POST SCRIPTS

It's been suggested by a few people I know that we could have kicked Saddam out of power and then just left it up to the Iraqi's how they wanted to proceed without totally dismantling their government.

They've gone through this process a few times over the past 3000 years being in the cradle of modern civilization and they have always managed to survive.

The sudden freedom and ferver to create a new government would have been chaotic and who knows where it might have led? I just know it wouldn't have led to a government being thought of as a US puppet and it would have been all on the Iraqis, not u.s. troops.

I worried about becoming an army of occupation and the next Iraqi government being thought of as illegitimate, a puppet, like Vishy France in WWII, that puts us in a real tough spot.

I had this idea at the time we went in and maybe it is a dumb idea, but what we've done for real seems even dumber...so many misteps, so much confusion, corruption and so much worry over being politically correct that we can't do the job needed to take out terrorists, we keep doing half measures...and it's just been really lousy for our soldiers.

The silent majority had its opportunity to save this effort in Iraq...they blew it.

Anything short of a herculean effort is not going to stop the liberals from snatching defeat from the jaws of victory.

They have willed our defeat from the beginning.

This is no more evident than when the war first started. Listen to any liberal now and they will tell you about how well the war went initially, but that we have become hopelessly bogged down in the middle of a "civil war". But is that what they were saying when we weren't "bogged down"?

Absolutely NOT! from the very beginning they sought to undermine the political will to fight this war. When we were moving fast, we were "outrunning our supply lines", when we stopped, we were "bogged down in the desert"

Before they had a counter insurgency campaign to b***h about they were attempting to turn an outstanding military success into a defeat!!

They lost all of my trust at that point, but now the "silent majority" has as well. Do not take any comfort in being the "silent majority". Such a majority is less than worthless.

For those of you who wrote in to your congressional representatives, and were active in your support I thank you. For those of you who were content to support a war while it was going smoothly, but have since silenced your encouragement or changed your minds altogether without ever having actively sought to make a difference, I have no time for you.

The vast majority of Americans prosper amidst a good economy, low employment and NO TERRORIST ATTACKS, yet they cannot bear the thought of continuing to support this war. Yet those who serve, especially those who serve as part of combat arms, profess the importance of victory.
And they back up their beliefs with action.

This may very well go down as the only war in US history where those who suffered the least thwarted the efforts of those suffering the most out of sheer ignorance and arrogance.

So do all of us in the service a huge favor. Turn off your TV's, pretend the war is over. Such an illusion will have little effect on your personal lives and prosperity. Ask yourself honestly? have you not prospered over the last several years? Has not the sweat, blood and tears, of this war been put forth by a relatively small portion of the population? Is it not this same portion who wish to continue the war. Should we not have a greater respect for the opinions of those who have bleed for this goal. Has the average American, going about their daily lives, digressed to such a level of self importance that they would seek to destroy the efforts of those who have gone in their names?

I fear I have come to the conclusion that when the next war comes, I should value the indifference of the American people over their support. For this war has proven in my estimation that while their support is fleeting, their self importance is paramount. In such a reality it is better to fight unnoticed and unheralded than to subject oneself to the eventual departure of support you were depending on.

I can see this as one possibility...and maybe a really good one. Had we left they might have managed to form/sustain a workable government. But if they failed, it would have become, most likely, a haven for terrorists. The trouble with this kind of enemy is there is no easy way to defeat them. It is bound to be messy and long. The alternative is not something we must try to imagine...it lives and breathes in every attack they devise all over the world. It is 911 repeated over and over again. It is children being brainwashed into the cause of jihad. I may be wrong, but I believe that supporting the people who want freedom was a good cause for remaining, especially since it also has the potential to work in favor of the overall cause of defeating terrorists by depriving them of the means to operate.

Mistakes and missteps have been made . They can be overcome with necessary adjustments...if the will of the people to win can be counted on...the creeps in congress and the media that constantly undermine the effort scrape away at the will of the people and it makes me sick.

These public "servants" and town criers can't even be bothered to take it upon themselves to use proper terminology. For instance, so many of them call what's happening in Iraq now a civil war. They insist on calling it that! Dr. Jack Wheeler describes civil war this way:

The Traitor Media and their Democrat allies are so fond of chanting the mantra of "the civil war in Iraq." Google "civil war" plus "Iraq" and you'll get 3,800,000 hits.

Thats a lot of propaganda!!!

The truth is that there is no civil war in Iraq. A real civil war is two armies or armed militias fighting each other for control of a government or country. They fight each other. This is exactly what Sunni and Shia terrorists are not doing. They are engaged in committing terrorist atrocities upon each other's civilian population.

What is going on in Iraq is terrorism, pure and unadulterated. You can call it "sectarian" terrorism and violence, but it's not civil war. Neither Sunni-Baathist-AQI (Al Qaeda in Iraq) terrorists nor Shia-Moqtada terrorists are fighting to topple the elected Maliki government and seize governmental power. Neither is fighting the other.

He goes on to give a perfect example of civil war. It is the Palestinian conflict where two Palestinian armies, Fatah and Hamas, are fighting each other for control of the government.

The ego's are piled up like manure in a dairy farm...and it's really disgusting.

I think we are not the same people we were 50 years ago. And that's not a good thing.

I can barely remember the Korean war as a little kid, but I do recall the attitudes of adults about that war as I grew up and in my mind there was always a quiet resolve to win it. I don't recall any opposition or criticism spoken by my family or their adult friends. I don't ever recall any demonstrations against the war, but I'm sure there must have been some.

The old newspaper clippings in my Mom's scrap book reported the war and never once did I read anything close to the garbage today's media pour out against our leadership. Back then, they knew such things were not helpul, it was not what the folks back home wanted to hear either so it just didn't get said. The war correspondents reported on the gallantry of UN soldiers, our tactical victories and the inevitable defeat of that evil North Korean communist regime. Congress actually backed the President all the way!

It took a few years of slugging it out against overwhelming numbers until we expelled the North Korean aggressors and their Chinese allies, but we did it and there was no question we would.

Nobody in Congress dared tell the American people we couldn't win in Korea. Everyone was of a like mind, we all knew had to hold back the communists and so we did. We were fighting against Russian pilots in Mig 15's, waves of Chinese soldiers and weapons from Eastern Europe and the USSR.

Then in the late 1950's and early 60' those wonderful doting parents from WWII, with a new affluence and all our new freedoms gave rise to a reactionary movement, possibly due in some part to this new affluence and possibly due to the influences of the new left. We called this the beat generation. It started out like a small cancer and it grew rapidly among a new pampered generation. This was followed by the hippy generation and this cancer became more insidious reaching deep into American society.

Drugs, sex and rock n roll. Tune in, turn on and drop out, LSD! Reject authority, blame it on the man. If it feels good do it! I'm ok - you're ok, Frederick S. Perls, it was a time of no judgement and "don't bogart that joint my friend". Pot was in - values were out. Character was not valued as much as the freedom to do your own thing. As a result of this we have too many a-moral people in high office, or should I say we have too many a-moral people... high in office; high on the new drug of power absent the restraints of good morals and character.

Their moral confusion brings the world those entertaining headlines of U.S. corruption as it further weakens our national spirit. Those corrupt politicians are only a reflection of ourselves. Our collective misdeeds, bad judgement and spineless resolve is an insult to the greatest generation that willingly sacrificed it all to defeat Tojo and the Nazi's.

That generation saw their duty! They had a clear vision of their mission, unlike todays leftwing Democrats and their Republicrat allies. The WWII generation had the courage needed and they endured horrific losses to save the world.

Thank God they were there and not todays feminized, leftist version or we would be speaking German.

Today I see a great cultural divide that has resulted in a massive societal disconnect from patriotic duty and good character that brought us the nationalism and patriotic fervor of those old days in WWII. A vast number of new Americans and new generations just can't relate to a bunch of wig wearing white men in Philadelphia, drafting a declaration for independence or the significance of a people like John Paul Jones, Paul Revere or that skirmish at Bunker Hill. These are people and places in abstraction. They have little to do with our new multi-cultural, non-melting pot society and the new diverse social values in our many cloistered sub-cultures.

America's heroes from 1492 on are just fading away into a pointless oblivion because we no longer recognize their achievements as men who stood tall amongst their peers of their time and ventured forth to change the world. Instead we measure them against the enlightenment of today and call them greedy conquerors, ruthless oppressors and hateful racists.

You shouldn't have to wonder why we're having problems in Iraq.

Problems with this suggestion

How were we supposed to look for WMD if we had not established order?

What would Iran and Syria have done had we removed our army from the area?

How would an immediate withdraw have gone over with Saudi Arabia, Jordan and other Arab nations who were looking at this war as a test of our resolve?

IMHO: Iran would have been scared to death to mess with us 4 years ago, knowing we just walked over the Iraqi army like they were girl scouts. It was shock and awe and Iranians were about to wet their pants right after that Iraq war, they were no problem and they didn't challenge us until much later when they felt it was safe. But we lost that advantage when we failed to continue to act tough enough to keep them in check.

There was a time when all we had to say is look, mess with us and your next...we will smash your forces and leave your nation in ruin, don't provoke us or you will get what Iraq got! Likely we could have shut down a few Iranian nuclear reactors with that kind of force/diplomacy.

To a certain degree, this is how we fought WWII as we rolled into Germany, we hit em hard and kept on pushing, leaving a wake of destroyed enemy military wherever we went. We didn't stop to reconstruct anything or be a police force until much later. We pushed, we crushed and we kept moving. We were fighting total all out war against a determined enemy and we left the shell shocked population to put things back together and then later...we helped them reconstruct.

The thought of us waging that kind of war scares #### the our enemies and it should ! Its brutal, ruthless and its final with only one clear winner emerging from the carnage.

Right after 9/11 Bush said something to the effect, if you're not with us and you support terrorists, then you are against us....and that scared a lot of countries. For a time the world shuddered, because the world knew what an awsome military force an angry superpower like the USA was... they were all stunned and waiting for our next move or our next demand. Pakistan took the hint, but we didn't take it far enough and now Bin Laden has a safe haven in the mountains of Pakistan.

Again, at that early moment in this war, we had a great advantage to negotiate with quasi-enemy nations. Two things we needed we had in spades...FEAR and RESPECT. If they did not respect us, then they feared us and thats all we needed to keep them in line and project change while we pursued Al Queda.

A small force in Iraq would have been all that was needed to restablish order had we not dismantled the Iraqi government and military. That was overkill and unecessary to achieve our objectives, which was to dethrone Saddam and get compliance with that UN brokered peace treaty.

We also would have been in a position to do as much searching as we wanted for WMD's at least for a few months without causing to much disturbance and achieve what we have to date.

Once the idea was accepted in the Arab world that America was not there (Iraq) to steal oil, nor establish a permanent military presence, we could have left with honor and no doubt a minimum resistance and casualties. Staying to long and not being tough enough led to an escalation where other nations ganged up on our troops because they knew we wouldn't come after them.

If, however, in our leaving Iraq, it was becoming unstable, then we should have let the Iraqis decide their fate. Let it go to war and to victors go the spoils.

Let them deal with the USA later or let them appeal to the UN. Thats when the UN would have been forced to step up because it would be a direct appeal from Iraq for humanitarian aide, absent the USA...or we could have helped a little but let the rest of the world deal with the bulk of it.

Who cares what the Saudi's felt about it? lol The fact that we did NOT wipe out some of their radical Maddrasses schools where the hijackers came from and that we're still their friends, despite their corrupt monarchy is all they need to worry about.

Talk about the world seeing the US resolve...heck, we just resolved to depose Saddam and we took out the entire Iraqi military like a hot knife going through butter. Our resolve, our prestige, our presence and our fear factor was never higher in the world than right after Saddam's statue was pulled down.

We have been giving ground ever since.

Of course this is just my opinion, and probably not one shared by a lot of people, but I like to think this would have worked out pretty close to what I have proposed if we had done a few things differently.

This may very well go down as the only war in US history where those who suffered the least thwarted the efforts of those suffering the most out of sheer ignorance and arrogance.

Ignorance, arrogance and, thanks to politics and the media, a great deal of propagada. It's one thing to just not know, it's quite another to be mislead as the media and certain pols have purposely done...it makes me sick. Nick I think your first comment should be read on the floor of congress...very well said...may we sent a copy to Wally Herger?

Jack...ditto your comments!

Iran would have been scared to death to mess with us 4 years ago, knowing we just walked over the Iraqi army like they were girl scouts. It was shock and awe and Iranians were about to wet their pants right after that Iraq war, they were no problem and they didn't challenge us until much later when they felt it was safe. But we lost that advantage when we failed to continue to act tough enough to keep them in check.

Wasn't it Rummy's plan to forge ahead...and he wasn't listened to?

There is allot of sense in what you are saying Jack, but I feel the points you made in the previous post addressing American resolve are accurate and run contrary to what would have happened on the home front had we just hit hard and withdrew.

Many Arabs felt that Saddam had won the first gulf war because he managed to retain power. The manner in which Arabs process information is different from the way we do. Had we left a power vacuum, it would have been filled, most likely by the Shia in the south and middle portion, and a fairly autonomous north in Kurdish control.

The Iranians would have had a defacto puppet state in Iraq with Shia domination. They could have stepped in and changed the entire rule of that country by supporting Shia militias, and little more.

What Saudi Arabia does, matters because they support terrorism for practical rather than fanatical purposes. This is an important distinction that most liberals conveniently overlook. The Saudi's will lick the boots of whoever has the power. The royal family fears the loss of their grip on the country, and will make concessions to whoever they feel is holding the biggest gun. Had we left right away they could have contented themselves that we had done all we intended to do and would be leaving, forcing no real change in their policy towards terrorism. Because nobody, and I mean nobody believes that the US government has the will to enter a region, fight a war, and then return in force a year later if things go bad again, and they most certainly would have gone bad in Iraq.

Terrorists the world over have been sending their best and brightest to fight us in Iraq and Afghanistan because they see the consequences of losing in Iraq. Deposing Saddam was great, but leaving directly after simply would have led to the ushering in of another regime that most likely would have been even more cordial to terrorists, since in total war, the infrastructure would have been damaged a great deal more. Either way, we would have had to come back again.

The attempt to bring representative government to Iraq was the only comprehensive strategy for Iraq and the middle east. Simply going in to determine the existence of wmd, and to dispose Saddam would have been immediate solutions to immediate problems, while completely ignoring the underlying symptoms.

You are absolutely correct when you say that we have bungled the counter-insurgency phase of the operation. Mainly because we have lacked the political will to do what is necessary. But that is the same problem that would have prevented us from completing our mission in your scenario.

The reason I keep siding with the Republicans in this debate is because they get the larger picture, they simply lack the will to allow the techniques required to bring about success. Because quite frankly, they don't brief well. And allot of people in this country think a war should be a clean cut affair fought according to the Marquis of Queensbury rules.

Overwhelming power is required in counter-insurgency as well as conventional warfare. The problem is that there allot of people that don't understand what "winning the hearts and minds" really means.

I always enjoy it Jack, wen we do not completely agree on a topic. I always end up learning a great deal.

I also want it noted that this site has been truly supportive of the mission in Iraq and the troops who are fighting it. You and Tina have been a great source of support for me, and I appreciate it.

Thanks Nick for your insight. I wish I had the time and space to make a more comprehensive case how a blitzkreig war into Iraq with a quick military withdrawl might have been better for us...not perfect, but better. Part of the problem in Iraq with a protracted occupation is...well, a protracted occupation! We run the rislk of overstaying our welcome with the local "hearts and minds" we want to help and that can't be good for them or us.

Also, your point about the Shia being in power was excellent and this is why I said if we had left the majority of Bathists in power (they are mostly Sunni) and gained some concessions for the Shia, we would have been far better off than dismantling everything and making unemployed enemies of powerful Sunni people.

One consoling fact that I have learned only recently is that not all Shia are of the same mindset, you can say they are the fundamentalists of Islam, but then Baptists, Pentacostal and EFC to name but a few, are so-called fundamentalists of the Christian church and they are quite seperate entities and this is what we run into with Iraqi Shia v Iranian Shia v Saudi Shia, etc.

So I have to backtrack a bit when I said I felt a Shia corridor might be formed from Iran to Egypt if we don't win in Iraq.

They may have Shia dominate factions and thats bad enough for sure, but they will likely be no more unified than PLO elements we see killing each other in Gaza...least this is a theory according to my new Muslim source, a source that I think is fairly credible.

By the way I just went to gun show at the Silver Dollar. Anyone reading this ought to consider going, it was really a good show with more booths than previous years and super deals on ammo...I saved a bunch of $$$.

Tina, thank you for your comments, and feel free to send that statement to whom ever you think it would be beneficial for.

Jack, I think it definitely would have been better in the short run, but I really feel we need a comprehensive strategy in Iraq. We didn't leave right after we had defeated the Germans or the Japanese either, because we saw the necessity of not repeating the post war mistakes of WWI. We also saw in Western Germany a needed ally in countering Soviet aggression.

To some degree parallels an be made with Iraq and Iran. The Shia are not all of a like mind, but the more vocal ones in Iraq tend to have allot cozier relations with Iran than I think any of us would like.

Perhaps it would have been interesting to see if we could have followed through on assisting an internal coup in Iraq, but even then that would have meant finding a leader which could have maintained order after the fall of Saddam, and after we left the resistance forces in Iraq high and dry after the first gulf war there weren't to many takers outside of the Kurds.

Staying in Iraq was definitely the harder thing to do. I also believe it was the right strategy. The tactics involved in dealing with the insurgency may have been flawed in some respects. The political and media response was definitely flawed. But these are all problems undermined a good strategy, and that needs to be kept in mind. We should not jump to throw out the strategy, because of errors in tactics. We should not abandon the end state, because certain politicians and media would rather see us lose in Iraq than succeed.