Thursday, April 09, 2009
"Napalm in the morning"
Barack Obama catches the scent of victory, and breathes deeply of it. If only Nixon could have gone to China, perhaps only Barack Obama can make the left happy that we won a war.
4 Comments:
By 
Georg Felis, at
Thu Apr 09, 09:55:00 AM:
“Victory has a thousand fathers, but defeat is an orphan”
Well, at least he’s channeling JFK somewhere, now if only he would stand up for tax cuts and fight against nuclear missiles being placed in unstable regimes. (The invade another country and bail out *during* the invasion thing we can do without)
By 
, at
Thu Apr 09, 11:57:00 AM:
As I've said before, it is an an odd twist the Iraqi adventure may well become recognized as GB2's greatest achievement as President. It will almost certainly have the most far-reaching consequence for the region and hence the world. I was never fully in favor of the invasion, because I never thought he had articulated a rationale that an ordinary Republican like me (fiscal conservative, small gov't, strong but seldom used defense capabilities) could accept and because I worried about the acidic political effects on our country and the national culture of an unpopular war. I saw that particular movie as a teenager and didn't much enjoy it the first time, so I wasn't looking forward to a remake. Having said that, I see now that the Iraqi effort is potentially an extraordinary gift to the world from our country. I hope that the world manages not to blow the benefits.
By , at
Thu Apr 09, 04:39:00 PM:
Anonymous @ 11:57 AM
Iraq did not have the potential to become "another Vietnam". Look closely at the AfPak theater. We are increasing our numbers while we depend on the worst logistical situation in my lifetime (59 y.o.)
This one is going to get bad. I'm not sure that that isn't the plan in the WH.
By , at
Thu Apr 09, 05:08:00 PM:
I never said that, militarily, Iraq had the potential to become another Vietnam, I said it had the potential to become so unpopular that it's existence would have acidic effects on our politics and culture.
As to your very different point, I would say our Iraq adventure very definitely had the potential to become even worse than Vietnam militarily, since we were winning on the ground with substanntial support from the population in Vietnam right up until our country lost the will to fight, while in Iraq there was not a popular support for our efforts until 2007, and it could be said we stood a very good chance of losing militarily at many points in the war there.
I'm no military historian, so I cite as my evidence for the latter point the outstanding Bing West book "The Strongest Tribe", a fine military history of Iraq written by an author of a similar study of Vietnam (and a former counter-insurgency officer in that war).
As far as "AfPak" goes, I don't know enough about it to express an opinion, but as a general rule I like our foreign wars to be short, with overwhelming force brought against the bad guys, and our people out of the theatre once we've completed our stated purpose. "Country Building" is tough stuff, too long and hard for American political will to stand in my opinion.
