believe that the First Amendment guarantees the Second. Others believe the Second guarantees the First. Things like that.

“When you are weak appear strong. When you are strong appear weak.”

People are only afraid of looking weak when they suspect that they actually are.

So…is that why you’re attempting to look profound?

Of course they could. You just don’t think so and because of that you assign “bad faith” to the argument.

What I wish people would figure out is that *our* cultural mindset to accept the appearance of weakness is *firmly* anchored in the teaching of Jesus Christ (as a cultural artifact, not religious faith.)

The people we are dealing with do NOT have this cultural mindset.

Why is it that I have to explain this to those who would claim a greater international and cultural sophistication than the rest of us?

Why is it that I have to explain this to those who would claim a greater international and cultural sophistication than the rest of us?

Because it is easier to claim ability than to acquire it, Synova.

Sure, but Sun Tzu was prescribing tactics in war, not a philosophy/psychology of life, as suggested by his closing line about people fearing looking weak if they suspect they actually are. (I love parlor psychoanalysis!)

Sun Tzu was advocating that the strong “rope a dope,” whereas we are unfortunately apparently debating with one.

Appearing weak, is of course, to encourage your enemy to attack you.

Heh, indeed.

Appearing weak, is of course, to encourage your enemy to attack you.

Two variables at work there. Encouraging people to attack and expecting an attack. Encouraging people to attack and not expecting an attack. Famous John Kerry claims concerning no bloodbath in Vietnam after US withdrawal. He encouraged the North to attack and then acted like he was surprised or something. Or maybe not even that.

In the case of Vietnam, the Left is trying to get our enemies to attack America and when they do in the future, the Left will act like they didn’t expect it. If assuming they even admit that they were attacked by the same enemies that they funded and armed, instead of blaming it on Republicans.

http://www.thepeoplescube.com/

What war *ever* was necessary? Didn’t Ghandi figure it was better for the Jews to simply let themselves be killed until the Germans got tired of it? Would speaking German be so bad? How silly to say so! Japan has a fascinating culture than many find attractive. Why did we fight them? Would it be so bad to live under either rulers? Is it really worth the slaughter of Iwo Jima?

You speak with such certainty as if certainty is possible.

Can we even say that Vietnam would have been better left unfought? Do we have a way back machine to check? And Korea? Can we say that stopping that fight where we did out of fear of China have any result other than plunging North Korea into hell for generations?

Political reality is not military wisdom. It’s not even *human* wisdom.

The human result of leaving Vietnam is not something *I’d* ever want to claim. But maybe it’s possible to only selectively see horrors. Responsibility for the paradise in North Korea is not something I’d want to claim either.

I’m serious when I said that neither WW1 nor WW2 were necessary in any case. Is one ruler better than another? Certainly it would have been more humane in every war ever fought *ever* simply to surrender and live.

How cool would that be?

Such could only have been said by someone who has led an amazingly sheltered life.

(yawn)

This is the best argument you’ve got?

What’s the deal with the term “leftists” here? I can’t figure out if this is a disparaging way to refer to liberals, or you people mean real leftists, who you appear to know nothing about.

WRT humility. There’s an interesting weekend’s read–if all you do is the prologue and epilogue–called “Black Lamb and Grey Falcon” by Rebecca West. She investigates the origin of the western requirement to be the victim. It was written during the Blitz when the lessons of her travels in pre-war Yugoslavia came shatteringly true. It’s also a hell of a history of the region, and is written beautifully, as she did everything she wrote.

I don’t think so.

Would Japan have invaded the continent? Not likely.

Just in human suffering alone there is no way whatsoever to justify not letting Japan have the Philippines and even Hawaii, certainly Guam, and how did it matter to us if they moved into Korea and stayed there?

Saying as how leaving Vietnam was good because a few thousand more Americans didn’t die while ignoring the horrific slaughter that followed is… vile.

Leaving the people of North Korea to generations of near starvation and oppression isn’t so laudable either.

War is not *ever* about justification, btw. Even putting it in those terms makes no sense. War is about national self interest. “You broke it you buy it” is cute but the truth of it is that leaving things broken, as the allies did quite deliberately to Germany after WW1 directly brought us WW2. Heck, those wars are probably to blame for the middle east today what with the fellows with the world map and box of crayons afterward.

All “you broke it you buy it” means is that we have come to realize that misery breeds discord. We likely could do a hit and run on Iran without either a moral or practical need to occupy and rebuild because Iran is a different situation, an enemy *state* rather than an enemy ideology.

Attacking Afghanistan as retaliation for 9-11 is not noble. Just because people can say it is justified does not make it right. All retaliation gets us is eternal war because no one ever stops fighting.

The only legitimate reason we had to attack Afghanistan was as a lesson to those who might tolerate their country used as a base for the ideology/terrorists attacking America. The most legitimate reason for attacking Iraq was to put a little of the crazy in our eyes and demonstrate that *everyone* has self-interest in protecting the United States because once we get going there’s no telling if we will stop or not.

Everything else is gravy.

Stopping Saddam’s torture and genocide of his own people was gravy. The potential for a self-governed Afghanistan is gravy. The possibility of a pluralistic and reasonably democratic nation in Iraq is gravy. Not that any of these things are trivial, and Iraq has the potential to be an incredible weapon against the rot that created Al Qaida and the Taliban if we don’t lose our nerve.

But people don’t see that because all they want to see is the (supposed) justification of vengeance.

How twisted is it to call everything else illegitimate and pour the love on the most base motivation only?

Well Lee, you didn’t answer my question. Try again.

How cool would that be?

If it means Kennedy, Reid, and Murtha falling on their sword, then sign me up.

But America went to war because the Imperial Japanese empire killed 2200 Americans at Pearl Harbor on that Sunday morning, December 7, 1941, some 100 of them on one battleship, the Arizona. More people were killed (3100) when the Twin Towers fell in New York than were killed at Pearl Harbor.

So essentially you are of the Roman punitive expedition mentality. If barbarians kill one of ours, kill more of the barbarians, eh?

Such a proto-typical view from non-humanists.

And it was perfectly appropriate for America to go after those behind the attack, Bin Laden and his protectors, the Taliban.

The Taliban weren’t on the planes, it was the Saudi Arabians.

Iraq had been contained.

Japan was contained. That didn’t stop you from advocating the killing of more Asians.

This is the best argument you’ve got?

Not an argument. Just a statement of reality.

What’s the deal with the term “leftists” here?

You have much to learn Xan.

Check my name link for a lesson on Iraq.

You already said that. Try again.

Compared to the Axis, the loonies of Iraq were just “minor” murderous thugs. The loonies of Iran are not overtly thuggish so much as believers in a thuggish ideology that threatens us all, especiallsince they are within a breath of a nuclear candle. The difficulty for us is that Mr. Bush and his mavens of ignorance have badly mniscalculated and squandered our military much as Agustus’ General Varus did in Germany so long ago. The loss of 40,000 effective troops in a professional and small army of about 500,000 (less than 250,000 combat) is very much a parallel situation. At the height of the empire of Agustus, the Roman army that dominated the world was smade up of some 500,000 as well. The real likely enemies are the loonies of Iran and the resurging Taliban of Afghanistan, not the disputatious clerics of Iraq.

Anyhow, it’s a profound and highly interesting observation… makes a person think.

You’re right, Donald, that the disputatious clerics in Iraq (and personal power players who aren’t clerics) don’t particularly threaten us. However, considering your list of “real” likely enemies (which I don’t dispute at all) means that a success in Iraq puts us in a regional position of strength. Geography still matters strategically. In this our presence in Iraq (and hopefully stable democracy in Iraq) makes us stronger.

Still, maybe, this is a case where we should just go ahead and let people say how we’re over extended and weakened in order to hide our strength.

Other things Iraq has given us (and YES I know that they speak Farsi in Iran) is a large number of soldiers didn’t know Arab culture or language before and now they do. There are a large number of soldiers and officers who are more expert in the culture over there than anyone sitting in a classroom as student *or* teacher over here.

One might say this education has been too expensive but this education exists none-the-less.

And that is just cultural education. Again, “real practice” at war for the sake of getting experience is vile, but the fact is that we’re there and if we should be or not our soldiers are, in consequence, by far the most experienced and effective in the world. Yes, many of them are injured and many of them died, but bodies lost aren’t the definition of strength or weakness in a military force.

The personal tragedy is infinite for those it touches… I’m not arguing anything different from that. Only that considering our military *cold*… our military is not made weaker by the loss but vastly stronger by the experience gained.

We’ve gained personal experience for now and organizational experience that will persist. We’ve gained a new set of heroic role models as well, which can’t be discounted from a military stand-point.

I’d suggest, too, finding someone who can talk about the geographical issues that make Afghanistan worthless to us strategically. All war is logistics. It’s only on television that troops and equipment appear where they are needed as if by magic.

Less than adequate replacements have long been sucked from the Reserve and Guard base, and this depletion is happening at a time when the machines may be needed. The rotation of human force will certainly make for change in numbers by next Spring, and that, together with a lack of sufficienf machine force, places us in a miserable position. None of this is new of course and all of it has been “gamed” by military and forewarned by the think tanks. It is the direct short-sightedness of the administration and inability to adapt, never mind shift course, that will add to the burden of our military.

It is a mess.

So essentially your position is that Hitler wasn’t a threat in 1932, because he was small fry. Saddam was a small thug, in your words. He needed time to grow, time you would have given Hitler and Stalin, yes?

But then I served during the Clinton draw down. It sucked.

When I consider it, I’m impressed that we’ve been adding back troops and equipment at approximately the same rate as it was reduced during the “peace dividend” years. I can’t imagine how it could have gone faster than that, starting with processing recruits. They need drill instructors and facilities and it’s not possible to just wave a wand and have what we had before with the capability to process in the numbers that we had before.

In the mean-time we go to war with the army we have, not the army we wish we had.

We don’t get to decide that we need to take military action and then take 5 or 7 years to prepare.

We’re still adding active duty troops in such numbers that the Army is now facing a housing crisis. Where to put them? Where to put their equipment?

And I wonder, this war will be over soon… is someone going to come along and say we don’t need all those men and machines any longer and dismantle it all again?

On other matters, it may take 10 years to make and NCO, but indeed, war makes them faster and I have a 22 year old NCO now deploying with 55 year old Chinooks. It once took longer to make a Major, but I have a 25 year old West Point Company Commander who saw the war from Kuwait to Mosul with the 101st and was over for a year and now trains the new recruits who are sent over. Whether Iraq makes a better staging area for projection of regional power (in combination with carrier battle groups) or Kuwait, is an interesting juxtaposition. But it is certain, if one listens to Congressional hearings related to force rediness, the wear factor has taken an enormous toll on machines from the M1A1 to Apaches.

Finally, no one realtically believes oir ever believed that the late looney thugs who ruled Iraq were a threat to anyone or anything. The lines of containment and the choke hold of weapons and supplies had locked them into the box they made for themselves. Their greatest damage capability was good, old fashioned stealing money and gangster crimes of thuggery on their own people.

Dead babies, in world opinion, laid directly on our doorstep, used to foment hatred of the United States and cited by Bin Laden as reason to attack us.

Yet another bit of History that has gone *poof* into the ether.

IMO, the perception of Viet Nam is flexible. Whatever is needed to teach today’s lesson is what “actually” happened in Viet Nam. Conservatives, as it happens, have more facts on the side of their perception. Lots more.

My point was essentially (in my typically less than explicit way of making it) that while Saddam was “contained”, the situation itself was used as a weapon against us. An effective weapon.

Of *course* it was Saddam killing Iraqi children, but that’s not the way it played.

They (the Japanese Empire) did attack Hawaii–remember Pearl Harbor? They did attack the mainland U.S. also. Those folks killed by the thousands and thousands of balloons with explosives released by the Japanese were the victims. Perhaps they wanted to push their perimeter to Chicago.

Unfortunately, although the Iraqi loonies periodically provided open house for terrorists os all kinds, even Abu Nidal as I recall, Sadam and his sons were quick to sever those ties when needed. They did arrange for Abu Nidal to commit suicide by shooting himself in the head 4 times or was it five. He did like Yassir “Ugly” Arafat, who along with other PLO folks enjoyed sharing in the rape of Kuwait. But, really, gimme a break. Boxed in by F-15 and F-16 sorties and no fly anywhere zones, all that was left for the thugs was to steal oil money and hide in banks outside Iraq, now to be shared by his wife (or is it his two wives) and any other family members he did not kill.

Iraq was a failed state that never was a state and remains a failed state that will never be a state. The actual threats to regional security is Iran and its new associate, Syria. Wasting our political and military capital in Iraq is simply foolish and very typical of a failed administration with a less than cogent world view. Perhaps Mr. Thompson or Mr. Romney will do better.

Your historical perspective is flawed, as are your current events. Note that all effort went to retaking the Phillipines, not Attu and Kiska. The muslims may not have fought Japanese occupation, but the vast majority sure the hell did. Keeping an entire army tied down in garrison. A garrison we didn’t have to face in the Solomans, or New Guinnea, or Enweitok, or Saipan. Thank you, Filipinos.
Iraq is the new Phillipines. Will you abandon them?

In reference to that.

The axiomatic reason why you believed WWII was not a waste is because the US won. Victory is all you care about, because it is the only thing that convinces people like you, regardless of what your surface arguments.

Macarthur’s war ending counter attacking campaign to island hop was meant to avoid as many Japanese garrisons as possible and leave them stranded, while pushing American airpower closer and closer until the B-29s could finally devestate the Japanese home islands and the then might of the American Navy could not be deterred. This might was forseen by the then dead Yamamoto, who although he ordered the attack on pearl harbor, opposed the war.

In a like fashion, despite the advice of our brilliant modern general staff, we continue to waste $10 billion a month, 3700 dead and some 30,000 wounded, many horrendously, in a military effort that any rational review of the evidence was unnecesary and unjustified. Yamamoto was correct in foretelling the failure of Imperial Japanese policy, just as our own generals and admirals were correct about this misguided effort. The real enemies we will need to confront remain and are strengthened by the failure of this administration’s flawed policies. That marvelous iconclast Clarence Darrow said,”History repeats itself; that’s one of the things that’s wrong with history.”

Our learned leaders continue to forget that these people are not attacking each other because they hate one another. Most of the killings involve total strangers. What they are doing is attempting to exterminate another sect. It has nothing to do with having or not having a democracy or a dictatorship or anything. As long as there are enough weapons and opportunities, this behavior will likely continue.

The Sunnis had their chance… now the Shiites are retalliating. The 21st century, if it continues as it is now, will probably be known as the “Get Even” century. Iraq got even with Kuwait… the USA got even with Iraq. Al Qaida got even with the USA… the USA is getting even with Al Qaida and Iraq. The Kurds are getting even with the Turks… the Turks are beginning to respond. We have decided to repeat the cold war and put missiles by Russia… Russia starts up their Air survaillance. We respond by putting nuclear missiles on our B52s.

Because we are only seven years into the new century, and because we have been spending $400 billion a year on new ways to destroy living beings, we might be digging a hole nobody will be able to get out of, but I guess important folks have decided “getting even” is more important than the survival of this planet… IMHO

A rational view of the evidence of the costs of WWII would have proved that it wasn’t worth it, especially without the information concerning the Nazi’s experiments and death camps. A rational view only means that you see what you want to see, what you are able to see.

This is what makes me ever more optimistic about the world. People are people the world over with serious axes to grind and petty squabbles. But time after time after time they find a way to put the past behind them and go forward. Old enemies become friends and better lives are forged.

The idea that civil strife and religious hostilities are immutable is not upheld by the lessons of History which show the exact opposite.

The cycle of violence and war never solves anything items of faith are modern, and unsupported, items of faith.

It had almost entirely to do with the control of information.

Which no longer exists.

In 1944 and 1945, the Japanese launced more than 9,000 “fire” balloons toward the U.S. mainland with the intent of starting massive forest fires and other damage. This program was fortunately mostly a failure, except that more than 300 reached the mainland, started some fires and managed to killfive children and one woman.

Elsewhere, in 1942 a Japanese submarine repeatedly launched a seaplane that dropped incendiary bombs near Brookings, oregon causing little real damage. However the pilot was lauded as a hero in Japan and later was a planne for deadly kamikaze attacks.

Finally, the book, The Three Power Alliance and the United States-Japanese War, written by Kinoaki Matsuot, a member of the Black Dragon Society, set out the Japanese war plans for coordinated invasions of the Panama Canal Zone as well as Alaska, Washington state and California. Reality or dream, it is fascinating and fits well within a “contingency” framework.