With all due respect- this is madness!

Whether the American occupation has 90% approval or 20% approval it makes ZERO difference on whether, say, the Sadr faction decides to participate in the Iraqi government.

It’s kind of like thinking that if I don’t change my lucky shirt until November, the Cubs will finally win a World Series.

Consider this for a moment. If the public showed 75 to 90% support for the war, and if your fellow Democrats in Congress didn’t continually make defeatist statement that our enemies use for propaganda, what do you think would happen in Iraq? The war would end. The terrorists would give up because they would see its pointless.

We’re fully capable of changing the facts on the ground. All that’s needed is time and support for the troops.

You should keep in mind that in the foreseeable future, all our wars are going to be like Iraq because no one can stand up to the conventional US military. If you’re prepared to lose Iraq, I hope you’re prepared to lose all future American conflicts and see the world taken over by our enemies, piece by piece, country by country.

Il mondo è tornato ad essere un posto normale. Ricordate, qualche settimana fa, l’editoriale del New York Times (la password per leggerlo cercatela qui) che invocava il ritiro statunitense dall’Iraq? Il giorno dopo, giornali e telegiornali italiani …

You could have just as easily stated that they were wrong about the invasion, so why should you trust them now. Instead, you say that they’re guilty of death and destruction unleashed by the invasion.

That’s true that would have been more polite. But I still don’t see my comments as ad hominem but simply attributing responsibility of which these men surely own some small portion.

Why not accept that my views are sincere and independent of my feelings about partisan politics? Why is a commitment to a political course considered ‘hate’? Are anti-abortion advocates hateful? Tax cut proponents? Education advocates?

I don’t have any ‘hate’ for Kevin Pollack but it is typical of the media to trot him out as a “war critic” when he (and Tony Blair) was among the most forceful of the ‘liberal hawks’ for the last 4 years. (This Sunday, count how many people are invited onto the news shows who opposed the invasion and remember that we’re talking about a position that’s shared by 60% of the American people.)

Sure, maybe Pollack and O’Hanlon are simply reporting what they see on the ground. But haven’t we heard this before? From ‘Mission Accomplished’ to this National Review cover story over two years ago to Joe Lieberman telling us that the surge is ‘working’ even before Petraeus says the surge had even started. I don’t want this to sound sarcastic or simply rhetorical but, really, when will it be ok to begin to be skeptical of these claims.

Believe me- even though I opposed the invasion I supported the occupation: until it grew too obvious that it was counter productive to our goals of national security and regional stability. (Is that hateful too?) After the first Golden Dome Mosque bombing in February 2006 how is it possible to believe that we are not in a civil war? What can we ask our soldiers and Marines to do in such a condition; the Iraqi and American people want our troops out- it is only the governments that want us to stay.

Eventually, it would be refreshing to listen to people who accurately predicted events in Iraq- I would suggest they are either lucky or wise- I’ll take either at this point.

You could be forgiven for coming to that conclusion considering that the most “articulate” anti-war advocates that cable news could find was Janeane Garofalo and Sean Penn. Yet 126 Democrats voted against the resolution in the House and 21 voted against in the Senate.

I’ll admit that I’m not aware of the authors’ writings over the last four years, but allow me to give you this proposition: Don’t you think it’s at least possible that the authors really saw good things happening in Iraq, and support the surge not to cover their tracks, but because they genuinely believe in the mission?

Also, the Iraq War didn’t go as horribly as you make it out to be. Yeah, I know I’ll catch a lot of flack for this, but a simple look at the history of our nation at war shows terrible mismanagement from both the civilian and military sides. Lincoln, for example, who I think we can both agree was a great man, was completely inept during most of the Civil War, firing and hiring generals like it was nothing. After D-Day, when we were fighting in France, our intelligence didn’t tell us anything about the 10 foot hedgerows that GIs would encounter, thus we didn’t prepare for them and our advance was slowed by months and we suffered thousands of unnecessary deaths. There are countless more examples like these that pale any mistake Bush and Rumsfeld have made about Iraq, and I only give you two.

It is important to remember that war rarely goes as planned, and that terrible mistakes will always be made.

When I talk about ad hominem attacks, here’s what I mean. When you criticize the authors of the article, not their opinion. You could have just as easily stated that they were wrong about the invasion, so why should you trust them now. Instead, you say that they’re guilty of death and destruction unleashed by the invasion. There’s a big difference between being wrong about something and being implicated in death and destruction.

On the other hand, your criticism of Colin Powell at the UN is very well-founded and reasonable. Not an ad hominem attack in the least.

Nazar