What would Pelosi do?
Before you head off to the polls today, make sure you read this piece by Michael Kinsley over at Slate, who disects the Democratic Platform:
I picked up “A New Direction for America,” a 31-page manifesto released to little acclaim by House Democrats in June. By all means, read it. But do me a favor and vote first.
Kinsley wants you to vote first, because he wants you to vote Democrat. However, he knows that his assesment of the Democratic Platform will make you see red (and likely vote that way, too).
On National Security:
For national security in general, the Democrats’ plan is so according-to-type that you cringe with embarrassment: It’s mostly about new cash benefits for veterans. Regarding Iraq specifically, the Democrats’ plan has two parts. First, they want Iraqis to “assum[e] primary responsibility for securing and governing their country.” Then they want “responsible redeployment” (great euphemism) of American forces.
Older readers may recognize this formula. It’s Vietnamization—the Nixon-Kissinger plan for extracting us from a previous mistake. But Vietnamization was not a plan for victory. It was a plan for what was called “peace with honor” and is now known as “defeat.”
Go read the entire thing…before you vote.
Capt. Ed adds this: “In fact, as Kinsley notes, the Democrats have no plans for anything other than their normal asset redistributions to special-interest groups and selected victim classes.”
Yep.
Remind me again the Republican strategy for stabilizing Iraq? And if there is one why aren’t we using it?
The plan is to kill all those who would try to destablize it (let’s call them “the bad guys”, or jihadists for short.) In the meantime, we continue to build up and train the local forces (we’ll call them “the good guys”) to take control of the security of their own country.
We are still a long ways off from completing either mission. But our military is making significant progress on both fronts, and neither can be accomplished without the other.
I’d hope that the fact that there are more ‘bad guys’ in Iraq than there were before this strategy was implemented would be reason enough to rethink it.
I believe most Americans agree that the strategy of the last three years has been a failure, based on any criteria: numbers of terrorist attacks, levels of services to the Iraqi people (2 Hours of electricity a day!), the capacity of the Iraqi government, etc. Being a pragmatic sort, we’re willing to try a different course.
In actuality, neither the republicans nor the democrats have a strategy for Iraq. Nobody anticipated the level of extremism within the country and continuously supplied from Iran and other outside sources or if they did, they didn’t do anything about it. They don’t know how to win and they don’t know how to get out.
The democrats give us this bullcrap about we need to TALK to everybody, reason with them, get help from the UN partners, etc. That’s so much bullshit I can’t believe it. You can’t TALK the clerics into calling off jihad. Furthermore, millions of muslims have bought into this crap all over the muslim world. Millions of them. The French and English and Germans are scared to death of offending the muslims residing in their countries for fear of violence. Do you really think they’re going to help us any more in Iraq … hell no. It doesn’t matter who is in charge of our government. Clinton himself couldn’t talk them into it.
The Republicans are pathetic as well. If Rumsfeld worked for a corporation and delivered the kind of results he’s delivered in Iraq, he would have been fired long ago. But Bush is so damn stubborn, he won’t do it. Instead, we languish on and on.
I no longer believe that Islam is a religion of peace. It is a religion of hate, fear and intimidation and we must be prepared to defend ourselves against it, and if they want to kill each other off in the name of whatever religious islamic sect they belong to, then they can go ahead and do it without my tax dollar supporting it.
well yes, those that thought we would be greeted with flowers didn’t anticipate this, but the problem is that they were not the experts on the middle east, they were just the people in power making decisions, without the willingness to make informed decisions because somehow it has become ideologically incorrect for republicans to ask experts for their real, unbiased opinion before making decisions. the first Bush listened to these experts and didn’t invade Baghdad because these experts feared that that would lead to a civil war … well i guess they were right.
oh great, what a wonderful plan. problem though is that the more of them we kill the more of them will turn against us. terrorism is really hard to fight with force … just take a look at European countries that had to deal with it. the problem with terrorism is that it has a cause, in this case it is about assuring that western forces leave iraq and the muslim/islam world (if you do some research you will find out that one of the reasons for Bin Laden to start fighting America was the stationing of US forces on Arab/holy land. so what do we do? we put more forces there. what do you think is going to be the outcome of that?
With this plan you will have to be prepared to kill pretty much the whole middle east, and honestly i doubt that the US is going to be prepared to accept not so much the number of dead muslims, but the number of dead american soldiers that will come with that.
Nobody anticipated the level of extremism within the country and continuously supplied from Iran and other outside sources or if they did, they didn’t do anything about it.
Dianne- with all respect, this is crazy. Democrats specifically anticipated this. Take Jim Webb for instance in 2002:
The issue before us is not simply whether the United States should end the regime of Saddam Hussein, but whether we as a nation are prepared to physically occupy territory in the Middle East for the next 30 to 50 years. Those who are pushing for a unilateral war in Iraq know full well that there is no exit strategy if we invade and stay.
…
In Japan, American occupation forces quickly became 50,000 friends. In Iraq, they would quickly become 50,000 terrorist targets.
Dianne- recall that we defeated the Soviet Union without invading them. There is a time for military muscle and there’s a time to use your damn head; one without the other will lead to disaster.