Wow! And he’s going to be pilloried by his party.
Filed under: Iraq
Wow!
Posted on May 22, 2007 by Bookworm
-
Statcounter
7 Responses
Leave a Reply
-
Recent Comments
Juma Ramadhani on Philip’s Complaint, or L… Juma Ramadhani on Philip’s Complaint, or L… Jack Nicolusa on Name that political party Odessa on Andy Garcia, Cuba and the… keval on Israel thumbs its nose at the …
“Been there, done that”
http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=03/04/07/0314213
“Stop Making Sense”
Oh, he’s gonna get crushed all right. The left is only in it for themselves.
I kept hearing military people say they would support a Kerrey bid for President in 2004, but it was always John Kerry that was calling or his campaign volunteers.
I commented on another blog about Senator Kerrey’s OPED. It sounds great until he quotes Jim Webb (and I paraphrase Webb here). . . you don’t have to occupy a country to fight the terrorists who are in it.
In the context of Iraq, that just doesn’t make any sense at all. Hussein’s regime as we know was competely totalitarian. There was no alternative organized structure to fall back on. If we had torn it down, and walked away there would have been a huge vacum and opportunity for terrorists. I predicted that after a horrible civil war (a real one) there would evolve a Shia province of Iran; a new Sunni country dominated by Al Qaeda; and Kurds clinging to survival. The quote was typical Webb garbage and Kerrey loses points for using it.
Moreover, Kerrey cited three occurences when military action has resulted in democracies; Germany, Japan and Bosnia(?). Ironically, none of his three examples were turned around without a lengthy occupation to stabilize the situation.
I am glad to see Kerrey take on the Left’s hypocrisy. I am equally glad to see his own turn on him. I love it when they beat each other up. But, so far as I am concerned, his message is inconsistent, as usual.
There was no alternative organized structure to fall back on.
You had to create one Old, before the war was over and the US became occupiers. It was time sensitive. Webb’s position is probably not that subtle all in all.
But my position is that you could create an alternative organized structure by having US forces fight a guerrila warf against Saddam. Don’t take Saddam’s capital, keep fighting over the same inch of ground, wait a few months like 9 or 18, for the Iraqis on your side, Shia and Kurds, to be ‘blooded’. Like they are now. Then launch an all out attack to take Saigon, Baghdad.
This is nothing new or experimental, since it was done in Afghanistan more or less. It is why you have Karzai. Karzai personally lead a force of Afghans and called upon favors politically in the absence of Massoud, and was able to take the capital Kabul, with the aid of US SF and air spotting for the JDAMs.
My take is that Kerrey isn’t talking about the need or not need for occupation, but what you do before an occupation. When you are actually fighting the war, and the people in that war are doubtful about who will win. War is a cauldron and an anvil on which you hammer our your differences. If it is too short and meaningless like OIF 1 was, then you are just pissing away lives for no gain.
Decisive engagements when you have a decisive advantage over the enemy army right now right here are always better than letting the enemy arm flee and reconstitute to attack another day while you are unprepared.
Bush’s problem was timing. And the UN was a great way to make the US fail in our timing.
Finally, Jim Webb said something during his campaign for the Senate that should be emblazoned on the desks of all 535 members of Congress: You do not have to occupy a country in order to fight the terrorists who are inside it. Upon that truth I believe it is possible to build what doesn’t exist today in Washington: a bipartisan strategy to deal with the long-term threat of terrorism.
he’s not talking about bringing democracy or anything similar, Old. He’s talking about places like Ethiopia, the Phillipines, and Somalia. The inconsistency is not in his wording.
Oh you guys and gals are so macho nacho libre taking out Iraq and then Iran.If pre-emptive is your philosophy then why not engage China’s potential economic and military world dominance.Oh it’s called realpolitiks.Oh I see somebody might REALLY get hurt. Hmm . . . I wonder who?
Ya wusses !
ps Silly analogy Japan and Germany to the Iraq situation. Talk about apples an oranges !
ps Does oil ring a bell? Didn’t hear it,well listen again cling a ling ca ching .