The War Issue
By Mitch Berg
Jeff Dobbs at the Thinker on how Iraq could smack the Democrats in ’08:
It was just this past spring that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid was proclaiming:
“We’re going to pick up Senate seats as a result of this war,” Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (Nev.) told reporters yesterday. “Senator Schumer has shown me numbers that are compelling and astounding.”
The Democrats clearly understood that the worse the situation in Iraq became, the better their electoral prospects.
It was just this past summer that House Majority Whip Jim Clyburn worried that a positive report on the surge in September by General David Petraeus would be “a big problem for us”.
The Democrats clearly understood that the better the situation in Iraq became, the worse their electoral prospects.
Hence the wall-to-wall proclamations that “Iraq is a worse disaster than ever” on MPR? Just curious.
Dobbs continues:
Iraqis are voting with their feet by returning home after exile
The figures are hard to estimate precisely but the process could involve hundreds of thousands of people. The numbers are certainly large enough, as we report today, for a mass convoy to be planned next week as Iraqis who had opted for exile in Syria return to their homeland. It is one of the most striking signs that not only has violence in Baghdad and adjacent provinces decreased dramatically in recent months, but confidence in the economic and political future of Iraq has risen sharply.
Violence is down. Iraqis are returning. The American people are beginning to see this progress, despite the efforts of Democrats and many in the media to hide it from them.
For now, the number of Iraqis returning may seem small compared to an estimated 2 million that have fled. But the number is growing faster than anyone has anticipated. And those returning are not returning as targets of opportunity for terrorists, but as participants in the opportunity for freedom.
To the extent that the war in Iraq will play a significant role in the 2008 elections, the numbers should be compelling and astounding to Democrats, in a direction they never could have imagined just a few months ago
But…But…John Stewart still says it’s a quagmire!
Go read it.
November 27th, 2007 at 10:14 am
For the record, if you’ll permit me a peevish digression from the topic, that joker spells his name Jon, not John. As another John Stewart (no, not the folk singing, erstwhile Kingston Trio one), it is an important distinction to me. It’s also one I often have to make.
One time the cashier at Cafe Latte gave my check card a long, hard look. “Is this really you?” she asked. “No,” I said, “I always try to use other people’s credit cards whenever I can.” She still seemed confused, so I helpfully added, “there are a lot of us with that name.”
“Yeah, but he’s the funny one,” she said.
“You don’t know that,” I said, “you’ve only just started to talk to me.”
Ok, so she was right.
And this John Stewart says Iraq is not a civil war, it’s a gang war.
November 27th, 2007 at 10:35 am
It’s amazing that there are people who consider themselves rational, informed adults who believe that the might of the US military and the culture and economy that stands behind it cannot win a war against an impoversihed third world country. It is not a matter of “is it possible?” but “is it worth the price?”
November 27th, 2007 at 11:59 am
What do you mean “is it worth the price”?
More people in the world love and trust America, fewer people in the world hate America and want to attack us, and our military strength and effectiveness has been proven and stands ready to invade Iran, Syria, Pakistan, China, Russia, or whereever there’s a freedom-hating dictator opposing U.S. interests. Not to mention we totally eliminated Saddam’s WMDs.
Plus the whole thing paid for itself with freely-available cheap oil.
/jc
November 27th, 2007 at 3:40 pm
So, slash, you’re like, eleven?
November 27th, 2007 at 3:57 pm
Terry, must you insult the 11 year olds so blatantly?
November 27th, 2007 at 4:23 pm
Some posters have nowhere else to go.
But I go to 11.
/jc
November 27th, 2007 at 5:14 pm
11 what? Years? Miles? Is that the floor your elevator stops at?
November 27th, 2007 at 5:39 pm
Terry,
I think your question is fair, is killing 600,000 Iraqis a reasonable price to pay to oust Hussien? Is 1.5 Trillion a reasonable price?
What have we gained for it? A state most likely to wind up in the Iranian sphere of influence, and at least cool, if not hostile, to the US in the long-term. In addition, we got the added benefit of proving our interest in fighting terrorism was a fraud, and the final icing on the cake, we got to show that we had less regard for helping the moderate muslim world fight extremism, than we did for safeguarding Israel from Hezzbolah and/or Hamas.
When you couple that all up with proving that we are helping Bin Laden show that we are duplicitous and deceitful (or rather Bush is) – including the ascendence of lines of argument like Berg uses which show wilfull disregard for fact, thus proving our disinterest in rational conduct – well, I think it was far too high a price.
In fact, I’d say, given that these are the outcomes, if anything, we should have asked to be paid to look like such fools, rather than paying for the priveledge ourselves. Gosh Thanks George!
If, on the hand, you meant are we willing to pay the price in Iraqi and (far less so) American lives to stick around while this civil war hashes itself out? Are we willing to pay the financial cost in direct military spending and inflated oil prices while the Shiaa and Sunni decide how to carve up power?
My answer is, why should we? This isn’t, and never has been, about Democracy. Bush even said he wasn’t so much interested in a viable democracy in Iraq a few months ago. It certainly isn’t about creating some sort of domino effect of liberty, after all, we support Musharaff, the Saudis, and Mubarak – if the pace of change is to be measured by the movement of those nations, then democracy will ring out in the middle-east sometime in the year 2525. If our price is to buy establishing American pre-eminence in the post Soviet world (i.e. project for New American Century manifest destiny BS) then, well, we’ve shown full well we can rapidly bankrupt ourselves with our Haliburton army, but we cannot, as things are currently structured, sustain long-term, high-intensity large scale military actions. We’re past our prime, we just don’t seem to quite know it yet. Should the Chinese decide to call in their markers, we’ll be eating Raman Noodles while we wonder how we lost our homes to the ARM we took out three years ago.
Do you mean that price? Because the benefit sure as hell isn’t that we’ve thwarted Al Qaeda, they are larger and stronger than they were prior to our invasion according to our own NIE. So what price, and what benefit? thanks.
And Night Writer, it’s Berg who’s the Pendantic One, not I. Get your insults straight.
November 27th, 2007 at 5:42 pm
Jeez, Terry, is there a joke you get? It’s a Spinal Tap ref.
November 27th, 2007 at 5:42 pm
it’s Berg who’s the Pendantic One, not I.
If you have to explain it explicitly, it’s probably gonna be a tough point to convince people on.
November 27th, 2007 at 5:43 pm
It’s a Spinal Tap ref
It occurs to me that I do have readers who are younger than the movie.
Not sure if Terry’s one of them.
November 27th, 2007 at 6:01 pm
I would have recognized the Spinal Tap reference if it was in a humorous context. You mean this Slash guy is joking around? That he really doesn’t believe that the US is loved around the world & oil is $20/bb?
November 27th, 2007 at 6:18 pm
Peev-
I think you are agreeing with me, which probably means that your writing is too loopy for me to understand.
In English all complete sentences can be reduced to SVO sentences, Subject-Verb-Object. I can’t figure out what subjects, verbs and objects are supposed to agree in your comment.
You wrote:
“When you couple that all up with proving that we are helping Bin Laden show that we are duplicitous and deceitful (or rather Bush is)”
Does this phrase & modifying clause mean that Bush is “helping Bin Laden show that we are duplicitous and deceitful” or that we are “Helping Bush show that we are duplicitous and deceitful”? Or that “we are helping Bin Laden show that Bush is duplicitous and deceitful”?
November 27th, 2007 at 6:38 pm
Peev – you’re so vain, you probably think this comment’s about you.
It could be I was just venting on a pet peeve, but it would have been rather puckish of me to also work in a pun about someone’s tendency to seize upon an off-hand line in a post and turn it into multiple paragraphs of commentary only nominally related to the original post, while doing the same thing myself. Ha! I crack me up!
Oh, and I think you mean “pedantic” – but I guess it’s pedantic of me to point that out.
November 27th, 2007 at 9:36 pm
Peev is right. The war has already cost more than any victory is worth. Whatever missions Bush can manufacture and then declare accomplished in the last days of his residency won’t have a lot of political effect. Bush’s daddy actually did win a war, remember, and he couldn’t hold onto his job in the ’92 election. The dominant political reality, hinted at in the most recent congressional elections, is that America is tired of wingnuts. Win, lose or draw in Iraq. Wingnut asses, prefer to meet the curb.
November 27th, 2007 at 10:56 pm
“Peev is right”
You mean you can understand his comment?
“The war has already cost more than any victory is worth.”
You may value cost and outcome differently than others. Was Korea worth the 50,000+ American KIA’s for that war of choice? The matter of the Iraq War, and whether or not it was worth it, will be decided by political and historical consensus. The opinions of angry clowns will not be a factor.
November 27th, 2007 at 11:48 pm
The dominant political reality, hinted at in the most recent congressional elections, is that America is tired of wingnuts.
As evidenced by the enormous success of Lions to Lambs (Thank you, Robert Redford), as opposed to Live Free or Die Hard (Kick ass, Bruce Willis).
Angryclown has his thumb on the pulse of America.
November 28th, 2007 at 7:25 am
America is tired of wingnuts. And Americans will always prefer movies where lots of shit gets blown up to preachy political films. Cause it’s fun to watch shit get blown up.
Kermit has his thumb on the pulse of his froghood.
November 28th, 2007 at 10:43 am
Peev is right.
Where “right” = “sits at the controls of a rhetorical conveyor belt that swamps the reader with an unbearable volume of opinion-masquerading-as-fact wrapped in condescending, smarter-than-thou containers?”
You could say that, sure.
The war has already cost more than any victory is worth.
That is a hopelessly subjective judgement, with which one may be simultaneously right AND wrong AND off the subject.
Bush’s daddy actually did win a war
No, he fought to a successful, bloody (to the Iraqis) truce without actually winning the war, exactly as he told the UN he’d do.
November 28th, 2007 at 11:02 am
>>The war has already cost more than any victory is worth.
>
>That is a hopelessly subjective judgement, with which one may be simultaneously right AND wrong AND off the subject.
Come on, Clown, can’t you see that it’s totally beside the point whether America is better off having invaded Iraq than if we hadn’t?
That’s not why we fight wars in the post-9/11 world.
/jc
November 28th, 2007 at 11:08 am
So, you’re a Hillary backer slash?
November 28th, 2007 at 11:24 am
Mitch elucidated: “That is a hopelessly subjective judgement, with which one may be simultaneously right AND wrong AND off the subject.”
Also, probably depends on what the definition of “is” is, eh Mitch?
Can’t wait for Bush’s Simultaneous Victory and Defeat and What Were We Talking About Anyway? Parade.
November 28th, 2007 at 11:27 am
> So, you’re a Hillary backer slash?
BLECH!!!
I’m a Giuliani man.
He’s the only candidate supporting expanding our Iraq war success into Iran and taxpayer-funded abortions.
Those are my two deal-breaker issues.
/jc
November 28th, 2007 at 5:52 pm
I think your missing the mark, slash. Hillary is hinting that she will choose Wes Clarke as her running mate. Good ol’ Wes has confessed to ordering the bombing of civilian targets in Yugoslavia during the Balkan War. Now there’s a fella who won’t shy away from war crimes if that’s all that stands between America and Victory!
And given the pictures I’ve seen of America’s (cross-dressing) Mayor in on the internets you might want to avoid calling yourself a Giuliani “man”.