TRYING TO PULL A TET IN IRAQ

[_JS]

The current strategy is to maintain enough order in country so that Iraq can take over that responsibilty eventually.

So it is Vietnamization, only in Iraq?

[Michael Tee]

<<So we need to be meaner?>>

(plane, in response to my comment that the Iraqi Resistance was merciless to traitors and collaborators)

Well, that was the Nazi's conclusion.  Did it help them?  Do you want to be like them?  (The last was a rhetorical question - - I know you want to be like them.)

[BT]

So it is Vietnamization, only in Iraq?
 

Close enough.

[Plane]

"the pissed-off Iraqis tend to take out their anger on the traitors' families as well as the traitors themselves, and favour executions with gruesome tortures rather than a clean shot to the back of the head and consequently (c) tries to build up a little favour bank with various Resistance figures just in case the day comes when he needs a friend in that camp."

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So we need to be meaner?

<<So we need to be meaner?>>

(plane, in response to my comment that the Iraqi Resistance was merciless to traitors and collaborators)

Well, that was the Nazi's conclusion.  Did it help them?  Do you want to be like them?  (The last was a rhetorical question - - I know you want to be like them.)

You seem to think that getting more Natzi like is working well for the Iriqui Resitance , but you don't think we are mean enough to match them?

[Michael Tee]

<<You seem to think that getting more Natzi like is working well for the Iriqui Resitance , but you don't think we are mean enough to match them?>>

Oh, yes I do.  But I don't think you took my meaning.  I referred to the savagery of the Iraqi Resistance towards traitors and their families, not as a factor in their success, but as a consideration that you appear to have neglected in assessing the value of the Iraqis who volunteer out of self-interest (your explanation) to serve in the quisling army.  I was merely pointing out that self-interest would diminish their effectiveness as collaborators, since it would lead them to curry favour with the very forces they were supposed to be fighting.  I believe you mistook my reference to that savagery as a reason for the success of the Resistance, which wasn't my intention at all.  Savagery alone won't explain anyone's success in that conflict since all sides are equally savage.

[syrmark59]

Cut and Run.

The official GOP apologist's smear mantra.

Lets just keep staying the course, even though there is *none*. What we have in Iraq today is anarchy. The government we continue to prop up simply does not function.

I find it very funny that Baker's commission has came up with two proposals which I mentioned a few years ago.

Partitioning Iraq- creating multiple city states-  give the major players their own piece.

Involving neighboring countries in keeping the order- they have the most to benefit, since they have to directly live with it.

Not suprisingly, Team Bush continues to reject these ideas despite their own repeated and thorough failures.

[Michael Tee]

<<I find it very funny that Baker's commission has came up with two proposals which I mentioned a few years ago.>>

Baker's a piker.  The Wall Street Journal's guest editorial today (some guy from Johns Hopkins) came up with at least half a dozen.  None a them any good as far as he could see, except that a simple Saigon-type exit was ruled out because he figured it would result in several hundred thousand being killed in communal massacres.  Besides, ditching the helicopters might block the Strait of Hormuz.

I figure the best option for the U.S. is to ask Saddam to take it back off their hands.  Ahmedinejad might do it for them, but they'd have a lot of amends to make to him and his country first.  The Nazi solution came in for careful consideration, but I think it'll cost too much money.  God knows they have no objection to it on moral grounds. 

All in all, as I surveyed the God-awful mess I felt a certain sense of warped vindication.  They elected the Smirking Chimp to lead them and now they must live with the results.  Of course, they didn't really "elect" the Chimp, the election was probably fixed, again, this time in Ohio, but that's hard to prove and may not even be the case.  Even if the elections were fixed, they deserve Bush by not opposing him in numbers sufficient to overcome any Republican cheating at the polls.  In any event, the situation for them can only get worse.  More strutting punks will have to die, more hundreds of billions will have to drain from their treasury, more civil liberties and safeguards will have to be sacrificed to the needs of the national security state.  Neighbour, you are truly fucked.  And you did it all to yourself.

[Lanya]

http://billmon.org/archives/002843.html

[BT]

Good to see billmon realizes he was part of the problem and contributes little to the solution.

[Michael Tee]

What I got from billmon's post was that the anti-war movement was at fault for not showing enough militancy, not blocking the troop trains, not organizing mass actions.  Not being as creative in finding the techniques of these times for stopping the war the way the students of the 1960s were creative in finding the techniques of those times.  Time moves on and what worked in 1968 isn't working in 2006

But failure to stop a crime is not equivalent to being a party to the crime.

The problem is Bush and the neocons around him.  No way is billmon part of that problem.  It's not wrong to try and fail.  To care and not be able to do anything.  It's only wrong when you don't try and don't care.

[Plane]

" It's only wrong when you don't try and don't care. "


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So what would our nation be guilty of if we saw the tyrany and slavery of Iraq and never did anything?

[BT]

No way is billmon part of that problem.

Sure he is . He admitted as much himself. He turned the war into a wedge issue for partisan gain.

He did the same thing he blasted Bush for doing. I just hope he can overcome all the guilt he must feel.

[Michael Tee]

<<Sure he [billmon]  is [a part of the problem] . He admitted as much himself. He turned the war into a wedge issue for partisan gain.

<<He did the same thing he blasted Bush for doing. I just hope he can overcome all the guilt he must feel. >>

He's too hard on himself.  I didn't say billmon didn't think he was part of the problem, I said I DON'T THINK billmon is part of the problem.

And he's too easy on Bush.  I don't blast Bush for turning the war into a wedge issue for partisan gain.  That's a very minor sin, probably the least of his many.  I blast him for being a liar, a war-monger, a mass murderer and a torturer.

Billmon better get a grip, a sense of perspective.

[Lanya]

Cut and Run.

The official GOP apologist's smear mantra.

Lets just keep staying the course, even though there is *none*. What we have in Iraq today is anarchy. The government we continue to prop up simply does not function.

I find it very funny that Baker's commission has came up with two proposals which I mentioned a few years ago.

Partitioning Iraq- creating multiple city states-  give the major players their own piece.

Involving neighboring countries in keeping the order- they have the most to benefit, since they have to directly live with it.

Not suprisingly, Team Bush continues to reject these ideas despite their own repeated and thorough failures.

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Hi Syrmark, good to see you. 

"Bush: I won't change strategy in Iraq"
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20061021/ap_on_go_pr_wh/us_iraq_9 

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/10/21/AR2006102100308.html
"We will not pull our troops off the battlefield before the mission is complete," he said.

http://www.slate.com/id/2125910/
The Sunk-Cost Fallacy       (from 2005 but still relevant)

[Michael Tee]

<<So what would our nation be guilty of if we saw the tyrany and slavery of Iraq and never did anything?>>

So now you want to pretend that the U.S. went into Iraq because they saw the tyranny and slavery of Iraq and wanted to do something about it?

That is such bullshit I don't even need to answer your question.  It is compeltely irrelevant because it bears no relationship whatever to what has happened between the U.S. and Iraq.