Been listening to Glenn Beck, Frank? i can't wait to see the spin on how this is all due to the insurgents choosing to thwart us by being nonviolent as the troops surge...oh wait, am i giving them ideas?

The problem is that the troop levels we have now can't be sustained and that you also need political changes (changes that the Bush administration isn't making) to win in Iraq - even Petraeus says this. Without political changes the violence will go right back up again once troop levels drop. The surge is just like a temporary plug. Violence has dropped in certain areas but nothing has changed politically. Just more money and more American lives wasted for nothing by this administration. The violence is only down where the troops are - you would have seen this if you actually read the article. We still don't have enough troops to secure the whole country of Iraq and we can't do that without a draft. If Iraq truly is that important to our future then it looks like we will need a draft. I wouldn't support a draft because I doubt it Iraq is that important. It shouldn't ever have even been part of the War or Terror and it only ways made so because Bush/Cheney are idiots as are many of the people that support them.

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However, in the northern province of Nineveh, where many al Qaeda and other Sunni Arab militants fled to escape the crackdown in Baghdad and surrounding region, there had been a 129 percent rise in car bombings and a corresponding 114 percent increase in the number of people killed in violence.

While the figures confirm U.S. data showing a positive trend in combating al Qaeda bombers, there is growing instability in southern Iraq, where rival Shi'ite factions are fighting for political dominance.

It's time to retreat from retreating, to surrender the idea of surrendering! Run away in all directions at once!

Interesting hypothesis, SM. Unfortunately, it does not explain the way in which the Sunnis have turned against AQ and killed almost all of them.

You see, in war, once the enemy has been driven from the field, you don't need to keep as large an army there. That's why we don't have a massive landing zone in Antwerp any more like we did in 1944-45.

The moonbat cabal that infests the halls of congress is so inept at surrendering that they surrendered in their effort to surrender... their incompetence knows no bounds

Hahaha,"Mission Accomplished, Bitches!" I want a bumper sticker that says that.

"Without political changes the violence will go right back up again once troop levels drop. The surge is just like a temporary plug. Violence has dropped in certain areas but nothing has changed politically."

The problem is there are two fallacious assumptions -

1. Political progress isn't confined solely to national unity. In specific areas, the regions that were previously the most hostile to the U.S. and openly supported the terrorists, they have been making a lot of progress.

2. That's why it's a bit of a leap to assume that once troop level go down, the violence will rise back up accordingly. Militias need support of the local population. Al Qaeda needs the cover of the local population to operate. Both groups used to have it, Al Qaeda lost it and with the militias it's declining. The last time Al Qaeda was given this they turned to terrorizing and raping their own populace as well as trying to create their own personal fiefdoms.

The Sunnis leaders turned on them. With the tribal mentality of Iraqis, if you don't have the support of local sheiks or other prominent leaders - you have nothing. With the track record they have and with the sheik seeing this group try to usurp them and pillage their people the last time they gave their support, it's doubtful they're going to give it again. Without that support, they can't operate, and without it they can't bring the violence back up. The same thing is going on to a lessor extent with the Shiite militias.

3. If you'd been following this you'd know that the main difference with the surge is not just the amount of troops but the tactics.

This is where most liberal criticisms of it miss the whole reason he's been successful. Under normal circumstances a ~20% increase in troops would mean little - this is why your side was predicting failure.

An area **would** previously revert back to violence once the U.S. had cleared it out. It's switched to capture and hold methods where we keeps troops in an area once it's taken. Now, this does take extra troops to do and that does lead to the problem of us keeping troops there later - but once you capture an area, you do not need to keep the same amount of troops there as it took for the battle to gain control over it.

Saying the violence has only gone down where we've put more troops also misses the whole point of why a ~20% increase was successful - that's where the most violence was - overall, it was a small increase but Petraeus switched to focusing these guys where they were most needed.

The equation is also changed if Petraeus gets his way and we press harder on Iran. The IEDs, the weapons, and the bombs are expensive and the Shiite militias couldn't get them without Iran's support. We keep that from happening and they'll be far less able to fight, U.S. troop levels be damned.

Your side has spent the first half of this year explaining why the surge won't work. While most Democrats have abandoned fighting the war, you're now explaining to us why it won't last. Would you like to give it a shot before demanding we leave 10s of millions of people who counted on us to tyranny and oppression, stengthening another country that wants to nuke us, and making the threat of our military force against dictators and enemies of the United States worthless?

First, I'd like to ask this: who in hell coined the term 'surge?' In the military I am enlisted in, and I'm not sure about the others...say, Canada...but in this one, we call any effort to bolster ongoing operations somewhere, reinforcement.

Secondly, the total number of troops sent in the reinforcement amounted to roughly 5000 additional shooters. And I mean shooters, not FOBbits. How on earth can just one more brigade's worth of Soldiers and Marines that actually close with and kill these people, sound like some fantastical, overwhelming 'surge?' If anything, it was too few! I echo an above poster's sentiment. It ain't the numbers, it's the tactics.

Lastly.... The 'War Against the War' is just getting started. Wait 'till you have a generation of military-age Americans, who grew up beneath the anti-war, dishonorable-peace-better-than-war crowd's parentage....

Someday the Leftard will take our advice and just Give War a Chance. And if they don't, we can kill their children. Then we'll get all offended when they demand violence against us.

Sadly, they still won't get the message, or understand the corollary.

I think all the celebrations are premature. The situation is very complex and for a long term solution to emerge is not encouraging. We cannot stay in Iraq forever and the public is sick of it all and the almost 200 bil yearly cost. Yes we can throw blood and treasure at Iraq and tamp down the insurgency, but will that be enough to change the instincts of the Iraqis and have a long term solution. Likely they wil be fighting each other for generations, long after we have left or hidden inside our bases.

When that war is won, Bush lands on an aircraft carrier again with a big banner saying, "MISSION ACCOMPLISHED, BITCHES!"

When we win this war, I am going to should that in the face of every person who was against the war and said we would never win.

I might run up to Ron Paul and shout that in his face at a debate.

To save wear and tear on the landing deck, I suggest "paving" it with journalists and Democrats first.

Yup, sounds like a good bumper sticker to me, too. I'd hire a skywriter plane to write it in the air over California. As soon as the smoke clears from the great Malibu burning though.

P.S. Good on ya, One_MOA!

...and any survivors can ask questions at the press conference. Or be summarily executed. Whichever.

Well, actually I would prefer the latter, but I'll let the President decide their fate. I'm magnanimous like that.

How do you fight an idea? The idea in the Middle East that the US is evil and must be punished. The more people you kill who hold this idea dear the stronger this idea becomes. The idea lives and multiplies in all the countries around Iraq. The idea can linger for years then erupt violently. You can never kill the idea. You can only change it into something else. You don't do that by destroying a countries infrastructure, creating an exodus of the professional class, killing innocent civilians, creating the likes of Blackwater, pouring weapons into todays tribal allies who will eventually use them for Tyranny and allowing a sham government to funnel the help ment for the people into their own pockets.

So keep the war going, maybe for another 5 years, but tell me how you are going to change the domestic majority opposition to the war?

Bush got it all wroing from the start. 911. He should have listen to his relationship with Jesus. The most admired man in his history. He would have told him to turn the other cheek. Spend the money and service on pulling the Islamic world out of Tyranny, not with guns and bombs but with hospitals, roads, schools and money. It would have cost a lot less and been alot more effective than what we have now. In 6 years we have gone from having the sympathy of the world to fear and loathing.

Bush on the Aircraft carrier! The mistake is that he didn't pulll most of our forces out then. That would have been victory. Especially if he could have poured US resources into the rest of the poor Islamic world to get them on our side. Getting the Palestinians their own country also would have helped.

If we had followed Jesus's teaching we would still be the light on the hill. Now we have created a monster, reinforced a simple ancient idea, that we are without God, so evil corrupt and degenerate, that we must be destroyed. How, I ask did this idea spawn from the heart of a deeply reigious man like President Bush?

#7 - Posted by: on October 23, 2007 11:37 AM

Don't bother reasoning with Sarcasm Man. He supports Ron Paul, so its obviously useless.

#15
You realize this is a humor site, right?

Anyways, I wouldn't declare victory just yet. This is more like the turning point, like the battle of midway or the battle of Gettysburg or the D-Day landings. We still have a long way to go in the War on Whiners, but we are winning.

Humor site!!

The jokes on the kids. There the ones who will pay for this war. Ha, Ha

Where the ones who will pay for this war?

There the ones who will pay for this war.

I like the practical joke on the 30 million people we leave to fry, you gotta think bigger.

If we had followed Jesus's teaching we would still be the light on the hill.

Skeptical, if we had followed "turn the other cheek," slavery would still be prevalent in the South (assuming blacks had lived through our German/Japanese occupation) and as much as we don’t like to admit it, we did get help from an interventionist foreign power during our own revolution. I have respect for people who can adhere to nonviolence, but usually pacifists and non-interventionists have had to rely on people who don’t adhere to those policies for their own freedom and independence.

It’s nice to think non-interventionism doesn’t mean we can’t go ahead and fight back against our own invaders, but using that as a strict practice amounts to letting our allies fry, letting our enemies get much more powerful, and leaving no one to help us once we’re attacked.

Even assuming our allies are still around by the time we’re invaded, why should they stick their necks out for us when we won’t stick our necks out for them? Why should they care about the survival of democracy in America any more than a few of us care about democracy in Iraq?

Prior to Pearl Harbor, why should we have assisted Britain and issued an oil embargo on Japan? Those were a large aid to making sure the bad guys in World War II were defeated, but if we want to be non-interventionist, it’s hard to justify it.

As an aside, and as a libertarian, it’s incredibly annoying that libertarianism has come to mean: “other people having to live in totalitarianism is perfectly fine as long as it doesn’t affect me.”

Lastly.... The 'War Against the War' is just getting started. Wait 'till you have a generation of military-age Americans, who grew up beneath the anti-war, dishonorable-peace-better-than-war crowd's parentage....

I'm not so sure about that. There's also a generation (mine) in their 30s and 40s who saw the Iranian Hostages released, the Berlin Wall fall, and places like Panama and Grenada treated to a vulgar display of American Power. And we cheered the whole way. When I was in college (a public lefty university) we called ourselves the Commie Chasers. And there were lots of us - maybe even a majority.

What we're really seeing in the "war against the war" is the baby-boomers' last ugly, flailing and flatulent attempt to maintain their relevance. They are on their way out; this is their Battle of the Bulge. My generation is rising to power, and we raise better kids.
Remain vigilant, but do not fear.

So if the war against the War in Iraq is over, that means the hippies can go away now, right? Hello?

When that war is won, Bush lands on an aircraft carrier again with a big banner saying, "MISSION ACCOMPLISHED, BITCHES!"

Loving it! Followed by President Dubya dropping trou and forcing all doubters to kiss his ... self.

hey #15...Ask Bill Clinton about turning the other cheek and where it got us. lets see, North Korea stabbed him in the back, and he turned the other cheek, our embassay's in Africa were bombed, he turned the other cheek, remember what happened in Somlia, he turned the other cheek, the USS Cole was bombed, he turned the other cheek, the list goes on and on. I personally dont want to turn the other cheek anymore, I'd rather stand and fight. Turning the other cheek is what let to 911. 8 years of military weakness led to 911. You know why we havn't been attacked since then....,,you know what, if you don't know , I can't explain it to ya.

"Compared to war, all other forms of human endeavor shrink to insignificance" -George S. Patton

The more people you kill who hold this idea dear the stronger this idea becomes.

You are so right, dude! That's why the idea of Zoroastrianism is absolutely unstoppable today. In fact, I went out and bought a compact, hybrid, low-carb Zoroast just last week.

When that war is won, Bush lands on an aircraft carrier again with a big banner saying, "MISSION ACCOMPLISHED, BITCHES!"

OOO!! I'm telling on you Frankj! Ms Sarahk!! Frankj's using the B-word talking hate on the liberals, can you give HIM the smack down too???

In regards to your topic Frank, looks like a quagmire to me, maybe the demoncraps and libtards should pull out....'cause they're pu--y little gheys!

Maybe now we can have an exit strategy to extricate ourselves from Slick Willies' illegal war in the Balkans. After all, its been ten years-what a quagmire!

Nice quote by General Patton, Old Geezer.
George S. Patton Jr. was the most astute foreign policy expert we ever had!